Yuja Wang

I have listened to a lot of piano over the years but Yuja Wang is the best pianist I have ever heard. Beijing has been kind to us.  An interview of sorts with her here

Some reflections about education

I guess lots of people have heard old fogies like me complaining  that education "ain't what it used to be". And of course it is not.  The world of today is different from the past and education must reflect that to some extent.  

A century ago, a "Greekless" person was regarded as not fully educated, for instance.  Even if you were not fluent in ancient Greek, you were expected to know the more famous quotations and be able to at least figure out the bits that you did not know.  These days a knowledge of html is much more important and helpful.  It certainly makes blogging easier.

But good stuff has undoubtedly been lost in today's schools and replaced with blah. Important areas of cultural awareness have been supplanted by lessons about fluid sexual identities and the importance of saving the planet! Not to mention the evils of patriarchy and lies about Hitler being a conservative.

And it takes us old guys to be aware of that.  If you have never been exposed to something you cannot know what you have missed. And to have missed exposure to our great cultural heritage is a great loss indeed.  There is, of course, culture of all sorts. But what I am talking about is areas of enjoyment that have stood the test of time.  And poetry, literature and music are such areas. 

Contrary to what Leftists seem to believe, the world did not begin yesterday.  It's possible that half of all the great minds that have ever existed are alive today -- but what about the other half?  And the traditional role of education was to tell us about that other half

And it is particularly in the area of culture that the other half is important.  Scientists, engineers and philosophers of the past have now mostly been completely superseded.  Isaac Newton, for instance, was brilliant in his day but physics has long gone beyond him in its understanding of the universe.  But cultural contributions are really never superseded.  Monteverdi might have written the Vespro della Beata Vergine 400 years ago but  it is still performed and enjoyed to this day.  And, for religious music, no-one has surpassed J.S. Bach, who lived from 1685 to 1750.

And its the same in poetry.  Poets like Coleridge and Tennyson just simply cannot be replaced.  They are sui generis and give particular pleasures that no-one else does.  There are other good poets but to miss out of Tennyson and Coleridge is to miss out on much of the pleasure that poetry can bring.  Tennyson died in 1892. Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in 1834.  And if you like poetry but know nothing of either of those dead white men, you have simply missed out on a great experience.

So I am glad that I went to school when the importance of the culture of the past was still recognized.  In the '50s I went to a totally undistinguished Australian country school but came away from it not only with some knowledge of mathematics, chemistry  and physics but also a knowledge of the great poets, a basic grasp of Latin and Italian -- and a good introduction to the language and literature of Germany.  At age 15 I was even learning to recite and sing Schubert Lieder  in the original German.  And I knew English language poems by Tennyson and others by heart.  And it was also courtesy of my school that, at age 13 or thereabouts, I first heard Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

But most of that will be Greek to young readers today.  They have no idea of how much enjoyment and satisfaction has been hidden from them.

So how come I learnt all that highbrow stuff in a country school half a world away from where it originated?  It was basically because Britain's very prestigious "public" (meaning private!) schools taught that sort of thing.  And because of the acknowledged excellence of such schools, they became a model that everyone wanted to emulate.  I was, in short, taught a curriculum not too different from what I would have got at Eton.

But nowadays everything from the past is wrong in our Left-dominated educational system so Eton traditions are the last thing that a "modern" educator would respect.

And yet the past can be so helpful.  Readers of novels, for instance, always have the problem that you usually have to read a fair bit of a novel before you know whether it is any good.  Without guidance of some sort you cannot know in advance whether a novel is worth reading and you can waste a lot of time on something that in the end gives you nothing.

But classic novels are classics because lots of people have found them good over a long period of time and recommended them to others.  They are the sort of book of which people have long said:  "You MUST read ...".   So knowing which are the classic novels can greatly upgrade the pleasure you get out of reading.

For instance, I greatly enjoyed reading many years ago what some say is only the second novel ever written in English --  "Joseph Andrews" by Fielding. Can anybody who has read that book forget "Madam Slipslop"?  I cannot.  Sometimes a classic novel has great insights but it is always entertaining. And fortunately, you can get a reading list of great novels and enjoy them.

It's not so simple with poetry.  The great pleasure of poetry is not to read it just once but to KNOW it.  And that means to know at least some of it by heart. If you do, you will often recite it, either out loud or just in your head.  And you will enjoy doing that.  But there's the difficulty:  The older you get the harder it is to memorize things.  Anything that needs memorizing basically has to be done when you are young -- preferably at school.  So if you were never taught any of the great classic poems at school, the pleasure of poetry has basically been ripped away from you.  Sorry.  But that's it.  If you want to try yourself out, here is a famous but short poem by Tennyson. It's a lament over the death of his homosexual lover.  The Left seem to think they have invented homosexuality recently.  They have not.

Break, Break, Break

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Break, break, break,

         On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

         The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

         That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

         That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

         To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,

         And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break

         At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

         Will never come back to me.

It's a wonderful and heartfelt poem by a master of the English language.  I learnt it at school.

And then there is music.  Fortunately, the simpler music from the past has been  much revived by the folk music movement -- so remains accessible regardless of your education. It was the folkies who introduced to "Cutty Wren", written over 200 years ago. If you know that song can you ever forget "John the red nose"?  I cannot.

But some of the slightly more complex songs from the past should also be enjoyable to many.  I think particularly of madrigals. They were once taught as part of a good education. In some private schools they still are.  Take Monteverdi's Chiome d' Oro ("Tresses of gold").  It's a love song to a lady with blonde hair! A not unfamiliar idea, though probably politically incorrect these days.  The many ladies who blond their hair these days would sympathize.  A good performance here. It's wonderful.  Monteverdi wrote it around 400 years ago.  Words translated from the Italian  here.

And that brings me to another important cultural element:  languages.  If you learn (say) German at school you will almost certainly never get to the point of being able to have a reasonable conversation in it.  That is not the point.  It is much more likely that you WILL get to the point where you  can make  some fist of reading texts in that language.  And that IS useful.

Translating plain text into English from another language is difficult enough but translating a work of art into English is just about impossible.  The translation will never be as gracious as the original. That came home forcefully to me when I was reading the translation of Chiome d' Oro.  Italian was one of the languages I studied in my schooldays and the translation of Chiome d' Oro is nowhere as magical as the original Italian.  Every Italian would agree with me on that!  You just miss so much if your cultural awareness is limited to English.

All that came back to me recently when Anne asked me "Who is this Goethe fella?".  Johann  Wolfgang von Goethe is of course Germany's most famous and beloved poet.  And seeing that he wrote in the land of music, it is no surprise that his poems have been set to music -- by Hugo Wolf, Franz Schubert and others.  Some of Schubert's most famous Lieder are to texts written by Goethe. So I was able to introduce Anne to Goethe via the Schubert Lieder.

So, for the benefit of anybody reading this who might have an interest in classical music let me link to just two of the songs I found. Let me revisit some things that it has been my great good fortune to enjoy for nearly 60 years.

There is for instance here a good rendition of Gretchen am Spinnrade set by Schubert.  It is a love song.  It is from the legend of Faust, the man who sold his soul to the Devil.  Faust wanted Gretchen so the Devil made her fall frantically and hopelessly  in love with him.  The song tells of her feelings.  A translation from the German:

My peace is gone,

My heart is heavy,

I will find it never

and never more.

Where I do not have him,

That is the grave,

The whole world

Is bitter to me.

My poor head

Is crazy to me,

My poor mind

Is torn apart.

For him only, I look

Out the window

Only for him do I go

Out of the house.

His tall walk,

His noble figure,

His mouth's smile,

His eyes' power,

And his mouth's

Magic flow,

His handclasp,

and ah! his kiss!

My peace is gone,

My heart is heavy,

I will find it never

and never more.

My bosom urges itself

toward him.

Ah, might I grasp

And hold him!

And kiss him,

As I would wish,

At his kisses

I should die!

And if the song is good, just the music Schubert wrote for it is great too.  There is an incredibly sensitive performance of it for solo piano by a Chinese lady -- Yuja Wang -- here.  What a treasure it is that the East Asians seem to like our classical music even more than we do! If, as seems likely, the Leftists achieve the destruction of our civilization, China will preserve our great cultural treasures.  

And, getting back to Goethe, there is Erlkoenig set by Schubert -- one of the most famous of the Schubert Lieder. A version sung by the young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a famous German baritone) is here -- with English subtitles.  The story is of an ill child who is having hallucinations while his father is riding frantically to get the child home.  It is very dramatic.

Will the screed above benefit anyone?  Probably not. But I still think it concerns things that should be noted down.

A visit to the metropolitical cathedral church of St. John the Divine

Apologies for that pompous heading but I rather enjoy ecclesiastical language.  The church concerned is most often referred to by Brisbane people simply as "The cathedral".  There is of course also a Catholic cathedral in Brisbane city but St. John's is undoubtedly the most magnificent.

A pity the preaching there was not also magnificent but it is anything but.  The only themes that enthuse most Anglicans these days are homosexuality and global warming.  They are post-Christians. The 39 articles would be Greek to most of them.  It would be an amusing exercise to write a Church of England Bible.  There would not be much in it.  Virtually everything in the real Bible would be dismissed as silly stories.

Anyway, I went there for a concert. I go out to concerts rarely these days but a familiar band was in town: The Kammerphilharmonie Köln (Chamber Philharmonia Cologne).  They seem to pop up in Brisbane every year and I have enjoyed many of their concerts.  They are very good for putting on old favourites. And the great stone vault of St. John's gives brilliant sound.  They filled the church.

Parking in the city always bugs me so I went early so I could park in the church grounds:  A bit cheeky but I have always done that.  So I had to leave home at 7pm for an 8pm performance. And in order to facilitate a 7pm departure, I made the dinner!  It was very humble fare, however:  Ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches. Anne was with me and we met her sister June outside the cathedral.

We started off with a lively performance of the whole of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. How the leading violinist produced that endless cascade of short notes escapes me.  Practice makes perfect, I guess.  A  feature that I really liked was the inclusion of a double bass.  It gave an extra depth and body to the sound which violins alone could never deliver. The part would originally have been written for a Viola da Gamba, which is represented these days mostly by a cello.

Another work on the program was a Mozart divertimento in F major for strings.  I did not know it at all but it was good to hear. And we ended with Bach's suite no. 2 in B minor for flute and strings and basso continuo -- An old friend joyfully revisited.

We got an encore song, in the form of Ombra mai fu by Handel.  It was sung with great passion by a very large lady.  That always cracks me up as the song is in fact about a tree.  Words translated below:

Tender and beautiful fronds
of my beloved plane tree,
let Fate smile upon you.
May thunder, lightning, and storms
never disturb your dear peace,
nor may you by blowing winds be profaned.

Never was a shade
of any plant
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.

A socially active week

I have recently had another birthday, taking me further into my eighth decade.  So various kind people have contributed to a celebration of that fact.  

On Wedneday Anne came over to my place bearing Sydney rock oysters and other good things and made me one of my favourite meals: Lamb cutlets with plenty of fried onions.  We watched operetta after dinner.

On Saturday, Suz hosted a small lunchtime celebration for family members only.  There are 3 of us with July birthdays so it was a joint celebration.  Nanna, Joe, Anne and Jenny were there, as was Suz and family. Suz fed us all some nice home-made pies. I gather that Suz cooks a lot from scratch and cooks fairly traditional meals.  I eat a lot of traditional Australian food these days too so the pies suited me.  And Suz gave us a Pavlova for dessert -- another great Australian favourite.  

The kids were amusing when eating their food. Dusty was a real boy and shoved in his food by hook or by crook and ended up with a fair bit of it on his face.  Sahara, by contrast, ate like a little lady and took twice as long as Dusty.  So Suz has got a very boyish boy and a very girly girl.  Excellent!

Then that night Anne rose to the occasion and cooked me some sausages and onions, another favourite of mine.  I enjoyed them as much as any meal -- and I have had some good meals.  Walking out into the kitchen to a smell of sausages and onions frying is living IMHO.  The food freaks would have a fit!

Today Jill cooked me a lunch of pasta with seafood as she usually does.  It was good, as ever.  Jill, Anne and Lewis were all in good voice so it was a very lively lunch.  We had rose wine to wash the food down, which was a bit of a blast from the past. 

I sang my favourite doxology as a form of "grace" to start the meal. That inspired enough memories in Jill for her to sing the "Sunday school is over" song.  We both have fond memories of our Protestant past.  The Protestants changed the world so we are pleased to "check our privilege" -- and enjoy it. Jill has in fact started going to church again.  She has found a Church of England congregation she likes.  Lewis of course accompanies her.  He doesn't go to shul any more but goes to church -- a man of exemplary patience.

Lewis was very vocal in the conservative political cause, as usual -- and we all agreed with him.  Lewis told us that he now has "My son the mister".  His son is a medico with all sorts of specializations and one of them bears the title "Mr".

Simplicius

Composed, 1887.  Performed at Zurich Oper in 1999

I hesitated for some time before ordering this Singspiel.  I read the synopsis and was not impressed:  Too complicated and not set in an operetta-type setting.  But the music was by Strauss II so I ordered it.

And I disliked it from the beginning.  The surrealist staging was way outside my liking.  I guess some people find it amusing or interesting but I just found it tedious.  A NYC writer felt the same.  He wrote:

"David Pountney’s production is not attuned to the bulk of the work, which can hardly breathe under the weight of his heavy symbolism and the heavy, enormous sets"

I think Pountney is one of the many directors of stage performances these days who is trying to show how smart HE is rather than how good the work is.  Despicable and boring.  I paid to see the work of Strauss, not the work of Pountney. I will order nothing more if he is part of it

But I kept on watching, all the while keeping an eye on the track numbers.  I have often found that the initial tracks of an operetta DVD are very skippable so I was looking for a point in the show that seemed a good starting point for me.  And I did find one! Track 14, about half of the way through the show.  From that point on it became closer to a normal operetta, even having quite a few laughs.  And the customary two happy couples at the end, of course.  With a lot of cuts to the many slow-moving bits and a naturalistic setting, it could be quite a reasonable operetta.

And the plot was not really as complicated as it appeared to be.  The story is that a soldier killed his brother in a battle of the terrible "30 years" war that raged in Central and Western Europe during the 17th century.  He was so grief-stricken at what he had done that he put his eldest son into a monastery and retired with his little son into the forest to lead the life of a religious hermit.

But the little son eventually grew up and was taken back into society as an ingenue. Meanwhile it transpired that the father and son were of noble birth and were wanted for the purposes of marrying into another noble and rich family.  But nobody knew where the father was and nobody knew who the son was.  So a couple of other claimants emerged wanting to marry the rich bride.

They were discredited, however, and we eventually found out who the son was.  And that simplified everything so that, after a few complications, everybody got married to the spouse of their choice.  Quite a simple plot, basically, and quite in operetta style.

The involvement of Swedes in what was basically a German civil war may seem odd to some but is good history.  Der Schwed did indeed take part. Protestant King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden did  lead his troops South to help the German Protestants, having a considerable influence on the outcome. He could in fact be said to have saved Protestantism in Germany.

I watched the show three times but felt that there was nothing in it that would draw me back to it so I gave the DVD away:  No great arias, no great singing, not much in the way of jokes and repellent staging. It's just not jolly.  But Martina Jancova as Tilly is attractive and acted well, while Piotr Beczala is a classic love-stricken tenor. Some other operettas I have watched innumerable times.  When watching Wienerblut, for instance,  I start laughing long before the punchlines of the jokes arrive.

An excerpt from Simplicius  here -- with subtitles! Judge for yourself.  It's just bombast.

A wonderful Austrian singing lady: Ute Gfrerer

Ute Gfrerer is one of my favorite operatic sopranos.  But despite having performed widely and often and for many years, there is no Wikipedia entry for her so I thought I might put a few notes together here that might fill a gap.  I should put this up on Wikipedia itself but anything I put up there gets deleted.  Wikipedia seems to be a subculture of its own with rules that I do not fit

Below is a picture of Gfrerer that shows something I particularly like --  her big smile.  

 

I have watched her in both the Zurich 2004 performance of Die Lustige Witwe and in the 1998 Moerbisch performance of Der Vogelhaendler -- very different roles but well sung and well acted in both cases.

She turned 50 this year, which means she was born in 1965.  See! I can do subtraction!  She was born in Carinthia in Austria, daughter of an innkeeper, with three sisters, all of whom sang.  She now lives in Boston.  She updates her Facebook page fairly often.  See here.  It's mostly in English

Her musical history is extensively covered here.  Let me reproduce a marvellous vignette from that:

"In fact, singing is so integral to the Austrian social fabric, that a performer in Austria might find their audience joining in on their performances. Gfrerer had one such transcendent experience while recording one of her live concert performances in Austria, where she sang a traditional folk song from her countryside. "When I got to the second verse, the audience began humming along with me," recalls Gfrerer, "Then in the last verse, they all started singing in 4-part harmony, and it was so beautiful. It could only happen in Austria!"

Amazing.  Singing along is one thing but singing along in 4-part harmony is another. Austria is certainly a superpower where great music is concerned.

There is a very good 2012 interview with her here that contains a lot of personal reflections -- In German.

In her early years she was particularly interested in operetta but in more recent times she has had a particular devotion to the music of the prolific Kurt Weill.  She is regarded as a leading interpreter of it, in fact. 

She also shows her versatility here with a 2013 rendition of Piaf's famous song La Vie en Rose.  I think she outdoes Piaf but what would I know about French music?  Though others have also highly praised that rendition.  I liked the way the happy Austrian lady emerged from the soulful French singer as soon as the song was over.

Gfrerer seems to be a rather jolly lady in general, though her part in Lustige Witwe was almost wholly serious.  She was even asked, rather absurdly for her, to be Eine anstaendige Frau (a respectable wife). 

Her natural talent for gaiety did however surface in the dancing scenes of Lustige Witwe.  She was in any dancing going, whether the part really called for it or  not. She even led the cabaret dancers towards the end of the show. With big smiles and shrieks, her happiness throughout the dancing was a joy to watch.  She even got herself tipped upside down in that last segment! She is a naturally happy lady, I think.  And being born both beautiful and talented why should she not be happy? 

La vie en rose is a great love song.  Just for fun, I put up an English translation below:

With eyes which make mine lower,

A smile which is lost on his lips,

That's the unembellished portrait

Of the man to whom I belong.

When he takes me in his arms

He speaks to me in a low voice,

I see life as if it were rose-tinted.

He whispers words to declare to me his love

Words of the everyday

And that does something to me.

He has entered into my heart

A piece of happiness

the cause of which I know full well.

It's him for me, me for him in life

He said that to me, swore to me "forever".

And as soon as I see him

So I feel in me

My heart which beats

May the nights on which we make love never end,

A great joy which takes its place

The trouble, the grief are removed

Content, content to die of it

When he takes me in his arms

He speaks to me in a very low voice,

I see life as if it were rose-tinted.

He whispers words to declare to me his love

Words of the everyday

And that does something to me.

He has entered into my heart

A piece of happiness

the cause of which I recognise.

It's him for me, me for him in life

He said that to me, swore to me forever.

And as soon as I see him

So do I feel in me

My heart which beats

So how does La Vie en Rose stack up as a love song against  Als geblueht der Kirschenbaum?  The words are very similar -- with one important exception: Piaf describes her love as deluded -- as seen through *rose* coloured glasses.  Whereas  the Austrian song is a very happy one: the singer describes her enraptured impressions of her man without reservation.  And the the music reflects that.  The French song has a great air of tragedy where the Austrian song has none of that.  Is love tragic to a French person and admirable to an Austrian?  That is the impression one gets.  And I am comparing two great singers of the songs concerned.  Martina Serafin's faultless voice and enraptured delivery of Als geblueht der Kirschenbaum in Vogelhaendler does every justice to that song. And she was singing it in her native German for a change, which would have helped at the margins 

And what does it tell us that the French song is infinitely better known than the Austrian one?  That tragedy is more interesting to most people?  I am inclined to think so.

And I suppose that it is rather churlish to mention that "tragic" love songs are a rather common phenomenon.  In popular culture "Both sides now"  by Joni Mitchell is a splendid example.  But in the classical music world the famous Goethe/Schubert song Gretchen am Spinnrade anticipated La vie en rose by a considerable time.

Operetta stars seem rather generally to keep pretty quiet about their personal lives but I see that Gfrerer had a daughter named Maxine in 2006.  She would have been 41 at the time.  A late run!  Pregnancies that late often indicate that the lady has had a lot of trouble finding a man who suits her.  She is such a happy lady that seems unlikely in her case.

Purple Penguin is online

Joe has put up a first draft of what will become his professional website as his IT skills and experience develop.  He has already learnt a huge amount in a relatively short period of time.  You can click on various things.  There is even a rudimentary game. But why he has chosen "Purple Penguin" as his online identity I have not asked.  It goes with his lively sense of humour, of course.  I think he should have called himself "The Phantom" -- but that would have caused copyright problems, of course.

There is a chain of frozen yoghurt shops called Purple Penguin but Joe is unlikely to be mistaken for yoghurt so that should not pose copyright problems.  There is however another IT firm called Purple Penguin so he might have to become the technicolour penguin eventually.

I also read that "A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead."  Yuk!

Joe also has a ginger cat named "Mozart" but since Mozart is long dead, I foresee to copyright problems there

Der Vogelhaendler

Der Vogelhaendler is a bucolic comedy, by Carl Zeller, set in the 18th century and first performed in 1891. I recently watched the 1998 Moerbisch performance it, set in Austria. 

There have been many versions of the show done over the years, many of which differ quite considerably from one another.  There is a recording of the Rosen in Tyrol aria here  There is a short excerpt from the version of the show that I have here

Der Vogelhaendler means the bird dealer, though the show had very little to do with birds. But it did have a lot to do with the difference between Tyrol and Kaernten (Carinthia) -- and if you don't know about that, the show does explain, sort of.  A lot of the differences do not survive translation into English, however.  There is actually a fair bit of levity about Tyrolean dialect. Tyroleans are presented as very old-fashioned.

Ute Gfrerer

I was greatly looking forward to seeing this show as the multi-talented, blue-eyed Austrian soprano Ute Gfrerer was in it.  And she did not disappoint at all, at all.  It was a great role for her and she filled it brilliantly.  She was in particularly good voice.  Her voice had a bell-like quality in the early scenes that suggested technical help to me.  Though it may just have been reverb from the adjacent sets.

There was no doubt about the power of her voice, however.  When at the end of the show she sang in unison with the very capable tenor (Sebastian Reinthaller), it was her voice that dominated.  A singing lady I know tells me that sopranos generally do that but I am not so sure.  Some wonderful soprano voices can be quite small -- Hallstein, for instance. 

And she has a sort of inbuilt levity and that shows even in the most unpromising scenes. I do fault Harald Serafin for not giving us a bit more of Gfrerer's famous big and happy smile, though.  We got some of that at the beginning and a bit of it at the end but it was not enough. 

A picture from her home page

I actually liked Gfrerer even better here than I liked her in the 2004 version of Lustige Witwe at Zurich.  She had a much more varied role here and did all the parts well.  And am I allowed to mention that she was 6 years younger here than at Zurich?  Very wicked of me, I am sure.  She would have been 23 in 1998 so was at her peak in some ways for this show -- with youthful good looks.  But, as we see above, she is gorgeous to this day.  Am I being maudlin?  Probably.

Martina Serafin

An odd thing about this show is that Harald Serafin did not cast himself in any of the parts, a rare thing.  But he gave his daughter, the attractive Martina Serafin, a leading part, so that may have been why.  Maybe she said:  "It's me or you".

Interestingly, her father is never mentioned in any online biographies of her.  I was able to confirm the relationship only  by struggling through an Italian site.  My Italian is pretty shaky so I don't do that often.  But she seems to have developed a lot of affiliations with Italy and there was an interview where she attributed that to her father.  Even then she referred to him only as "a certain well-known conductor" rather than naming him. 

Slightly odd to refer to him as a conductor.  Maybe Italian has no word that precisely translates the German Intendant.  Apparently Harald is half Italian by birth -- which surprised me -- and Martina relates strongly to that part of her ancestry.  I came across her Facebook page at one point and it was in Italian.  I imagine the surname was originally "Serafino", which means "seraph" in Italian.  I think she could pass well as a Northern Italian or Roman lady.  I guess she does.

An interesting thing was that the Fuerstin, played by her, described her first meeting with her Fuerst by saying that he looked schoen to her.  German has no word for "handsome" so an attractive man is normally described as huebsch -- "pretty".  To describe him as schoen ("beautiful") is therefore a considerable compliment.

The famous aria from the show was of course "Roses in Tyrol" but I thought the aria sung by the princess (Serafin) in celebration of her husband ("Als geblueht der Kirschenbaum") was the standout aria. It makes me weep with its beauty. A version sung by Renate Holm is below.



It's undoubtedy one of the great love songs of all time.  In the song, the lady says she thought her husband looked beautiful when she first met him and also behaved beautifully on their wedding night.

The point of the song in the show is that she has just been informed of apparent infidelity by her husband.  She comments that it could not be so -- because she remembers him in their early life as being beautiful in both looks and behaviour.  And her faith is of course eventually justified.  Operetta has good endings.

Someone should do a singable translation of it. Here are the words with my rough translation:

Als geblueht der Kirschenbaum,  

As the cherry tree was blossoming

Ging ich zum Walde wie im Traum;  

I walked to the woods as in a dream

An des Brunnens kuehlen Rand, 

At the cool edge of the fountain

Wo hell die weisse Birke stand.  

Where brightly the white beech stood

An dem blauen Himmelsbogen 

Under the blue bow of the sky

Ging der Mond, die Sterne zogen

The moon came out and the stars shone

Einen Reiter hoert' ich jagen

I heard a horseman hunting

Und mein Herz hub an zu schlagen

And my heart gave a leap

Denn er hielt sein Roesslein an

When he reined in his dear horse

Ach ja, er war ein schoener, ein schoener Mann!  

Oh yes.  He was a beautiful, beautiful man

Still verklang der Hochzeit Pracht  

The wedding bells no longer rang

Und von den Bergen stieg die Nacht

And night was climbing up the mountains

Bang trat ich ins Brautgemach

I anxiously entered the bridal chamber

Und leise, leise schlich er nach!

And softly, softly he followed me

Draussen fielen Bluetenflocken

Outside flower petals fell

Drin der Kranz von meinen Locken 

Inside the garland from my hair

Heimlich fluestend half der Freier  

Softly whispering my suitor helped me

Mir zu loesen Band und Schleier

To take off my ribbons and veil

Sah dabei mich zaertlich an

Looking at me so tenderly

Ach, er war doch ein schoener, schoener Mann!  

Oh! He certainly was a beautiful, beautiful man

I have heard a few different performances of the song but I think the version by Serafin on the DVD that I have is as good as or better than any.  But one would expect that of her distinguished ancestry.  In saying that, however, I have just done what she obviously wants nobody to do.  She wants to make her mark in her own right without being forever indulgently treated because she is Harald's daughter.  But she should not worry. She is a genuine great talent in her own right.

But what the little boy playing cupid in that scene was all about I have no real idea. I think he was blowing a bird-call whistle as a warning to be cautious but who knows?  Or was it just an reminder  that we were talking about love in that scene?  I confess defeat.

Humour in the show:

The big explicit comedy scene was the Zwei Professoren. And part of the comedy in that for me was that the "bought" professors were only too real.  The global warming hoax has bought so many of them to this day.  plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  In action below:

There are many versions of it online -- e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLg5GSIDP_I and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfJTTvNCXAQ . Search YouTube with "Ich bin der Prodekan" and you will find them (Prodekan = pro-deacon, a title mostly used in the Balkans)

But I learnt a good jocular insult from the "professors":  "You'll never get brain damage; There's nothing to damage!" There were lots of good laughs throughout that segment -- the obnoxious and larcenous queer guy on roller-skates, for instance -- but the Zwei Professoren episode was full of laughs from beginning to end.  I even enjoyed how they walked off the scene, apparently full of themselves! A good visual joke. And I enjoyed how they did babble at times.  Having worked in a Sociology Department for many years, I recognized it! Much mumbo jumbo there!  

And even the high heels on Prof. Wuermchen were not entirely unfamiliar. And the actual heels were red!  An allusion? -- to Christian Louboutin, to Papal footwear?

"Prof. Wuermchen" means Prof. "Little Worm"; and Prof "Sueffle" means "Little Boozer".  As "Muckenstruntz & Bamschabl", The two actors performed together often as a comedy act  -- on Austrian TV of the late C20 and early C21.

"The two Ronnies" would be the nearest English equivalent. But I suspect the Austrians were funnier.  Anyway, the music they marched on to -- and then off to -- was very jolly.

And in the early part of the scene there was a play on words using the French Appelation controlee and the German word Apfel. And that little joke worked perfectly well in English translation -- because our historic links with German are still there. We are the other half of the Deutsches Volk. So Apfel in German is "apple" in English. 1500 years of living apart have not changed some things very much. Sadly, however, the audience did not get it. Though, from what I heard, one lady did.  They did however get a simpler joke about Bordeaux.

Another joke in the show concerned Peter Rosenstingl.  He was a conservative Austrian politician of the late 20th century who went into a business deal with his brother that lost a lot of money and left him with big debts.  He was also found to have misused public money to prop up the enterprise. So he shot off to Brazil to get away from all that.  But they got him back and prosecuted him. So "Stanislaus" used him as a byword for big and tragic debts.

Another contemporary reference was to Antal Festetics, a genuinely distinguished Hungarian biologist and prominent Greenie in Austria at the time the show was performed.  He was used in the show to as an example of a man who knows all about the natural world.  Had the subtitlers been on the ball, they might have substituted "David Attenborough" for him.

Another jocular touch was the pigeon loft, with mechanical pigeons, set on top of the "small pavilion". Someone went to the trouble of smearing the roof of the pavilion with quite realistic-looking pigeon excreta!

And the funniest line in the show?  "Come here my little piggy bank", IMHO.  It occurs when "Baron Weps" woos his rich wife-to-be.

And operettas do often refer to one another for humorous efect.  The allusion to the "small pavilion" in  Lustige Witwe was the example of that on this occasion.  It was not part of the original libretto, of course. We also got a small bit of Celeste Aida at one stage. And Burgenland was of course referred to. Moerbisch is in Burgenland.  And both Moerbish and Harald Serafin were referred to in the dialogue as well -- probably to good comic effect among the regular patrons.

And the mosquitoes were there!  Every show that I have seen from Moerbisch seems to have some reference to the Moerbisch mosquitoes in it.  On this occasion the ladies early in the show were swatting themselves rather a lot, though not saying why.

Translation notes

I have compared my translation of the song with what appears in the subtitles and I think my translation is better. I think they got a few  things wrong.  I actually understand why they translated Freier as they did.  It means something quite different in Yiddish and they wanted to distance themselves from that.  And they translated denn quite foolishly. I actually made the same mistake myself, initially.

I am actually a bit amazed at the subtitles.  The translators don't seem to know either German or English well.  I have already mentioned what I see as deficits in their translations from German but their grasp of English idiom also seems defective.  In the early scene where the hunters are told to scram, they are told to "Make yourself sparse", which is absurd.  "Make yourself scarce" is of course the required idiom.

And describing the hunted pig as "stamped" was dumb.  "Branded" was the required translation. But I noted that, for the Fuerstin,  Durchlaucht was translated as "Milady", which was rather more appropriate than the "Serene Highness" used in Zirkusprinzessin

And I had to laugh when I noted that the subtitle translators did not know the difference between "discreet" and "discrete" -- an easy one for those of us who learnt their Fowler at an early age.

And the translators do their best to describe what Gfrerer is doing when she speaks to "Stanislaus" "per du".  He is a Graf and she is a humble postal employee so that was very cheeky.  And it confused him because it upset the status relationships that really existed between them.  She was refusing to place herself lower than him, which confused him about who she really was.  But there is no equivalent of that stuff in English (mercifully) so you have to be familiar with some  European language to know what that is all about.

Other details

Further on the casting:  I thought that the birdman (Sebastian Reinthaller) was not well cast:  He seemed too young and small for the part.  He was shorter than just about everyone else in the show. But he had a great voice and performed with great energy so did justice to it in the end. 

I liked his haircut but that means nothing.  I liked Adolf Hitler's haircut too.  In both cases it was "short back & sides" -- the haircut I had for most of my childhood and which was universal in British lands until the "Beatles" upset the applecart.  After a lifetime of hair negligence I have reverted to that haircut in my declining years.  I am of course lucky to have hair at all at my age.

And the big conk on "Stanislaus" (Marc Clear) was very noticeable. I hoped at first that it was just stage makeup but I now think it was how he was born.  If it is natural he has done well to make a stage career for himself. Maybe rhinoplasty...  He is certainly a good and powerful singer, though. His singing in the castle garden when he accosted "Christel" (Gfrerer) was very powerful, and, dare I say it? -- clear.  I note that he has appeared at Moerbish subsequently as well.

A small point:  I would like to have heard something from the Tyrolean zithers but they were rather drowned out.  Harald Serafin should have done what people usually do with harps and harpsichords: Position mikes within inches of the strings.

And I was a bit grumpy to have the grandfather in the Nachtigall song portrayed as decrepit at age 70. I am 71 and I assure everybody that I can still walk tall and straight -- when I try!

And I think I should by now mention the bicycle fad that has long prevailed at Moerbisch.  Because it is a very big stage, bicycles seem to be regarded as a good way to get around it, anachronistic or not.  I think they  have been in every Moerbisch performance that I have seen. "Christel" arrived on stage on a bike on this occasion. The fancy tricycle was another version of it.  One does see some rather odd conveyances at Moerbisch so I suppose the trike was another version of that.  The audience seemed to be amused by it.

I must admit that I am rather critical of Harald Serafin for the instructions he gave to the many "extras".  He clearly told them to be as still as the grave.  It would have been nicer if they had been allowed to smile.

But it was a very light-hearted show  -- which I quite appreciated after just having watched the very dramatic Zirkusprenzessin.  A certain irony there, however.  Carl Zeller (the composer) did not have a very happy life. 

And the ending -- with both the old and the young couples united in satisfaction and happiness, was classic operetta -- although achieved in a rather Deus ex machina way.

Even in my dotage I am still something of a sponge for knowledge so I tend to watch the credits that roll on my screen at the end of a performance.  And one thing that I noted was that  part of the costumes for this show were borrowed from the Austrian Federal Theatre.  I did not know there was such a body so I clearly still have a lot to learn. But I guess all those wigs etc had to come from somewhere.

And being undoubtedly what in Australian slang is called a "woop" (even my mother called me that!  "Poorly dressed person" would be one translation of it) I have no right to comment on costumes but I nonetheless did rather like the splendid court dress of "Baron Weps". And the huge skirts and big hair I could tolerate. But Schellenbeger took that to a new height in 2013 Bettelstudent and that did rather bug me.

My liking for Austro/Hungarian operetta is undoubtedly eccentric (even "egg-headed") for an Australian but it remains popular in the German lands -- as the big and packed audiences you see at Moerbisch demonstrate. When the cameras cut to the audience of this show, Anne commented, "Not an empty seat".  Though you have to wonder whether the Staatsoper being in recess in July/August has something to do with that. The Moerbisch season runs from early July to late August.

APPENDIX

The words of "Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol"

 Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol
In the Tyrol, when you give roses
Weiss man was das bedeuten soll:
everyone knows what it means:
Man schenkt die Rose nicht allein,
it’s not just the rose you’re giving,
Man gibt sich selber auch mit drein!
you give yourself with it!
Darf ich es wirklich so verstehen,
Can I take it to mean the same here?
Kann ich auf dieses Zeichen gehen,
Can I act on this sign?
Dann machst du wahrhaft selig mich,
It would make me blissfully happy
Schenkst mit der Rose du auch dich!
if, with a rose, you gave your own self.
Amsel und Star zieh’n jedes Jahr
Each year the blackbird and the starling
Nach ihrer Heimat wieder,
return to their home again,
Singen die alten Lieder.
they sing the old songs.
Hält mich das Glück hier jetzt zurück?
Am I kept here by happiness?
Wag’ es zu hoffen kaum,
I hardly dare to hope
Denn in mir klingts wie ein Traum:
as a dream chimes within me:
Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol…
In the Tyrol, when you give roses…

Zirkusprinzessin (Circus Princess)

Hallstein with "Mr. X" (Rudolf Schock)


The initial encounter. Rudolf Schock is a lucky man

The casting

I was particularly pleased to get a copy of this operetta, as the leading lady is none other than the elegantly beautiful Bavarian Kammersängerin, Ingeborg Hallstein -- an angel with an angel's voice.   Maybe I'm a bit maudlin but I think she is the most beautiful lady ever in opera/operetta.

I thought in this show she looked younger than in Wiener Blut and I was right -- sort of.  Zirkusprinzessin was recorded in 1969 and Wiener Blut in 1971.  But those two years made a difference IMHO.  She conveyed much more of an image of sophistication in Wiener Blut.  But that was a more sophisticated role of course. It's not often that a lady says she likes to hear that her husband is attractive to other women.

But her facial expressions in Zirkusprinzessin as she pinged off the repulsive "Prince Sergius" were solid gold.  It was wonderful to see her in action.  As the Prince said when she had finished her little speech:  "Das war deutlich" ("that was clear").

And I liked the dramatic faces of Hallstein when she was watching the final act of the show. I thought she looked most beautiful at that point -- though whether that says something sad about me, I don't know.

Amusing that she wore her hair in the same uplifted style in both shows, complete with stars in it.  But it meant that full attention was on her face -- and it is a face worth looking at.

And at the risk of sounding ridiculous, I greatly admired the hat she wore when she arrived in Vienna from Petersburg. It was very elegant and flattering IMHO. Her other hats were good too. Congratulations to the costume department, I guess.

Something I have not seen elsewhere is any comment on her speaking voice. It was marvellously feminine:  Breathy, low-pitched.  I'm out of words after that. I actually think she was at a peak of feminine beauty in this show, not at all like the gross Kardashians (and their emulators) of the current era.  The Kardashians actually seem FAT to me.  There!  Can I utter any greater scorn than that?  So it is a wonderful thing that this show from 1969 has been preserved.

Some details about Hallstein from Wikipedia:

"Ingeborg Hallstein (born 23 May 1936 in Munich) is a German operatic coloratura soprano famed for the purity and range of her voice, which extended from the G-sharp below middle C to the B-flat more than three octaves above it.

For her great services, among other things to the young talents, the Bayerische Kammersängerin received the Federal Cross of Merit in 1979, that order's First Class in 1996, and the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1999".


Some scenes

The show

I hope it is not churlish of me to mention it but the suspension of belief that one needs for operetta was rather stretched by the trapeze artist jumping from high up in the tent onto the back of  a horse. It was quite mad as far as I can see.  A man doing so would surely crunch his balls and break the back of the horse.  It did however make good drama.

There were a few jokes in it but not many.  The second string story did good service there, though -- with the Pelikan scenes being quite hilarious at times.  But the Hungarian dialogue there stumped me. I can make some sort of a fist of understanding most European languages but Hungarian and Finnish are in a world of their own.  Kalman does seem to put bits of Magyar (his native language) into his shows for no obvious reason.  Maybe the fact that NOBODY outside the Hungarian lands is remotely interested in Magyar bothered him.   His intervention did no good, however.

And I did learn something amusing from "Toni", the second string romantic.  He described the dancing ladies he admired as having "marzipan legs".  I would never have thought of that one.  Presumably he meant white.

I am not the first to note that Kalman stole the plot for Zirkusprinzessin  from Millocker's Bettelstudent of 40 years previously.  But operettas do a lot of borrowing from one another so that is not too remarkable.


Getting married


The wedding ceremony

Translation issues

An amusing thing about the English subtitles:  Towards the end of the show, the German word Lust was translated as "lust" -- which sounded quite jarring in the circumstances.  The German word means "pleasure" or "enjoyment" or some such. The translator's lot is not a happy one (to misquote Gilbert & Sullivan) but that was a real boo-boo.  A common one, however.

I am also a bit critical of the way Durchlauch/ Durchlaucht was translated.  It was at times translated as "Your Serene Highness", which is indeed its expanded meaning, but Durchlaucht is an abbreviation of that, so a translation as simply "Highness" would have been more usual.  But German has two words for "Highness", Hoheit being the other, so it is another case where there is no perfect translation. Hoheit  is a more elevated rank than Durchlauch.

A complication is that the same person can be addressed both as Durchlauch and Hoheit.  The original distinction seems to have faded and left Hoheit as simply a polite form of address to anyone of Graf status or above and Durchlauch as the common form of address for the same people.  Since the Russian aristocracy was allegedly involved, Gospodina might have been considered in this case

Mind you, referring to Hallstein as Serene Highness is not unreasonable.  She does indeed come across as serene -- completely delectable, in fact.

"Highness" is the English equivalent of Hoheit but usage of "Highness" is much more limited.  Only the Queen can bestow that appellation in England.

Overall

There were enough machinations for grand opera but everybody ended up alive and happy, of course, in proper operetta style.  Certainly a great romance.

And the sub-plot ended up well too, with the aid of some amazing co-incidence!  You do usually have two or more happy endings in an operetta and that was delivered.

It was a great show with lots happening and some implausible love at first sight.  But love at first sight is a staple of operetta, of course.  There was much drama and it did get me in. I was feeling a bit teary at the end.

Technical

The operettas I watch are mostly cinematic versions made for West German TV in the late '60s and mid '70s so I do tend to see the same actors and actresses over and over again.  So I knew well that Wirtin Schlumberger was played by someone I had seen elsewhere.  I could NOT bring it to mind where and when, however,  so I had to look up the filmography of "Jane Tilden", who played the part.  I saw her previously as Stasa Kokozow in Graf von Luxemburg

A small technical point.  I watched the show at first on a big modern flat-screen TV and it looked fine.  But then I re-watched it on my small, old-fashioned bedside monitor -- a 19" RGB CRT monitor.  And it looked much better on the RGB monitor.  Why?  Easy peasy.  My RGB monitor is a CRT relic of the '70s.  My RGB monitor was exactly the sort of monitor the show was recorded for in 1969.  

So:  Products of the past work best on the technology of the past:  Another reason for preserving the technology of the past.  And I do put my money where my mouth is.  I have quite a lot of Amiga 500 and Atari ST games gear salted away in various cupboards -- in the form of the old 3.5 inch disks.

You can of course play all that stuff on emulators now but my son Joe is a games freak and he tells me that the emulators don't do all the old sounds well. Amiga sound was miles ahead of anything else at the time.  It still sounds good.   Joe has reminded me  that the rather good Amiga game "Loom" of the 1980s used excerpts from the "Swan Lake" ballet by Tchaikovsky in its theme music.  I always liked the sounds of "Loom" -- while the kids were playing it in my life of long ago.

APPENDIX

For Hallstein admirers: Below is a clip from a B&W show that is no longer available in full anywhere.  It features a young Hallstein.  You don't need to understand the words to understand what is going on but in case:  The repeated adjuration translates as: "Come with me into a private booth".  As various people have commented:  "The lucky devil even ends up getting a kiss from Hallstein"

A dinner to welcome a new inhabitant

Joe's GF has just moved in to our place.  She came up from South with her mother and sister.  So I shouted us all a dinner at our favourite Japanese restaurant, starting about 6:30.  The ladies are staying at Jenny's for the few days they are here so Jenny came along too.

She found that the Wagyu steak was OK at not affecting her allergies.  The food was excellent as usual.  Joe had a milky drink as usual and Kate got Peach tea, which she would have enjoyed. She found that the Wagyu steak was OK at not affecting her allergies. The food was excellent as usual. Joe had a milky drink as usual and Kate got Peach tea, which she would have enjoyed. The Phantom drinks milk, of course, and Joe is something of a comic connoisseur but I doubt that the Phantom was a major influence in the matter

Kate's family did not get the chance to say a lot as Jenny and I were in good form.  Joe too had a bit to say. We didn't talk about anything memorable.  Just about things we have been doing.

I invited everyone back to our place for post-prandial cups of tea, which Jenny made in her usual helpful way.  Joe and I both bowed out at around 9pm to work on our computers.

The restaurant gives out neat little readable receipts so I thought it would be a good memoir to put up the one I got on this occasion.  You can read clearly what we had.

Der Rosenkavalier

Richard Strauss is a long way from being Johann Strauss and I would not normally pay a cent for anything by him --  but Der Rosenkavalier is often described as a comic opera.  So I thought that maybe Richard Strauss had his moments.  He didn't.  It was the DVD set from the 2004 Salzburg festival that I bought and I am mightily glad that I did not pay much for it.  There was not a single laugh in it that I could see  -- and not a single memorable aria.

I realize however that I am coming from a particular place. I like Austro/Hungarian operetta from either side of the dawning of the 20th century, and although Richard Strauss is of roughly that period, he is not of that ilk.  He belongs within the tradition of 19th century grand opera. He is a "romantic" in the sense that Wagner and Verdi were romantics. He has a few good moments but that is the best I can say of him.

Der Rosenkavalier was full of meandering "philosophical" reflections  that could have been completely excised for the benefit of the story -- and the first half of the show was a sustained display of disgusting behaviour.

Hitler liked the works of Richard Strauss and I think I can see why. "Baron Ox" would have been a sympathetic figure to Nazis. He is of course the very anathema to me.

The only thing that distinguishes the show from a 19th century grand opera is that it had a happy ending.  We must be thankful for small mercies I guess.  It was first performed in 1911 when operetta was in full popularity so the happy ending may have been a concession to the times.


Hmmmm.... On reflection, I guess that what I am supposed to find funny was the pomposity of the baron and his various downfalls.  But I found his egotism and bad attitude to women all too real. I guess I should watch it again but just watching it once was trial enough for me.  I just don't find arrogance and a bad attitude to women funny.

Some foolish late-night reflections

Pace Robert Frost ("Reflection on The Road Not Taken")

In 1968 I contemplated becoming a German -- a  Prussian even.  The great marker of the Prussian is precise punctuality.  And I have that.  Joe does too so we often have some very precise arrangements between us which we both appreciate.  And Joe has a very military (and hence Prussian) attitude to food (refueling) too, which I also had at his age.  And I would certainly have been happy to wear a Pickelhaube, long gone though that now is.  And I am in fact a former army man anyway.  Prussians are particularly known as soldiers  -- not that I was a good one.

And Germany's rich cultural life would have suited me down to the ground.

In 1968 I had just completed an honours degree which included German II and in that year we did get some of our lectures in German -- about such world significant figures as Brockes (forgive the sarcasm) so my German was a lot better at that stage than it is now --  over 40 years later.  And I did take out in Sydney at that stage a German lady of elevated station back in German society.

So I thought of becoming a German and moving into a good position with her in German society. But being rather lazy, it seemed like too much trouble and Sydney women presented many interesting  possibilities too.  I even took for a short while an interest in a very shapely lady called Diane Rosenbloom -- with limited success.  It occurred to me only afterwards that Rosenbloom is an irrefragably Ashkenazi name so, not being Jewish, my chances with her had been minimal anyway.  She was a nice lady so I imagine that she entered shortly thereafter into a community-sanctioned marriage.

But what if I had realized then that I could possibly meet Ingeborg Hallstein in Germany?  Would I have decided differently? I might have.  I have just finished watching for the umpteenth time a 1971 recording of the wonderful Strauss II operetta Wiener Blut -- featuring as Graefin the beautiful coloratura soprano Ingeborg Hallstein, whom I see as the ultimate lady.  I was 25 in 1968 and she would have been 32.  That sort of age gap has never been a problem for me so what if I had gone to Germany and encountered her long, beautiful and wise face before me there?



I think I might have had a a chance with her.  I have always said that I get on with only about 1% of the world's women but that is one heck of a lot of ladies.  And the 1% ALWAYS includes classical music lovers -- which is my great delight too.  And that 1% is also pretty coterminous with the top 1% in IQ.

And most high IQ ladies are not at all comfortable with men who are dumber than them.  They have to be very good-natured to put up with it at all.  Though some wise ones do. So being in the top stratum myself, the very best women are accessible to me

So I have no doubt that Hallstein chose in her life men as musical as she is.  But although I am no good even as a bathroom singer, I would still, I think,  have had a chance with her.  IQ plus my devotion to classsical music might have won the day. A smart lady who sees my mocking blue eyes upon her knows immediately what company she has and regards it as at least interesting

And I did anyway many years later meet a Brisbane person who was also an ultimate lady. I had just married at the time but I knew an ultimate lady when I met one so a change of loyalties was rapidly accomplished.  Definitely Wiener Blut!

The Holy apostle Paul

Anne, the lady in my life is, like me, an ex-Christian and our Christian past is still influential with us both.  She doesn't like the apostle Paul's view of the place of women, however -- as in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 11, for instance.  Being a born tease, however, I enjoy pointing out that according to the Bible, women should be submissive to their men.  Anne is no feminist but she is a pretty independent lady so she doesn't like Paul at all and why is he in in the Bible anyhow?

I replied that if God inspired the Bible writings, surely he could also make sure that the right documents were included in it.  On hearing that she burst into peals of laughter.  I am not totally sure why but I think she saw the logic in it and realized that you could not arbitrarily exclude Paul from being a divine messenger.

So how do I think the books of the Bible were chosen?  I do actually lean to an explanation that would fit in with God's guidance.  The history of the matter is that there was a considerable debate in the early days about which books were new revelation -- and various collections were made which embodied particular people's view of what was divine.  But after a while a consensus did emerge.  And it was an inclusive consensus:  Enough books were included to keep most people happy.

So was God behind that consensus?  Since I am an atheist I think not but a Christian could reasonably think so.  What I think happened is that those books which made most sense and sounded good at the time gradually, amid debate, came to be generally accepted as holy.

With his background in Greek learning, Paul was quite a good theologian, he wrote very energetically, wrote very extensively and he explicitly claimed divine guidance -- so it would appear that the whole available corpus of his writing was included.

And in the nature of these things, a tradition developed which saw that early consensus as authoritative.

Wiener Blut -- a splendid farce

And a celebration of a great city

To Americans, a wiener is either a sausage or a private part of similar shape.  But in German neither Hamburgers nor Wieners are food items.  Both refer to the inhabitants of famous cities.  So Wiener Blut means "Vienna blood".  But what exactly that is we shall see.

In my well-spent youth in Sydney in the '70s I went to a lot of plays.  Sydney had a variety of them on at any one time and I took advantage of that -- seeing perhaps one play a week.  They weren't all good -- I walked out of a few -- but I enjoyed most of them, as did the ladies I took along.  Ladies LOVE going to plays. And there were among the plays I saw quite a few farces, including plays by that master of farce, Feydeau. And Wiener Blut is an excellent farce, worthy of Feydeau.  The show was written in 1899 and set in 1814.

Also in the early 70s, a lot of cinematic versions of operetta were made for German TV.  And the best of those are  now being released on DVD -- perhaps something to do with copyright. And a lot of the DVDs I have acquired are from that source.  An amusing consequence of that is that I see from time to time the same singers in different shows.  For me the '70s German operetta scene is still live. 

So the version of Wiener Blut that I have -- a 1971 production conducted by Kurt Graunke and directed by Hermann Lanske -- actually had three singers in it whose work I knew.  One of the reasons I bought that DVD was that it had the Austrian soprano Dagmar Koller in it, who is a genuinely lovely lady.  She is of my vintage but still survives. 

The point of it all

So let's look at the theme song which tells us what Das Wiener Blut is about.  The song itself defines such Blut as "Voller Kraft, Voller Glut! ... Was die Stadt Schönes hat, In dir ruht! Wiener Blut, Heisse Flut. (Roughly: "unique, full of fire, full of power, hot and flowing").  The idea is that the great city is embodied in its people. It basically means "high-spirited" -- bright and lively -- perhaps "gay" in the old meaning of that term -- and infidelity is accepted as part of that. If a man is not smitten by every beautiful woman he meets, he lacks Wiener Blut.  But operetta always has happy endings so in this case the Graf ends up falling in love with his wife! (As well he might!)

A wonderful farce. I am laughing as I write this.  But he only falls in love with his wife because his wife suddenly falls in love with him.  She had herself been before her marriage a gay and lively  Wiener ("Ich war ein echte Wiener Blut") and had thought that her husband lacked Wiener Blut -- until she saw and heard of his infidelities.  That convinced her that in Vienna he had become a real man by Vienna standards ("Aus dem soliden und strengen Mann wurde der flotteste Don Juan!  ... Sie wurden Mann von Welt").  So, as the wife, Ingeborg Hallstein was given a sophisticate's role.  And she conveys it with complete conviction and elegance.  It makes some sense that she wanted her man to be one who was desirable to other women.  See below:

So was there more than that with Wiener Blut?  Was it just a similar culture that Hallstein's character wanted?  Partly so, I think.  But Wien was at the time a great imperial city and civilizational centre so there was also there a longing for the high and sophisticated culture that existed in Wien.   At one stage Wien was undoubtedly the greatest city in the world since Constantinople/Byzantium.  To be and feel part of that was a great privilege.  And we see from the scenes of the ordinary people of the city at Hietzing that a love of their city included all orders of Viennese society.  They compared Wien to Heaven!

But other people esteem their city highly too.  We even have a rather good song of praise for Galveston!  And who can forget Elvis's "happy home" in Memphis, Tennessee?  London is a bit disappointing though. Such an amazing city seems to have produced only the Cockney song, "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner ..".  But nothing can compare with the frequent and brilliant songs of praise for Wien that occur throughout operetta.  And Wiener Blut is undoubtedly the leading example of that.

The casting

I did not think that Rene Kollo was well cast in Csardas Fuerstin  -- though he is undoubtedly a good and powerful singer -- but he suited his fickle part in Wiener Blut very well. As the Casanova he did not do any stern parts but when he was rumbled with his Geliebte in her floral and very modern underwear he managed to say "Ich auch" in a somewhat stern manner. And his surprised expressions when he encountered his seamstress Geliebte standing in for a Princess of Poland in the grand dance were spot on. The more I have listened to him, the more I appreciate his powerful and faultless tenor voice. And his diction is good too.  Regardless of the language of the song, operatic singing is often hard to follow, but Kollo's German is very clear.

But the real surprise for me  was German soprano Ingeborg Hallstein, of whom it has been said:  "Ingeborg Hallstein burst onto the scene in 1959 with an uncommonly sweet voice and beautiful face and figure, which immediately moved her front and center in German musical life."

There is a lot of her work available on CD -- for good reason -- but almost nothing on DVD.  But what a lady! An elegantly beautiful woman.  She conveyed eloquently the air of sophistication that her role as Graefin called for.  She really has the sort of face that would launch a thousand ships -- a face of both character and beauty. And she has the long neck that one normally finds only in beautiful Northern European women.  Virginia Woolf was another example. So Hallstein was a most convincing Graefin!

But is her beauty in part a function of stage makeup?  I don't discount that. On the few occasions that I have appeared on TV, I have been amazed about how the makeup artists were able to banish my facial spots.  But we do  get a lot of closeups in this show that clearly show Hallstein's stage makeup.  And it clearly just emphasizes already beautiful features.  

There is one thing that I am not sure that I should mention. Hallstein has some sort of mole on her lower face.  So why did not the makeup artists blot that out?   There was apparently in times past such a thing as a "beauty spot" and that idea still lives to some extent.  Don't ask me for the logic of it (if any) but some sort of facial blemish on a beautiful lady was held to be an enhancement rather than a blemish.  So Hallstein has it all.

KS Hallstein is a remarkable singer too.  She is known for her range and she does show a bit of it on a couple of occasions in this show.  It is not a big voice but it is probably just right for the ultimate lady that she is. Needless to say, she has long been recognized as Kammersängerin (KS).

If you want to really hear what she can do as a high coloratura soprano there is a 1965 B&W film clip below where she sings the haunting nightingale song by Franz Grothe from the 1941 German film "Die Schwedische Nachtigall".



Hallstein has been described as having crystal bells in her throat and that clip will tell you why.  (Lyrics for the nightingale song here).  In a sound-only file here you also hear her in high coloratura mode -- singing the wonderful An der schoenen blauen Donau, Austria's unofficial national anthem.  

The Donau (Danube) is shown in appropriate blue in the map below -- though I gather that it is rarely blue these days:

 

Hallstein was said in the 60s and 70s to be "die weltweit beste Königin der Nacht" (the world's best "Queen of the Night") and I can believe it. She is still alive and active on judging panels in her late 70s.  

Note: There is also a "Spanish" nightingale operetta, "Die Spanische Nachtigall" by Leo Fall. And also a Nachtigall song in Zeller's Vogelhaendler. You have to keep your nightingales straight.

And Hallstein's facial expressions and body language were brilliant too. She is a superb actress as well as a remarkable singer.  It seems to come naturally.  It probably does. She is as good as any Hollywood actress at living her part and better than most of them at subtlety of expression.  

An example of that which I really enjoyed was her very small but rightly contemptuous gesture of dismissal -- mainly just a tiny and momentary inclination of her head combined with a small "Oh!" -- when she first saw one of her rivals, little Helga. Her vocalization there was not even an Ach!.  She knew that she was miles ahead of that "rival".  And the scene where she asks the clumsy Prince to take her to Hietzing was brilliantly done.  I laugh every time I think of it.  It was almost an enchiridion of feminine wiles there.  She knew her power and even found it amusing.

And her expressions as she spoke with her flirtatious husband were also well done. She showed subtly that she did not believe a word of his attempted deceptions but was amused by them instead -- indulgent and quietly confident expressions.  She was aware of her high standing in Wiener society so was not easily abashed.  She has irrefragable dignity.

I have seen and heard other versions of the Wiener Blut song but I think Hallstein here is better than them all (see the clip above).  What a stunning woman!  The other women in the show are girls compared to her.  That clip may in fact get my vote for the most beautiful scene in operetta.  There are other strong candidates  -- such as Die ganze welt is Himmelblau with A.K. Wigger at Moerbisch in 2008 or Martina Serafin's in Als geblueht der Kirschenbaum in the Moerbisch performance of Vogelhaendler but  the emotion is so intense in the above scene that it certainly gets to me.

Not that I would say a critical word about the other two ladies in the show. Dagmar Koller once again came across as a lovely and lovable lady. Let me say that again: Despite what could have been a bitchy role, Dagmar Koller once again came across as a lovely and lovable lady.  She is a honey.  I suspect she would not accept casting any other way.  

And little Helga Papouschek as the servant's girlfriend was well cast. She has a certain prettiness but is no beauty -- a point made in the show when the two beautiful ladies (the Graefin and "Cagliari") agreed that they  could forgive the Graf that one.  She was in their view no threat to them. Wiener Blut!  

She has been described elsewhere as a "vielseitige Schauspielerin und Sängerin" (a many-sided actress and singer) and I can see that. She has a squeaky little voice but she gets her notes well enough.  She portrayed various moods very  well and looked right for her part.  She certainly showed various sides in this show.  And her role as a seamstress in a Polish hat standing in for a princess of Poland in the grand dance was one of the good jokes of the show.  And her  comment earlier on in the show that the overweight Polish princess might have been overdoing the cakes was as irreverent as it was apposite.

And we must not for a moment forget the character actors. Benno Kusche did his part as the confused Prince superbly well and Ferry Gruber as Josef the servant was very convincing.  He was very clever in fact.  He was as good a character actor as you could get and he certainly got the laughs, probably about half of them in fact.  There was brilliant acting throughout the show.

The costumes

A small note about riding habits:  I was much impressed with the riding habit worn by "Lisa" in Das Land des Laechelns but the outfit worn by Hallstein in this show was pretty good too.  I think that up until now I had only seen Englishwomen in riding gear.  Austrians do it infinitely better.  There is a low rez clip below that gives you an idea of Hallstein's outfit -- and also follows her into her visit to her old home at Döbling.  The beginning of the clip shows her actually riding a horse so the outfit was apparently practical.  She looks good most of the time but in her riding habit and riding hat she was really something  -- both while riding and after riding. 

Part of the attractiveness of the riding scene was the beautiful grounds through which she trots her horse. I gather that that scene was recorded in the grounds of the Palais Strattmann in Vienna.

I think the point of such an elaborate habit is that you could get off a horse and immediately be dressed for the best society.  I note that the lovely Dagmar Koller was also presented in a flowing riding habit in the vignettes of her pre-marital times in Csardasfuerstin

The golden garment with lots of ermine trim on the hood and sleeves that Hallstein wore to Hietzing also impressed me.  Not everyone could have worn such a garment effectively but on Hallstein it created a great image of privilege and luxury.  It complemented and framed her beauty.  A face framed in ermine certainly has a good start.  Dagmar Koller also wore a similar rather gorgeous flowing garment at Hietzing.

Some of the scenes at Hietzing below



The garments both ladies wore were dominos, all-covering garments often worn to masked balls and the like. They are a way of hiding in plain sight and both ladies in this story were indeed trying to hide at Hietzing. There are some modern ladies' garments called that but they are totally out of touch with the late-19th-century original, with its hoods, big sleeves, fancy trims and the like.  Below is a picture of a lady wearing a pink domino at a performance of Heuberger's Opernball

And Hallstein looked so happy in that scene.  Good to see.  I suspect that she is basically a happy lady who suppressed her good humour only slightly in the scenes where she is dealing with the attempted deceptions of the Graf.

Perhaps the elaborate Fächer (hand-held fan) much used by Hallstein in the show deserves a mention.  It is very feathery and is obviously meant to be part of a lady's ensemble rather than merely utilitarian.  She certainly uses it expressively.

Hair!

Interesting that Hallstein wore small stars in her hair for much of the time.  In operetta it is very common for the ladies to wear laurel wreaths  -- but not in this show:  Diamond stars as a hair adornment were invented by the rather tragic Empress Elizabeth of Austria around about 1860 so seeing them in this  show (set in 1814) is a bit anachronistic but certainly glamorous.  They do convey elegance.  Anne tells me that you can still buy in Vienna hair stars such as Hallstein wore.  So perhaps that is the practical reason why they were used.

It was Anne who told me about hair stars. I know nothing about the mysteries of ladies' hair, other than having a general view that more is better.  I have even bullied Anne into wearing her hair long, even though she is a lady of advanced years. I have of course scriptural support for my view of the matter (1 Corinthians 11:15) but even in the human race's oldest literary work, "The epic of Gilgamesh", we find a view that long hair is proper for women.

And I still have not figured out how Schellenberger in the one year (2004) had both very short hair (in Graefin Maritza) and very long and gorgeous hair (in Lustige Witwe).  Lustige Witwe  could have come first, of course, but as a "Daily Mail" reader I am aware that there are such things as hair extensions -- but I have no idea how that works at all.  But when Gilfry was fiddling with Schellenberger's hair in the Lippen  Schweigen scene I was mentally warning him to be careful of those extensions.  Fortunately, he was.

A few other details

Some of the jokes come very quickly and you have to be alert to get them.  One such was when Hallstein was offered a jumping jack but she declined to buy, saying as the seller walked away:  Ich hab' schon eine (I have already got one) -- meaning probably her husband. Another joke was the stern and prowling geheime Staatspolizist (secret policeman) at Hietzing in his brown hat. (OK.  He was just a Geheime Polizist.  We know who in history the Geheime Staatspolizei were, don't we?)

I was amused when the sausage king described Hallstein as "a dazzling piece of construction" and her rival as an "architectural masterpiece".  We see architectural allusions to the looks of a lady in other operettas too, notably Kalman's Graefin Maritza and Lehar's Die lustige Witwe.

And I also wonder a little what the sausage king's sausages were like.  As a sausage devotee I entirely agree with the prominence they were given in the show.  My devotion to sausages could make me a good German.  A good sausage is a work of art!

When the Graf is trying to seduce the wily seamstress with invocations of Stoss an (drink up), he orders Wiener Wein to help the proceedings.  I wonder what the wine was?  The most popular Austrian wine these days seems to be Grüner Veltliner, which is a rather undistinguished wine IMHO -- reminiscent of an Australian Hunter Valley  Semillion. Maybe he had in mind Gemischter Satz, which would have been around in the early 19th century.  

Gemischter Satz is in fact grown and produced in Vienna itself. So it really is a Wiener Wein. Vienna actually has its own vineyards on the outskirts of the city. Austria as a whole is a significant wine-producing region.  It exports to Germany. I noticed at the big party in Hietzing that everyone seemed to be drinking wine, not beer.  Not a North/South difference this time, I think.  Maybe just a Wiener difference?  

We saw a North/South difference when the (presumably) Northern Prince told the (Southern) sausage king to speak German, remarking that the sausage king's German sounded like Tibetan.  In good Southern style, the sausage king was not at all abashed and just carried on. There was rather a lot of commentary about Wiener speech being "different" and I gather that there are still such differences.

I am no authority on anything German and I know only the basics about North/South differences but I noted that the sausage king pronounced junge Leute as junge Leiter and there is no doubt that could cause amazement or amusement.

Another detail of the show that interested me was the novels the Graefin took out of her bookcase.  Because I had never heard of him I looked up Christoph Martin Wieland.  He was apparently a rather light novelist, best known for translating Shakespeare into German.

Realism and operetta have a limited relationship -- though I don't like deliberate anachronism.  So I cannot be censorious about a very curious thing about the streets of Vienna that we see in this  show: The streets were sparkling clean.  But the streets of of a great city in the 19th century would have been much used by horses and various horse-drawn conveyances.  And what does that produce?  Huge amounts of horse-manure and horse-pee in the streets.  The real-life streets of Vienna at that time would have stunk to high heaven and soiled anybody who walked them. Sorry for that totally inappropriate burst of realism.

The wrap-up

As endings go, this has to be the supreme operetta -- with FOUR happy couples at the end of it: All waltzing and singing Das Wiener Blut of course. Superb, superb! (As the  French Vicomte said in  Lustige Witwe when he heard that the widow was worth 500 million francs). Even the sausage king finds his match. 

It's hard to believe that the show was initially a flop.  Bizet died thinking "Carmen" was a failure too. The first producer of Wiener Blut was bankrupted by its failure and shot himself!  A terrible contrast between reality and fantasy. 

And the praise of Vienna as being unique and happy is of course common in operetta. One thinks of the joy in the two second-string stars of Zirkusprinzessin when they discover in cold St. Petersburg that they are both from warm Wien.  And the Princess in Vogelhaendler at her first appearance in that play is also proud to proclaim that she is a gay Wiener.  But a heterosexual one, of course.

And, as usual in operetta, the waltz (Der Walzer in German) is both much practiced and warmly praised.  And something I noticed at the end of one of the waltzes was that the ladies did a low curtsey to their men at the end of the dance.  I am aware that there can still at formal balls be a certain amount of bowing and curtseying at the beginning of a dance but I had not seen it as the conclusion of a dance.  Is that still widely practiced?  I have no idea.  But someone should bring it back routinely.  It would make the feminists burst into flames!

Some reflections

And an inevitable reflection that Wiener Blut inspires is how we mere mortals live up to the splendid life in Wien that it portrays.  I am sure I score a zero on glamour but, although I am no Wiener, the fact that I have been married four times to four fine women must testify to some sort of "Blut"!

But have I had in my life an ultimate lady such as Hallstein?  A lady who is beautiful, smart, confident, socially acclaimed, very musical and kind?  And have I walked through a crowded room with the lady to see her greeted with pleasure by many? (As Hallstein did with Kollo in the grand ball)?  I have done that. And I treasure the experience.  She may even read this.  Unlike Hallstein, she does not have crystal bells in her throat but I think we can both overlook that.  A real lady is a great pleasure to us mere men.

And what is the role of culture in male/female relationships?  With the lady I mentioned above  it was  very important.  She once said to me:  "I could forgive you anything because of the way you feel about music".  But there is more to it than that.  

The lady in my life these days is in fact a good soprano but that is rather incidental -- though we do sing some of the great old Protestant hymns together at times!  What she and I have in common is small-town Protestant Queensland culture.  We come from very similar environments. When I speak broad Australian she understands. We sound right to one-another.  It really pleases me to use traditional Australian expressions.

The great aria

Here it is in full:

Das Wiener Blut! 

Wiener Blut!

Wiener Blut! 

Eig'ner Saft 

Voller Kraft, 

Voller Glut! 

Du erhebst, 

Du belebst 

Unsern Mut! 

Wiener Blut! 

Wiener Blut! 

Was die Stadt 

Schönes hat, 

In dir ruht! 

Wiener Blut, 

Heisse Flut 

Allerort 

Gilt das Wort: 

Wiener Blut! 

I know the literal meaning of all the words but it would be maddening to try to translate it adequately so I am not going to try.  Someone bolder than I am has however subtitled it  here in an old performance by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.  Rather sad that the undoubtedly distinguished Schwarzkopf is roughly twice as wide as Hallstein.

Librettos are online here and here but performances of course differ so neither  corresponds exactly to the DVD performance

Perhaps I should in closing pay tribute the librettists, Victor Léon and Leo Stein. The fun was entirely their work.  A later libretto for which Léon and Stein were responsible was that of Lehár's highly successful "The Merry Widow". Strauss was in his last days when this show was created and, although he approved of the project, he did not specifically compose any music for it, although many of his earlier compositions were incorporated, as we can hear. He was mostly content to delegate the musical arrangements to Adolf Müller. You have to get your Adolfs right!  -- JR