Polyphony lives in Alabama

Polyphony lives ! This is one of Charles and Ira Louvin's greatest hits. Their close harmony is so tight, it's almost symbiotic, as if each voice grows out of the other. Like twins, intuitively completing each other's sentences. Ira (b 1924) was the tall, haunted looking brother, the creative fireball who wrote many of the songs and played a strange mandolin he built himself. His is the high tenor and does descant that can reach countertenor heights, truly surreal.Charles (b 1927) sings the steadier lower part.

This kind of harely accompanied harmonic singing was what people did in isolated mountainous areas in the Bible belt. No easy transport, no mass communications. People were dirt poor and made their own entertainment. Somewhere along the way, part song left the church and became folk idiom. Traditional folk tunes from Europe adapt, hymns become popular song. It's very creative.

This song, one of their greatest hits, develops like Lieder : anxiety, self doubt, sudden reversal on denouement, but understated and sincere. Love in that chaste, tentative but deeply felt 19th century way. It's even Allnächtlich im Traüme !

What I love about the Louvins is that they're so unself conscious that they they can be kitsch, because they're so totally sincere. It's refreshing. They sang a lot of goispel songs, but all that piety didn't help the troubled genius of Ira Louvin. By age 30 he was alcoholic. He married four times, and attacked at least one of his wives. Charles couldn't cope and the duo split up. In 1965 Ira was killed in a drunken car crash. Eeriely, many of his songs were about the evils of drink and drunk driving in particular - another very Liederish irony. Charlie's still performing, aged 82, he wrote a song remembering his brother which makes me weep.

Below is a rare clip from a radio show they did in thhe early 1950's. In those days people just turned up at the studio and sang and talked - no fancy takes. It's the real thing, not so far from performing live at home or with friends. They are so unsophisticated that they ask the audience to send dollar bills in the post to buy songbooks. (People used to buy song books then so they could sing the songs themselves, before records became common. I love the innocence of this clip, it comes from another world.

Sibelius a Nazi?

Q

Earlier this week an academic in North Texas announced a new book he's about to launch, which claims Sibelius had ties to the Nazis. I'm not falling into the trap of publicizing this book but you'll hear all about it. It's getting lots more attention than a normal book about music simply because now everyone wants to buy it to find out what it says, even if it turns out to be nothing. Sensation sells.

The allegation is based on three themes, that Sibelius liked myths, that he collected a pension and a prize from Germany and that he didn't help a Jewish musician. No specific evidence has been proffered so far and several specialists have queried the sources and interpretation. No matter what "evidence" may be found, the fact remains that such claims are profoundly ahistorical, presented out of context.

Sibelius's interest in Finnish myth was little different from a general Europe-wide interest in national myth - from Gottfried Herder to Walter Scott. Many countries, including Finland. had long been ruled from afar, so raising national consciousness was a necessary stage in awakening the idea of an independent nation. Nationalism in itself is not Nazism. Most nations would be equally "guilty".

Sibelius came of age at a time when the Russians were tightening control over Finland, which they then ruled. After Finland declared independence in 1917, there was a bloody civil war, where the opposition was supported by the Soviets. Weeks after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Russians invaded Finland, causing the terrible "winter war" where the Finns were outnumbered. So when the Hitler/Stalin pact collapsed in 1941, the Finns were forced into an uncomfortable alliance with the Germans. Note, with Germany, not necessarily the same as the Nazi party.

Sibelius received a pension sourced from German funds, but it didn't just apply to him but was a standard state benefit. He accepted the Goethe Medal from Germany in 1935. Ralph Vaughan Williams accepted the Shakespeare medal as late as 1938 and even went to collect it in person. That doesn't make either of them Nazis, because right up to the invasion of Poland in 1939, western policy favoured appeasement. Had Sibelius kicked up a fuss, the Germans might have tightened their relatively loose control over Finland, where Brecht and other enemies of the Nazi state had found refuge.

Then there's Sibelius's personality. Possibly clinically depressed, he holed up at Ainola, not helping anyone much. We don't know the exact circumstances of how the Jewish musician approached him for help, but the approaches started in 1931. And it's not as though Sibelius wrote his finest works in the Nazi period!

Because Sibelius's music was so much loved in the west, it made people sympathetic to his country. So after 1945 when Estonia, Latvia and other small nations were assigned to the Soviet bloc, Finland was guaranteed complete independence. Had it not been for Sibelius, Finland might have been punished after 1945, and handed over to the Soviet bloc like Estonia, Latvia, etc. The Russians ethnically cleansed Karelia and Ostro Bothnia, the Finnish "heartland". To this day, huge parts of these provinces (which Sibelius knew well) are still annexed to Russia.

Maybe there's proof, maybe not. But there are important differences of scale in moral responsibility. If such things "prove" Sibelius was a Nazi, then we're all complicit. Ultimately, this demeans the horror of what the Nazis did. If such circumstantial things "prove" guilt, that devalues the crime of active, deliberate evil doing.

After writing this I refered to Erik Tawaststjerna's monumental biography of Sibelius. There are plenty of references to Sibelius condemning racism. He loved Berlin in his youth, where his brother lived and where his publishing contacts were. One of the men he knew then went on to become a Nazi sympathiser (as many did). The guy lived beyond his means and his large family (many children) had no support. So Sibelius discreetly helped out. But that doesn't mean a bean about his politics. Sometimes people can be kind to others while not demanding that others think as one would like. Besides, most of Sibelius's friends were vaguely left oriented and liberal. The point is that we can't judge anyone in retrospect and out of context. If a writer wants to sell a book on this subject, he and his publisher are morally contaminated, benefiting from the Nazi association themselves.

The Sacred made Real - No muzak!

The Sacred made Real at the National Gallery was an exhibition I wanted to escape because the subject matter is distressing. But I'm glad I finally confronted my fears. It's shattering, alright, but shattering in a compellingly positive way.

The fact is that most people in this world aren't Spanish Catholics, far less Christian at all, so it's valid to ask "What's in this for me?" But human suffering is universal and many people, religious or not, wonder what's the point of life. "The Sacred made Real" is for those who want to get past the incessant, frantic mental muzak of society and enter a quieter spiritual place. This exhibition, frightening as it is, is therapeutic, because it opens out a world far beyond ourselves and venal concerns.

The hyper-realism in these sculptures is meant to shock. 3D is more personal than any painting can ever be. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (attr Juan Martínez Montañés c 1628) upstages the famous Velásquez beside it. As you enter, your eyes are drawn to this glorious, golden Madonna, and you revel in the beauty of its detail. She's ecstatic because she knows Jesus is coming into the world. Then you see a disembodied head. It's John the Baptist, decapitated for spreading the news. Only when you look from the back, the horror hits you. There in realistic, photographic detail is his severed throat, blood vessels and bones protruding.

These sculptures weren't carved as decoration They're supposed to jolt you out of any sense of complacency, forcing you to think about their meaning. They're created to provoke an extreme response, but one which lifts you out of mundane cliché. If it's hard to look at these images of suffering, how much more horrible it must be to experience them? And why did John, Jesus and generations of martyrs suffer willingly for their faith?

These sculptures are rarely seen because normally they live in churches. Some, like the Dead Christ (1625-30, Gregorio Fernández), lie in tabernacles where the devout can contemplate, but others are placed high above altars. Their mysteries aren't revealed: which makes them all the more elusive. This exhibition is unique because it allows us to engage with them up close. We may never get the same opportunity again, even if we go to the churches they inhabit.

The hyper-realism is disturbing because no veil of propriety is drawn over them. St Francis of Assisi is famous for being so humble he can talk to birds. It's a surprise how small his statue (Pedro de Mena 1628-88) is, because the detail is amazing: the very textures of his roughly woven garment are depicted, so you can feel what it means to take a vow of poverty. The textures flow so well over the folds of his robe, that you're hypnotized. Then suddenly you see the wound in his side. St Francis welcomed the stigmata because he wanted to live out Christ's suffering, to come closer to the mystery of the Crucifixion. However stigmata appear, they do cause pain, but look at St Francis's eyes, limpid and moist as if he's alive, filled with compassion and love.

Why is St Francis so inspired? Shouldn't he be indignant that Christ suffered? But St Francis believed that God became man in order to experience the human condition and the pain that entails. The Resurrection shows that mankind will be saved. Suffering and death are a part of life, but can be endured because they will be overcome.

Hence the steely determination on the face of St Mary Magdelene meditating on the Crucifixion (Pedro de Mena 1664). She's wearing a robe which looks like it's woven from reeds. It's so carefully carved it's tactile, and for a reason: you're supposed to imagine why a pretty girl would want to suffer like that. Frail as she is, she holds the crucifix as if she's clinging to it for dear life. and you realize, it "is" the reason for her life. The robe is held together with delicate ropes, each thread finely carved. They look as if they might break at any time, but we know they're carved of solid wood. So the statue is saying, what looks weak is supported by a force greater than you'd expect.

Despite the realism, these painting and sculptures are surreal. The glow on the faces of Mary and the saints isn't ordinary but it's sublime light, Urlicht, that comes from a source that doesn't exist in mundane nature. They look upwards, towards something no-one can see. So you have to think, and imagine. You're engaged, not passive. In the film, outside the exhibition, the curator Xavier Bray comments on Velásquez's Christ after the Flagellation. It looks straightforward, but follow the eyes of the observer. He's looking behind Jesus, at his back, to the wounds we cannot see. The flat painting becomes four dimensional, when you engage your mind.

These objects are more than "art". Gregorio Fernández prepared himself before sculpting by prayer and fasting, and there's no doubt that for others - and their audiences - the works were a doorway to heightened spiritual experience. The statues of St Ignatius Loyola, St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Bruno depict them almost as photographic images so that we see them clearly as normal human beings, transfixed by the mysteries they're contemplating. They're not idols, nor even icons but a way of helping other ordinary people to connect to the amazing ideas behind them.

Kings and magnates want their portraits to make them look good. These images, however, show the saints warts and all, ugly old men whose voluminous garments probably weren't ever washed. Yet they're beautiful because their sprituality mnakes them glow.

Watch the video - photographs just don't come near! Click to make it full screen. Better still, get to this exhibition before it ends 24th January. Some of these things may never be seen like this again. If you like Sacred Made Real, you'll maybe like my other posts UNIQUE TO THIS SITE like those on  Japanese baroque. (and all my 20 plus posts on MACAU, Jesuits in Asia etc.

Opera and Catholic priests? masterclass in imagery

"Beauty isn't prettiness. It isn't even attractiveness on the surface. If something is truly beautiful, it will attract, out of the viewer, a response, a response of admiration, of generosity, of self giving. If something's merely attractive, it will evoke in a viewer the desire to possess it "Oh I like that, I'll have that"...."This is the true beauty of love, given in its extreme of faithfulness given to the end,...and it has the power to evoke in us the response that I too, will be generous and will give of myself in my life".

Responses that elevate the soul as opposed to responses that merely engage consumer greed. Understanding visual images is an art in itself, and an art that's much misunderstood. Opera is a fundamentally visual experience, even though we've pretty much lost the art of interpreting visual images because most of us learned opera from recordings. Visual images are even trickier to interpret sometimes than musical images because they connect to so many things in ordinary life. So here is a masterclass in the art of visual intelligence. Watch full screen for max effect.

The Sacred Made Real from Catholic Westminster on Vimeo.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols is speaking at the opening of an exhibition at the National Gallery, "The Sacred made Real: Spanish painting and Sculpture 1600-1700) It's a small exhibition, but a case of "less is more". So intense is its impact that it would be counter productive to spread the show too far. In his talk, the Archbishop concentrates on three key pieces. He then "reads" their meaning. Watch the video and listen to how he brings out layers of meaning that might not catch most people. These statues are gruesome, and their extreme hyper-reality makes them hard to take. But there are reasons for that, which the video doesn't go into (it's just a clip) But listen to how he explains how he looks and how he feels.

It's such an unusual subject (especially for reserved English Protestants) that it has inspired some very good writing The Guardian The Times, The Telegraph

London is The Place For Me Calypso

Enid Blyton's towns full of gollies represent one response to West Indian immigration. So hearing about things from a West Indian point of view is an antidote. When the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948, TV cameras were waiting for an immigrant from Trinidad called Lord Kitchener. A reporter with the plummy BBC accent of the time asks him "I am told you are the King of Calypso". And Kitch promptly bursts into song ! Here's the full song complete with trumpet backing and the chimes of Big Ben.

One of the regular readers here, the guy with masses of West African LPs, suggested the 4 CD set from Honest Jon's Records in 2003, "London is the Place for Me". (can also be downloaded on amazon). Lord Kitchener is there, Lord Beginner and King Timothy, The West African Rhythm Brothers, Ambrose Adeloya Campbell. Such lively, inventive creative music, so vivacious and so irrepressible - what a heady mix it was. There are songs like "I was there at the Coronation", and Cricket Victory, with its amazing chorus "those little pals of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine" (cricketers, 1950), and funnies like the song about a guy cheating on his wife whose girlfriend steals the wife's nightie! Songs about jazz subcultures like "Gerrard Street" (100 club not Chinatown). These guys are sharp, too and deal straight out with issues like race prejudice, poverty, tough landladies, mixed marriage. Here is Lord Beginner on the General Election (1950)


One song is a kind of social document. After a long grey winter, Carnival would be a good thing, but there's no carnival in Britain in those days. The story goes that some guys were playing for themselves and for some reason started walking along playing in the streets. Crowds followed. Notting Hill was born!

There were already colonies of Africans in London, and there was cross-fusion that way, too. On the later CDs in the set many songs aren't in English but apparently just as witty if you understand Yoruba or Asante. Great music ! Click HERE for more music, including Kitch's tribute to Ghana Freedom song. "Ghana is the name, we wish to proclaim ! We will be jolly, merry and gay, the 6th of March, Independence Day". It sounds more hi-life than calypso but that's fine!

Boy wonder growing up - Britten's Diaries

Benjamin Britten was uncommonly precocious as a boy. He kept hundreds of early compositions, meticulously ordered, almost like an old man in a boy's body. Read about the Red House exhibition in Aldeburgh and the new catalogue of his juvenilia HERE.

Now there's a new edition of Britten's letters from 1928 to 1938, "Journeying Boy : The Diaries of the young Benjamin Britten" ed John Evans, Faber, 504pp) Here he's off to school and then to the RCM, and thence into the world. These are his formative years, when he starts getting recognized as a composer, meets Auden, Berkeley and Pears, and to some extent comes to terms with his sexuality.

Each entry in the book is but a few paragraphs - Britten was never one to pour out his innermost soul, at least not in words others could see. Many of the entries are straightforward notes: he ate Italian at Bertorelli's, bought gramophone records at HMV (itemized) and liked cakes at Lyons Tea shops. Trivia perhaps but you get the flavour of the man, as Evans, the editor leaves in spelling mistakes and scribbles, which is a good thing.

Why "Journeying boy?" Britten is setting forth, into the world, and in German that's "fahrenden Gesellen". Since Britten notes nearly everything he hears, even on radios in other people's houses, we can track his influences. Lots and lots of Mahler – he heard Alfred Cortot play Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in May 1931 and Henry Wood conduct Mahler's 8th Symphony in 1938 ("execrable performance!"), and plays Kindertotenlieder when he feels down about music. It's good to hear when and how he listens, though it's not news how much Mahler meant to him, although he and Mahler are very different as composers.

Britten is unequivocally "European". It's clear early on there's no way he's following the usual British composer career path. He likes Grace Williams (with whom he goes to see Emil and the Detectives) and thinks her Psalms are the best thing in a BBC concert which includes "dreadful concoctions by E Maconchy, R O Morris, Robin Milford and RVW (5 dreadfully boring mystical songs. It is concerts like this which make me absolutely despair of British music and its critics". Years later, he and Lennox Berkeley pass a pleasant evening dissecting and deriding William Walton. His disdain for British music and conductors is well documented but it's interesting to read how well he knew them, too. He sang RVW in a college choir.

Lowestoft and childhood recede rapidly. Britten's mother moves to Essex and takes up Christian Science. They visit Vienna and hear Mengelberg conduct Mahler 4 ("3rd mvt too long"). Elisabeth Schumann sings. He goes hill walking with Erwin Stein.

Nonetheless, Britten isn't quite as secure as he'd like to be. In 1937, he has dinner with Isherwood, Auden and friends "They are nice people, but I am not up to their mark tonight -feeling dazed, stupid & incredibly miserable-& so leave them at 9 with an overwhelming inferiority complex & longing for bed- if it weren't so single".

From comments in the diaries it seems that Britten wasn't in the closet. He's quite candid, about what happens with Berkeley, for example, and he's completely out to his brother who usually disapproves of what he does, but is surprisngly helpful. He and Piers Dunkerley go to Disney cartoons. "I am very fond of him - thank heaven not sexually , but I am getting too such a condition that I am lost wthout some children (of either sex) near me" Britten makes a clear distinction between his feelings for adults and children. He's quite open about what he does with Lennox Berkeley. His feelings for children aren't solely sexual as he's quite taken with Shirley Temple as millions were then, quite innocently.

In August 1937, Britten goes on holiday with friends, family and a boy called Harry Morris. Then Britten and his brother "have a first rate bust up". It's something to do with"'in loco parentis' wrath at my so-called conciet & bumptiousness". The rest of the holiday is "split", yet Britten says "Personally I'm not distressed". We don't know from Britten what happened but John Evans, in his editorial notes, says that blank pages in the diary "speak volumes" and makes a case that Britten's brother disapproved of the relationship, though there are long breaks in the diaries elsewhere. In later life, Morris was haunted by the idea that Britten made advances to him, but there's no specific evidence and it's third party .

Curiously, Evans makes a note (p 479) "One suspects that if (Britten) had been born into a different generation of gay men, he would have found a need to adopt a child, as so many gay couples do today" Perhaps I'm naive but I think gay couples adopt because they like being parents, as opposed to having unhealthy interests. All along, Britten's been helping Spanish orphans - indeed Morris was introduced as a potential protégé. So the idea of do-gooding isn't so far fetched. The Britten-Pears Foundation was Britten and Pears' legacy, their "child" so to speak.

Evans also suggests that the diaries end "abruptly" because of Britten's love for Wulff Schechen. On the other hand, there are other gaps in the diaries. In any case, Britten's blossoming relationship with Peter Pears, and their trip to America changed Britten's life decisively.

This is an interesting book if you're fairly up to speed on Britten and his circle: otherwise the proliferation of dates, travel plans and first names might not mean much. Diaries are tools, to be used in conjunction with other material. OPn nthe other hand, if you know anything about Britten, there's nothing new here. Evans suggests reading Bridcut regarding Britten's sexuality, but I suspect the truth will never be clear. Bridcut had an agenda, he was making a sensation TV show, so if Evans cites him as a source, it's worrying.

Britten's letters have been edited by Donald Mitchell (a monument) and Humphrey Carpenter's biography remains the basic text. There's a new book out, too, "Benjamin Britten: New perspectives in his life and work" ed Lucy Walker, published by Boydell, almost always one of the best music book publishers. But having shelled out big on the diaries, I'll have to wait, though the Walker book looks really interesting.

Rilke and a tale worthy of him

There's a long article about Rilke HERE

The picture is by Paula Modersohn-Becker, from whose work I first learned of Rilke's existence. The picture was in a book published in Dresden in 1929, part of a huge series tracing German art from 1400 to 1929. Dozens of volumes, thousands of paintings, each one reproduced in full colour on specially prepared luxury paper and then pasted into the volumes by hand. The reproduction was superb, a lot of love and expense went into making the prints state of the art.

What an enterprise it must have been! Later I discovered that it was a limited edition series, which makes sense - something so lovingly produced could not have been made in vast quantities. My father found some volumes in a second-hand shop in China after the war, presumably looted. People suffered so much in the war that houses were stripped to their bricks, and then the bricks sold on for pittances. Books were used as firewood. So how did these survive? Maybe they were looked after until the end, perhaps by "the enemy", who ended up losing them anyway.

As a kid, I'd sit and pore over the Durers, and Caspar David Friedrichs, even page after page of obscure Bavarian genre painters whose main subjects were dead animals and young dudes showing off their horses. Because the texts were in German, it seemed all the more mysterious.

The Modersohn-Becker pictures were in a special volume devoted to 20th century German painting - Franz Marc, Emil Nolde, Lyonel Feiniger etc. I was fascinated to think about a group of women artists living in a cold, windy place by the North Sea. Needless to say, many of those paintings no longer exist, destroyed by the Nazis, fire bombs and the deaths of their owners. "Degenerate art" – one picture was a rabbi. But a lot of the Old Masters would have been destroyed too. And the people involved in making the series, too, even the menials pasting each picture, one by one. What strange fate preserved those volumes? I'll never know but I'm grateful. Every now and then, in a museum, I'll spot a painting and chuckle, like meeting an old friend after years apart ."So you survived, huh?" "Yes", says the painting, "You've aged a bit, too".

Fantasy Messiah staging

Why shouldn't Handel's Messiah be fully staged? If ever there was a subject with dramatic potential, this is it. A living faith needs to live, constantly created anew.

Messiah is certainly not "opera" in the usual sense because, fundamentally, it's not "entertainment". Three hundred years of performance tradition pigeonhole it into a narrow niche: Protestant England at song. Yet think of the story it tells, as if you'd never heard it before. It's shocking, cosmic, "terrible" in the way Blake used the word "terrible", something too frightening to fully take in, but compelling and awe-inspiring.

Staging Messiah is also a good exercise in theoretical and practical stagecraft. It means considering the hows and whys of staging opera, in more general terms. For me, good staging comes from within the work being presented, growing outwards, not imposed from without. A good director once told me that you have to "unthink" everything you assume you know, so meaning comes through direct and pure. Since all of us, including devout atheists, carry baggage about Christian images, it's probably a good idea, to wipe clean completely of "social religion". These aren't actually relevant to the real Jesus story, and indeed are sometimes the downside of faith, and getting away from them is difficult. But it's worth trying.

Listen to that music! Handel is practically incandescent with ecstasy, charged with almost electric energy. And that text, darkness, fear, agony, suddenly blitzed away. Right from the beginning, it's about "shaking" the earth. Accounts of nuclear explosions refer to blinding light, just as religious texts do, and even some accounts of near death experience. This light is unnatural because it comes from nowhere in "normal" nature. Of course that doesn't mean depicting the Bomb, so no facile literal images needed. But the Bible does deal with Armageddon, and if we're not careful, it just might happen. Strobe lighting would have that impact, but cause convulsions in the audience, physically and psychologically. Not sensible.

It would be fascinating to work out a staged Messiah, as the real story isn't "easy". Real vision would take courage. On top of the usual hordes who can miraculously pass judgement at what they haven't seen, there'd also be backlash from "social religion", which isn't the same as spiritual belief. So perhaps no-one will dare do a truly original Messiah staging. Which is a tragedy, as the message in the story is so so strong and so relevant. But I do believe it can, and should, be done.

photo credit : Josh Summers

Xmas card Messiah ENO

It’s Christmas and the bells on tills are jingling! Deborah Warner’s Messiah at the ENO is a Christmas card writ large, designed to corner the Christmas market. “Are we like sheep?” goes Handel’s libretto. “Yes!” suggests Warner, projecting images of shoppers in a mall behind the music. This production will sell, and sell, because it looks great. But Handel it isn’t, nor is it art, nor does it have much to do with Jesus.

It starts promisingly, with a magnificent film of a big city, lights twinkling. On stage are individual actors, isolated despite the busy world around them. Modern interpretations of the story aren’t merely valid, but are a positively good thing, since humanity is universal, whatever the flavour of religion. important. A lot could have been made of this initial approach. Who was the woman ironing? What happened to the men on the DSS bench? Unfortunately these tantalizing ideas didn't develop but tapered off, dissipated in fussy detail.

At the end, there’s lots of congratulatory hand-shaking, like a parody of a Catholic Mass, but it doesn’t evolve out of what’s gone before, and comes over as an easy solution to end the show on a positive note to send the punters home happy. What does Warner mean by images of regimented community, like pews (or school benches), and the handing out of Bibles? Organized society doesn't necessarily benefit individuals any more than organized religion benefits souls. At the end, everyone may be on stage but it doesn't make them any less alone.

Handel’s Messiah is based on The Greatest Story Ever Told. It’s inherently dramatic. God becomes man to save the world by dying and being resurrected. Warner’s Messiah, however, evolves like a series of Xmas cards, each song cutely illustrated like a number in a musical. This fragments the powerful thrust of the original, where everything’s leading up to a specific goal, so its impact is woefully dissipated.

Warner's style is very busy, with lots of sub plots and diversions to entertain the eye. Here the stage is divided into two sections, actions happening simultaneously. In theory, this is a good device, but here it's used to maximize detail without expanding meaning. Then the floor itself is removed revealing what looks like real turf growing on a board. It's expensive, so why is it there? why is it pushed away? Perhaps the ENO has to support lots of stage hands and actors, which is why the moving of objects and furniture seems to be house style. Artistically, it's less valid. Indeed, it encourages superficiality, since it concentrates attention on props, not on inherent drama.

For Handel, Christmas is no more than a prelude for the Resurrection, But without the Crucifixion, Resurrection is meaningless. Warner’s production is so fixated on Christmas that the Crucifixion is negated. Even the instruments of torture are painted gold, like tacky decorations. Perhaps the real Jesus story might scare away the Christmas crowds, but I suspect it’s not cynicism that plays down the horror of the story, but an inability to deal with the deeper emotional and social implications.

Images familiar from Xmas cards are projected over the stage, and golden baubles descend, obscuring the action, like embossing on a card. Yet the paintings card makers borrow are based on genuine works of art. However well intentioned Xmas cards may be, they’re not art. They're ephemera, often tacky, and demean what they depict. They look good, as long as you don't look too closely or know the original. A bit like this production. At least there were no Santas, though there was a "Christmas Tree" or rather a tree spray painted gold like an ornament left on display long after Christmas has passed.

The closest this production comes to the heart of the drama is when Catherine Wyn-Rogers sings “He was despised”. Significantly, this is one of the few moments when there isn’t a lot of distracting action on stage, and the music at last has a chance to shine through. But Jesus is going through much more than social discomfort. Brindley Sherratt’s lucky, too, that he didn’t have to contend with a trumpeter on stage during “The Trumpets shall sound”. Poor Sophie Bevan has to sing on her back in a hospital bed and “die”. Then magically, she’s "resurrected”. John Mark Ainsley enters, gives her a gift wrapped dressing gown and immediately departs, blowing her a bemused, desultory kiss. Doesn’t it mean anything that she’s just been raised from the dead? Handel thinks it's a miracle. Here it's no big deal.

One of the positive things about this production was the way the ensembles moved on and offstage, seamlessly, in ways oratorio can’t achieve. This maintained a good flow between solo and choral pieces, and alone was justification for staging this work. On the other hand, the singing was curiously uncommitted. I never thought I’d miss conventional choirs, but even ragged ones can sing with more fervour. It was particularly disappointing since this Messiah is the culmination of Sing Hallelujah! an ambitious and laudable project for getting people all over thew country to experience the physical joy of singing. All that enthusiasm, and then this stilted performance by professionals singing nicely, but treating the Hallelujah like any other opera chorus. It works better when it's wild.

Christmas is associated with children, having lots of children in this production will guarantee success. The more ooohs and aaahs the better, and no-one ever criticizes kids. .They were lovely, and the small boy who jumps around the stage throughout certainly has admirable stamina. But using children in this saccharine way demeans them, and the central drama, like Xmas cards weaken the impact of great paintings. Of course children are symbols of innocence, hence baby Jesus, and real kids always get underfoot and clamber everywhere. Here they become props. Someone suggested to me, half jokingly, that maybe the kids might be crucified. Shocking as that might sound, there's a certain logic to it, since that's what happened to Jesus, and all kids grow up to face struggle, as part of life. Theologically and psychologically sound as that might be. it's just not going to happen.

Since Warner’s Messiah is a Christmas treat for undemanding audiences, it’s unrealistic to expect too much. There’s nothing wrong with God-free celebrations, and Christmas these days honours Mammon, not the Christian idea of God. So Warner's Messiah will be a huge hit and bring happiness to many, which is a good thing, to be commended. But it's also Handel-free, and art-free, like a true Xmas card.

A more formal version of this will appear HERE shortly. With photos. Please see my other posts on the Messiah, on Handel, and on stagecraft. Since this performance i've been thinking how The Messiah could be staged well. It does lend itself to staging, because this is the ultimate Ideas Story, and lends itself to being expressed in many ways. It should be possible to do an intelligent staging if the ideas come from within the score itself. The faith Handel depicts is universal, and if faith is universal, it adapts to all circumstances. There's no reason why the Messiah can't be dramatized, if done with respect, for the music and for the ideas behind it. HERE is a short bit on staging the Messiah, and its implications for the theory and practice of stagecraft.

Cantonese Cajuns

Cajuns and Cantonese! Jambalaya sung in Chinese by San Ma Tsai, in the 1950's. San Ma Tsai translates as "New Horse Boy", I don't know his real name but that's his stage name. He was an opera singer and comedian who loved doing satires like this. "I've go the threads, I look cool, I'm known as Ma Wong!" (Horse king, cowboy dude). Later in the clip are other comedians who did this well. The skinny one with glasses used to do nerdy roles, hilarious!

Turkeys for Enid Blyton

Readers in the US, enjoy a good holiday! The values of Thanksgiving are good, lots to be grateful for.

Brits have Enid Blyton. Last week a reader told me about his defining Blyton moment. It was a story about a Cub Scout doing "bob a job", which is when small boys do good deeds for minimal returns.

In this story (details vague after 50 years) a woman asks a kid to clear her huge shed of garbage. "If you do it right I'll give you extra treats". So the kid clears the shed which, as anyone who's ever done such things, is no small task. So the kid did his best and asked for the treats. "Ha Ha!" said the mean woman, "You don't get the treats because I hid them under the rubbish you didn't clear!" Some will admire that, but my friend, aged 9, was disgusted. One person's "clever" is to others sick, devious, manipulative. So this reader asked "What would Richmal Crompton do?"

Richmal Crompton composed stories like puzzles. William's mother's doing a fund raiser for the local church. William, being a scruffy little punk, doesn't do parish parties, so he wanders off. He meets a frazzled looking man who has missed his train, and there's not another til late afternoon. "Come to the village fair" says William, though the man is clearly a very posh London sophisticate. "At least I'll get tea" says the man. So the unlikely pair repair to the shabby village hall.

Some time before, William had done bob a job for someone who exploited child labour, and cleared what he could of her pile of rubbish. The woman reneged on her promise of goodies but let William keep an odd looking urn which caught his eye. "It's utter rubbish!" said the woman, sneering. Proudly William bestowed the urn on his mother. "It's not my thing," said mother, "but it might make someone else happy. Let's put it in the jumble sale so it might raise something for charity."

Strange posh man, bored witless at the provincial village fair looks at the jumble stall. Suddenly he shrieks "An Etruscan urn!!!" The posh man turned out to be a Sotheby's dealer. The hideous urn William found in the trash sold for enough to do all the charity the village needed and more besides. "Crikes!!" said William, content with a bag of sweets.

So check out Richmal Crompton and her William books. AND CHECK OUT STEPHEN HOUGH here on Thanksgiving in its widest sense : take a few minutes out to warch the videohe's included. My gift to you.

A sweet way to go gay

Make up your own risqué comments. This ad just begs for them. It comes off a great blog I follow called Musty Moments. "Scouring history for cheap laughs". Who said working in archives can't be fun !

Villazonistas unite - Don Carlo streamed

Three more days to watch the full performance of the original (2008) Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House. Villazon, Keenlyside. Poplavskaya. Pappano conducts, Hytner's director. Follow this link to watch online, on demand til Saturday night. All 3 and 1/2 hours incl extras! Fabulous, watch it loud and full screen.

It's wonderful that such things are possible on public TV. The BBC is funded by a licence fee paid by taxpayers. This of course drives hard line extremist capitalists crazy. Rupert Murdoch thinks the BBC is "competition" and wants it crushed. Ironic, huh, that someone who believes in free market forces needs politicians to help him control the market ?

Maybe he'll succeed as there are plenty of folks who think only in terms of greed, not good. And those are the very ones who can be bought. When such folks have power, that's all the more reason for ordinary folk to stand up for the ideals behind the BBC charter "to entertain, educate and inform". The BBC, despite its hangups, serves the public good and supports whole industries in music, news and creative arts. Much better that public money should go to such a project than on guns, dodgy politicians, dubious bail outs and so on. Oops ! sorry ! NOT guns, they don't arm or support the troops in Afghanistan.

Wolfgang Rihm - et lux et al

Wolfgang Rihm's Et Lux had its UK premiere last weekend at Huddersfield ( for more on the Huddersfield Festival which continues this week please see HERE) It's different because it brings together the Arditti Quartet, who do ultra modern, and the Hilliard Ensemble, who sing early music. Rihm has experimented with odd combinations before, like his refiguring of Bach, but this is quite new.

Ivan Hewett was there. Here's what he said "After a wispy single-line introduction from the quartet came a pure euphonious vocal chord. It was light but shadowy, a stunning moment of "darkness visible".......Often, the music tipped towards harsh dissonance, though always in a soft voice.....someimes, the quartet seemed to fight the voices with plucked and scrubbed sounds, sometimes it was like a second four-part choir." Read the full review HERE.

Looking ahead, there's a Wolfgang Rihm Total Immersion at the Barbican in London in March. See HERE for details. Wow ! Lots of previously unheard work and Rihm will be there himself to talk to.

The White Ribbon - Haneke

Michael Haneke's film The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) at the Barbican is worth rushing out for. I was going to wait for the DVD (also available on download) but I'm glad I didn't wait. It's won the Palme d'Or at Cannes but that alone means little: this a very compelling movie whatever the accolades.

It's set in 1913, but framed by the voice of an old man recalling events that happened long ago when he was the village teacher, and says "it might explain what happened later". Don't, however, fall into the trap of assuming it's some kind of pseudo-history. This film is about human nature and could apply anywhere.

The village preacher punishes his kids by making them wear a white ribbon to remind them to be pure in heart and mind. He loves them and genuinely believes he's guiding them well. By the standards of the time it wasn't so unusual to think masturbation caused death. So purity as ideal and symbol. But the story isn't nearly as simple as you'd think. Many dangerous things are happening in this placid little village. Someone causes the doctor to fall off his horse. Two children are brutally tortured. A barn is burned, cabbages in a field decapitated. Who is doing these things and why? Are the events even connected? As the old man says, perhaps the greater damage was that it created a climate of suspicion, everyone sniffing out evil, even where it wasn't. Then the real "white band", the villagers' innate purity, was lost forever.

This film doesn't do stereotypes. The Baron is the main employer but he's not a remote capitalist exploiter. With status come feudal obligations. He knows the locals personally. When a woman is killed in an accident in his barn, her son wrecks the cabbage patch. Then the Baron's son is beaten up - he hangs out with the local kids, too. Yet the Baron tells the village he knows it wasn't the woman's son. In any case, he tells the villagers, Felder (the woman's husband) is so straight and so upright, he'd die rather than be sneaky.

What's interesting, too, is that the narrative is oblique. It's a series of vignettes which hint rather than explain. The teacher sees the preacher's son walking dangerously on the edge of a bridge. "Now I know God doesn't want me to die", says the kid. His little brother looks after a wounded bird. The steward's son has pushed the baron's son into the brook (this time he's quickly saved by the steward's other son). When questioned by his father he denies it, but as the father leaves the boy plays the baron's son's flute - it's proof, without the need for words.

One day, the teacher encounters Frau Wagner, the midwife, who's rushing off to town because she "knows" who the perpetrators are. It turns out that the doctor, who'd been sleeping with her and his own daughter, has disappeared with the kids. But the midwife doesn't come back either. The local kids are at the doctor's house, trying to look in. Why has the midwife barricaded the windows, in a tiny Dorfchen where doors are left open to all?

The teacher remembers how the band of kids were present at all the strange incidents. He doesn't know (though we do) that the preacher's daughter killed her dad's pet canary by spiking it with nail scissors. The teacher questions the kids, but they're so used to clamming up, they act innocent. So he goes to the preacher, who goes berserk, as any parent would, although it's not just his kids. He threatens mayhem on the teacher if word gets out. But he doesn''t act. Nor does the midwife return. All is unresolved.

Much has been made of the sensational parts of the story, such as the doctor's son seeing his dad and sister in bed, but the film is about wider concepts like taking responsibility. Hence old peasant Felder, whom the baron had exonerated, is found having committed suicide right after the barn where his wife died is razed in a dramatic fire. The baron's wife says she's leaving him, not because there's another man but because she doesn't want her kids growing up in this unhealthy environment. And perhaps the teacher becomes a tailor because his girlfriend's father - a totally direct man who gets straight to the point and doesn't do chat - asks him why he didn't take over his dad's business in the first place.

Watch the trailers HERE 
Get the DVD HERE

Because English language audiences don't know anything about Germany other than Hitler, they might see The White Ribbon as a simplistic allegory about the war. But Haneke connects the story to 1914 for much more complex reasons. Anglophiles assume the First World War was the Western Front, not realizing that the devastation on the Eastern Front was infinitely greater. Both world wars stemmed from events in central and eastern Europe, rather than from the western peripheries. But history is written to suit the winners, and English is so dominant a language that it pushes other accounts out of the picture.

Setting The White Ribbon is that specific time and place adds extra resonance if you think beyond Anglophone assumptions. We might deduce that the film is set in East Prussia because of the reference to Frederick the Great as flautist, and to general knowledge about north German society. German communities, were established as far as Russia around 1000 years ago, nominally under the control of various kingdoms, but effectively self-contained. Hence the Junkers, on whom so much is blamed. In practice, though, feudal throwbacks maintained different values. Üb immer Treu und Redlichkeit bis an dein kühles Grab. Honest and honourable until the grave.

The German communities of Prussia and beyond no longer exist. They were subject to ethnic cleansing in 1918 and again in 1945. Of course that doesn't diminish what happened to Jews and Communists in Nazi times. But the point of the film is that evil comes from human nature, and innocents suffer. Everyone gets caught up in the madness, culpable or not. Which is why real purity comes from being direct, like the teacher's girlfriend's father, and the old peasant widower.

Like the period it depicts, Haneke's The White Ribbon ends in a kind of of limbo. The teacher never finds out what happened because he left the village soon after. Then the war came, overturning everything. By the time the teacher became an old man, the world he knew was obliterated. What happened to the people? Where did they end up, what did they do?

The photo is a real family, taken around this period from an archive collection. No one knows who they are or where they ended up, but in the moment when the photo was taken, they're preserved forever happy and smiling.