Bonn Opera's promo clip for Puccini's La Bohème (2016-17 season), starring Sumi Hwang as Mimi.

Ahem.  We now (finally) return you to your schelduled reading ...

Sumi Hwang: "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" from Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème -- this is a televised concert performance, but she's been on stage in Bonn as Mimi as recently as last season, too.

Books of 1916: Part One

2016 was a tough year in many ways, so may I introduce you to 1916? I think you’re going to love 1916.

I was struck by something I read in a (very nice) review of one of the books of 1916: —“because anything first published in 1916 that does not contain a word or thought about the First World War has got to be interesting.” Yes, you’d think so. But actually most of these novels make no mention of the war whatsoever. They tend to be historical, or escapist, or completely surreal.

You may notice that I’ve only reviewed about half as many books as I did last year for 1915. But last year I wasn’t done until March! So what you are losing in volume you are gaining in punctuality. Basically I began to feel this project was affecting my brain perhaps a little too much. My brother pointed out that I said in casual conversation, “I read that book in 1911.” I needed to dial it down just a bit.

Uneasy Money by PG Wodehouse

PG Wodehouse is always a delightful treat. I’m so happy there are more than fifty books still to come! I went by the US publication date in order to include this book, which some may consider cheating.

Lord Dawlish has a title but no money, so he is delighted when an eccentric millionaire leaves him all his money just because Lord Dawlish (aka Bill) gave him a few golf pointers once. But when Bill discovers that the eccentric millionaire has stiffed poor but deserving relatives, he sets out for Long Island to try to set things right. There is beekeeping, romance, people pretending to be other people, and lots of hilarity. The only sad part is something that happens to a monkey. In the end, everyone ends up engaged to the right person. On the final page we are at the train station in Islip, Long Island, which today is a gross and unappealing town, but apparently 100 years ago was a bucolic spot where the rich built mansions. If this book doesn’t make you smile, your soul is in mortal danger.

These Twain by Arnold Bennett

This is the third book in the Clayhanger series, and my favorite. In These Twain, the somewhat-starcrossed lovers from the first two books, Edwin and Hilda Clayhanger, embark on married life. They fight a lot. I read this book in the 1990s and haven’t re-read it, but what I remember most vividly are the descriptions of how angry they get at each other. Edwin Clayhanger thinks how he’d like to strangle Hilda, but then he goes for a walk and after a while he calms down, and when he comes home, he loves her again. At that time I was dating someone who made me really angry fairly often, and I thought These Twain was incredibly realistic. Bennett’s World-War-I-themed book (The Roll-Call) will come up in 1918, and is the last in the Clayhanger series.

Love at Second Sight by Ada Leverson

My hardcore fans (yes, both of you!) may remember that two years ago I was unable to review Birds of Paradise because I mislaid it and therefore couldn’t read it. (It turned up in the end, in a knapsack I never use.) I was eager to rectify my mistake by reading Ada Leverson’s 1916 offering, especially as this was her last novel.

Love at Second Sight is the last book in the Little Ottleys trilogy. Although I didn’t read the first two, it was easy to see what must have happened in them—in book one, the main character Edith must have married her husband, and then in the second one both Edith and her husband fall in love with other people but remain together thanks to Edith’s bloody-minded loyalty.

As this novel opens, Edith’s family has a guest in the house, and it’s unclear who she is, why she’s come to stay, and how long she plans to be there. But Madame Frabelle exercises a strange fascination over all of them. This book is terribly amusing and I’m not even going to tell you what happens, other than it’s a scream. The protagonist is thinking funny things about other people all the time but since she’s kind and fairly quiet, people don’t realize that she’s amusing and smart. The husband seems like the most annoying person on earth, and he must be drawn from life because how could you invent a person that annoying?

This is one of the rare books that has a contemporary setting during World War I. The husband was not called up because of a “neurotic heart,” which seems to be like PTSD. Edith’s love interest from the previous book returns home from the war, wounded. This novel’s realism allowed me to see all kinds of period details. For example, when the characters need to look up train timetables, they use things called the ABC and Bradshaw, which must be the apps they had on their phones at that time. Edith also had an Italian composer best friend who I thought might be based on Puccini since (according to Wikipedia) he and Ada Leverson were great pals.

I really was on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen, and guess what? Everyone gets a happy ending!

Ada Leverson’s Wikipedia page says cattily that after this novel, she worked on ever-smaller projects. Just like me!

Inclinations by Ronald Firbank

Firbank is a riot! This book reminds me a bit of Morrissey’s List of the Lost. Of course, that should be no surprise really, since both of them are directly related to Oscar Wilde on the literary family tree. What sets them apart is Inclinations is unalloyed comedy and nearly all dialogue.

What kind of inclinations does this novel concern itself with, you may ask? Well, it’s about a middle-aged writer Miss Geraldine O’Brookmore, known as Gerald, who brings a fourteen year old girl (Miss Mabel Collins) on a trip to the Mediterranean. There’s basically no description of anything or explanation of what’s happening or who is speaking, so you have to be okay with feeling unsure about what’s going on. One of the characters is shot and killed and it was chapters later that I finally understood which one. Plot is not what this book is about. This book is about lines so funny and with such a nice ring to them that I will just give you a small sampling for your enjoyment:

Miss Collins clasped her hands. “I’d give almost anything to be blasé.”

***

“I don’t see Mrs Cowsend, do you?”

“Breakfast was laid for four covers in her room.”

“For four!”

“Or perhaps it was only three.”

***

“She writes curiously in the style of one of my unknown correspondents.”

***

[Talking about a costume ball]:

“Oh, Gerald, you could be a silver-tasselled Portia almost with what you have, and I a Maid of Orleans.”

“You!”

“Don’t be tiresome, darling. It’s not as if we were going in boys’ clothes!”

***

“Once she bought a little calf for some special binding, but let it grow up...and now it’s a cow!”

***

“Gerald has a gold revolver. ‘Honour” she calls it.”

***

“Is your father tall?”

“As we drive I shall give you all his measurements.”

***

“I had a good time in Smyrna,” she drowsily declared.

“Only there?”

“Oh, my dears, I’m weary of streets; so weary!”

***

“I’m told she [Gerald] is a noted Vampire.”

“Who ever said so?”

“Some friend of hers—in Chelsea.”

“What do Vampires do?”

“What don’t they!”

If you find this sort of off-putting, these lines really do make more sense, somewhat more sense, in context. In a chapter that is eight words long (“Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel!”), Miss Mabel Collins throws off the protectoress-ship of Gerald and elopes with a count. The final section of the book is different, slightly more conventional and somewhat Jane Austen-esque (“I’ve such news!” “What is it?” “The Chase is let at last.”) In this part, the Countess (Miss Collins-that-was) returns home to England with her toddler and there’s question in some minds about whether she is properly, legally married. I’m looking forward to Firbank’s next novel in 1917.

I’m only just now realizing that Firbank is the author that the main character keeps reading in The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. I guess I thought Alan Hollinghurst just made him up. The thing is that his name sounds so made up, just “Fairbanks” with some of the letters taken out. Ugh, I learn everything backward.

Back from a wonderful weekend: We've been going to Lake Constance to attend the Bregenz Opera Festival more or less regularly for some 10 years now, and almost every time I've come home claiming this was the best thing they ever produced.  This year was no exception.

We left home shortly after 6:00 AM on Saturday morning: It's a six hour drive to Lindau (at the eastern end of Lake Constance) even under the best of circumstances, and summer weekend travel hardly offers these.  Except for one major incident, we managed to avoid the really big traffic jams, but it still took us seven instead of six hours to get there -- which was fine, though; we got to Lindau (the main / historic part of which is on an island connected with the mainland by a rail line and a bridge for cars) at around 1:00pm.  We checked into our hotel and then went down to the harbor front for a (somewhat late-ish) lunch (the drinks are non-alcoholic, in case anybody's wondering) ...

... then took a stroll along the esplanade ...

... and past Lindau's historic city hall and through its city centre ...

... back to our hotel, where my mom had a quick nap and I treated myself to the opening of Ali Smith's "Artful" and -- a dessert at the café associated with our hotel.

In the evening it was back down to the harbor...

... where we ultimately boarded a boat as well -- and almost literally sailed into the sunset (or, well, actually in the opposite direction, but with the setting sun providing a perfect backdrop to our half-hour cruise to Bregenz).

The Opera Festival's venue is an outdoor amphitheatre right on the shore of Lake Constance:

Productions change biennually: For this and next year's production of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, the stage has been set up, inter alia, with a 72 x 27 m (89 x 236 ft) replica of (a part of) the Chinese Wall, plus some 200 replica terracotta warriors rising from the lake.  Costume design was largely a mix of traditional and fairy tale / fantasy Chinese, with allusions to Maoist China however, hinting at the unforgiving cruelty of Turandot's rule (it was also very clear in the production that it is indeed her who calls the shots, not her father, although he is the titular emperor).  As has been the case in all of the recent Bregenz Opera Festival productions, acrobats and performance artists were part of the production; however integrated even more seamlessly than in the past years.  Also as always, the production made full use of the stage's lakeside setting, e.g., with barques and rowing boats as a means of transportation. -- The opera was performed in the original Italian, with German subtitles on screens to the right and to the left of the stage.

I've seen Turandot performed before -- but rarely, if ever, done as well as in Bregenz this year.  The entire production values were absolutely stellar; the Vienna Philharmonic (orchestra in residence at the festival) were their spectacular selves, and Calaf (the unknown prince) in particular earned the applause he was getting, and not only for his signature aria "Nessun dorma" (sung to the accompaniment of quacking ducks ... the pleasures of an outdoor / lakeside performance!  Well, as he sings in the aria ... "nessun dorma" -- "nobody sleeps" ... not even the resident ducks! :) ). 

However, the one lady who absolutely slew me was a Finnish soprano named Marjukka Tepponen, who appeared as Liù, the slave girl who is Turandot's polar opposite in the love triangle at the opera's core.  I've cried over Liù's sacrifice before, but never as I did on Saturday night.  Tepponen nailed that role down to its last little detail, and she somehow managed to make the whole grossly voyeuristic public spectacle of Liù's death a moment of perfect intimacy ... which, just because of its inherent contrast (intimacy exposed to the public eye) made it a moment of even greater vulnerability.

***********************************************

For those who don't know the plot, Turandot is a princess (and, although her father, the emperor, is still alive, de facto ruler) of China, who has decreed that whoever wishes to woo her must solve three riddles, and any suitor who fails to solve even one of them forfeits his life.  (I.e., think Shakespeare's Portia in The Merchant of Venice, except with an even more draconian punishment in the event of failure.)  So far, every single one of her many suitors has failed; in fact, the opera opens with the beheading of yet another unfortunate fool.

A wezir announces the death sentence of yet another suitor of Turandot's.

Martial arts acrobats interlude:

Preparations for the unfortunate suitor's beheading.

The condemned suitor is conducted to his execution.

Enter a mysterious stranger, who however is soon recognized by an old man and a young slave girl in the crowd.  It turns out the old man is his father Timur, now a refugee himself after having been driven out of the court and the land over which he used to rule, and the slave is a girl named Liù, who fell in love with the prince (the incognito stranger) years ago when he showed her kindness, and who on account of this resolved to stay with his father and care for him for the rest of his (or her) life in exile.

The unknown prince watches as Turandot's barque floats by.

The unknown prince, upon seeing Turandot at the condemned suitor's execution, of course instantly resolves to try his own hand at the riddles, too.  (Men ... Turandot should've factored in that, the more impossible the odds, the bigger actually the temptation.)  Obviously, nothing and nobody is able to dissuade him; certainly not Turandot's own ministers (who are as sick of the bloodshed as everybody else), nor even his father Timur, and also certainly not poor Liù, who can only plead with him -- her aria "Signor ascolta" ("My lord, listen") is the opera's first signature aria, and on Saturday night, Ms. Tepponen's first soft little exclamation mark ... but there were even better things to come.

The unknown prince and Turandot's ministers; in the background, Timur and Liù.

[I'd have loved to also get a shot of Liù / Ms. Tepponen during "Signor ascolta," but they were too far away and the stage was too much dimmed then -- and obviously both using a closeup lense and the use of a flashlight were out of the question since photos were a "no-go" to begin with, so I had to snatch whatever moments I could get at all.]

So anyway, to the palace the unknown prince goes. 

3 photos: processional entrance of the emperor of China.

The emperor, like everybody else, also pleads with the prince to think twice; also (of course) in vain. 

"Figlio del cielo, io chiedo d’affrontar la prova!"
("Son of Heaven, I ask to undergo the trial!")

Turandot explains that the challenge to her suitors -- openly designed to claim their heads rather than let them succeed -- is intended both as an act of revenge for an ancestor, a young princess who was brutally violated and murdered by her own suitor, and who has gone unrevenged for thousands of years, and as a safeguard to make sure Turandot herself will never suffer a similar fate.  Then she poses her three riddles.

"In questa Reggia, or son mill’anni e mille, un grido disperato risuonò."
("In this Palace, thousands of years ago, a desperate cry rang out.")

 (Turandot tells her unfortunate ancestor's story and then poses her riddles:

"Straniero ascolta!" -- "Stranger, listen!")

To her immense shock, the unknown prince (of course) solves all three of them.

The prince then proceeds to pose a challenge of his own to Turandot: If she has managed to find out his name by the next morning he will die, as she so clearly wishes.  If she does not manage to unveil his identity, she must marry him.

You can imagine the sort of night that everybody in Beijing is having after that ("nessun dorma" -- nobody is to sleep). [Unfortunately you wouldn't have guessed as much from the stage lighting, which was darned near pitch-black, so ... again, no photos.  And yes, I did try, but unlike the prince alas I didn't manage to beat the odds.]

The nearer morning draws, the more desperate things get.  Someone remembers that the old man and the slave girl have spoken to the unknown prince on the day before -- so, they obviously know his identity.  They are dragged before Turandot.  To save Timur, Liù claims she alone knows the stranger's name.  Turandot orders her torture.  The prince is shackled to keep him from interfering. (Goddamned apologist, Puccini, the guy wouldn't have saved Liù anyway -- the only thing on his mind is getting Turandot, the Ice Queen herself, and what's the life of a slave girl in the face of that?)  Liù dies with her lips sealed, after having told Turandot: "Keeping silent, I give you to him, Princess, I give him your love."  -- Melodramatic? Hell, no, not in the hands of Signor Puccini and Ms. Tepponen ...

Well, inevitably a new day dawns, and Turandot still doesn't know the stranger's name.  At the break of dawn, however, we get a bit of insta-love (which I've never particularly cared for, and it wasn't the Bregenz production's fault that I didn't care for it any better this time around, either ... it's in the libretto, unfortunately).  The prince falls over himself to place himself entirely in Turandot's hands in the last moments before daybreak, so now she could actually claim his life after all: He is Calaf, son of Timur, the erstwhile King of Tartary.  Turandot for her part, however, falls over herself suddenly falling in love with Calaf (or discovering she's in love with him already -- whatever ...)  Big embrace.  Turandot goes to tell her father that she's discovered the stranger's name, and his name is (you guessed it) "love."  (Melodramatic?  Hell, yes.) [Also, stage lit just about well enough once more for a final bit of sans-flash photography.]

"Padre augusto ... Conosco il nome dello straniero! Il suo nome è ... Amor!"
("August father ... I know the name of the stranger! His name is ... Love!")

And as in any good fairy tale, even one starting as brutal as this one, they presumably lived happily ever after.

The End.

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Exit the audience, including those who have come from afar.  On our home trip the next day, we took a different route -- all along Lake Constance, whereas going south we'd taken the freeway for as long as it was sane to do so without running into even more traffic jams ... but we'd figured if going back we'd be stuck in traffic jams again anyway (as was a virtual certainty even before we left), we might as well enjoy the scenery.  Turns out even though it was a rather slow crawl from Lindau almost all the way to Überlingen, at the western end of Lake Constance, we seem to have made the right choice, because we managed to get back home in a little over 6 1/2 hours, which all things considered means we made pretty good time.

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Here, incidentally, are Turandot's riddles.  Would you have kept your heads?

First:

“In the gloomy night
an iridescent phantom flies.
It spreads its wings and rises
over infinite, black humanity!
Everyone invokes it,
everyone implores it!
But the phantom disappears at dawn
to be reborn in the heart!
And every night it’s born
and every day it dies!"

Second:

"It flickers like a flame,
and is not flame!
Sometimes it rages!
It’s feverish, impetuous, burning!
But idleness changes it to languor!
If you’re defeated or lost,
it grows cold!
If you dream of winning, if flames!
Its voice is faint, but you listen;
it gleams as bright as the sunset!"

Third and final:

"Ice that sets you on fire
and from your fire is more frosty!
White and dark!
If she sets you free,
she makes you a slave!
If she accepts you as a slave,
she makes you a King!”
Come, stranger!
You’re pale with fright!
And you know you are lost!
Come, stranger, what is the frost
that gives off fire?"

The Answers:

I'll be off over the weekend to see this year's open air event at the Bregenz Opera Festival on Lake Constance – Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, complete with Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 27 x 72 m (89 x 236 ft) Chinese Wall and terracotta army stage, and Chinese acrobats (click on any of the images to find out more about the production on the Festival's official website).  Just keep your fingers crossed the weather is going to hold!  This should be great fun.  Will be back on Sunday night.

Take care everybody, and have a great weekend!