Because I Can -- Elina Garanca, "Carmen", Seguidilla, Dress Rehearsal Latvian National Opera, 2009

La Diva Assoluta:



And of course, for those with time on their hands, there's the entire Metropolitan Opera version from 2010 (get it fast, it gets taken down from the YouTubes frequently...)

OT: The Tougher Side of Growing Things. And "Carmen."

Thompson Yucca

We're at about 6,300 feet elevation, and spring has not quite settled in to these parts yet. Well, it's not quite Mother's Day, is it? They say we've seen the last of freezing temperatures, but I'll believe it when it actually happens.

We're supposed to pick up some heritage tomatoes and Anasazi beans and other plants next weekend, so we'll see...

We went to a plant sale in Albuquerque the other day at a residential care facility, and I was taken somewhat aback by the lush verdure of the inner courtyard where the plants and a nice, abundant lunch for the residents were on sale. This was well beyond what an oasis might be -- in the midst of what is still a very severe desert drought in Central New Mexico. It was unbelievable. It was a veritable jungle. Koi ponds and fountains galore. All kinds of fragrant flowers out of season. Jasmine and honeysuckle everywhere. Every variety of columbine. Thick, green grass underfoot. Disorienting to say the least.

Unfortunately, nothing they had on sale was suited to our high desert environment across the mountains; nothing was really suited to any environment but their over watered courtyard jungle, come to think of it, but that was OK in a sense. Given the size of the facility, the courtyard wasn't all that large, and the plantings they had there -- and the plants they had on sale -- were a nice contrast to the xeriscapes outside.

We were in a residential neighborhood, and all the houses round about -- and the facility itself -- had desert landscaping out front. Chamisa, yucca, hardy shrubs and trees, cacti, all set in gravel. There were pots for the flowers that -- hopefully -- would bloom in the summer. But no flower beds, and with one exception, no lawns. The one house that did have a lawn looked pretty scraggly, and I bet they'll take it up before the season is done.

On the other hand,  when we've been out in the North Valley -- or really almost anywhere along the river -- the luxury of the green grass and the extensive plantings is striking. The trees are in full leaf, the pastures are thick with grass, the flowers are abloom, and gardens seem to be doing well.  It's a complete contrast to conditions just beyond the edge of the flood plain.

We've also been checking out the nurseries round about. There are several that specialize in desert plants and planting, but we have not yet been able to find some iconic plants like Thompson's yucca, which are seen in gorgeous bloom as highway plantings, and which grow wild in many areas of New Mexico. It is the State Flower, after all. But just try to find one in a nursery. I did, I found one. It was about 10' tall, in a pot, cost something like $300 and would have taken a truck and crane to move. That wasn't what I had in mind!

Lots of other kinds of yuccas though. In fact, just about any other kind you might want.

Most of the seedlings I started in April have pretty much given up the ghost or perished outright. The several freezes since starting them haven't helped, though none were left to fend entirely for themselves when the temperatures dipped.  But worse than the freezing temperatures have been the feral cats and other animals that roam the night -- and sometimes day. In some cases they've pulled out every single seedling that was outside and they've done quite a bit worse. The damage we've seen at night and in the mornings has been startling. We had to see it to believe it. We will be taking precautions in the future.

But there is something else we haven't identified that seems to be inhibiting growth. Whether it is the water, soil, temperature, altitude or what I don't know, but some of the surviving seedlings seem to have reached an early point of growth and stopped, not died or withered, just stopped growing. They seem healthy and green and all, but they don't grow. Then there are the ones that have stopped growing and have turned a reddish or grayish color instead of green. How did that happen? What does it mean?

Our soil and water are both very alkaline, which I'm sure has something to do with it. For household use, we correct the pH with vinegar, which seems to work pretty well, but I'm reluctant to do that with plants -- which I understand can be very sensitive to such manipulations. Yet it could be the alkaline water is inhibiting growth, too. We can correct the soil pH with amendments, but if the alkaline irrigation water is part of the trouble, it's not going to do much good in the long run. Neighbors have said the soil is no good for planting -- because it's so alkaline -- but the farmers around here would seem to disagree. They plant and cultivate and irrigate quite successfully, remarkably so given the drought and the elevation, but home gardeners are generally negative about the prospects of planting in the ground. "It just won't grow" they like to say. They use raised beds or pots, or they don't bother at all.

One of our former neighbors across the street planted roses one year, and she was very disappointed in the failure of the plants to flourish. They were stunted, didn't bloom, and finally after several years of struggle, they just gave up. On the other hand, irises and day lilies seem to do quite well. Once established, they say that tulips and daffodils and other bulbs and tubers will flourish. The trick is getting them established -- timing and depth and so forth have to be pretty exact, otherwise they will fail.

If there is enough rain, the wildflowers around here can take your breath away in the late spring and through the summer, but there has been no rain to speak of, so there are essentially no wildflowers in evidence. Where I have irrigated outside, there is only one variety of wild plant that seems to want to show itself, I can't recall the name of it now, but it is an invasive species (a "Russian" something or other) and I see it everywhere that people are irrigating, even on the farmer's fields. If I recall correctly, it has tiny purple flowers. Nothing else at all has made an appearance.

The trees remain in partial leaf, as if they are waiting for better weather and water conditions to fully leaf out,  but the wild lilacs aren't waiting. Good for them. However, the drought has severely affected how much growth they're putting out this spring -- not much, in other words.

I thought I saw a pair of swallows yesterday. It would be nice to think they've come back to rebuild their nests in the eaves of our front porch. There are all kinds of other birds in evidence, from the little falcon or hawk that was sitting on the wire one day to the fat robins and the meadowlarks, doves, woodpeckers, grackles, hummingbirds and all the others who come to visit -- despite the feral cat colony. There are sparrows and a kind of blackbird I haven't identified yet nesting in the eaves of the older part of the house, too.

------------------------------------

Yesterday we attended the ballet in town, the Ballet Repertory Theatre of New Mexico to be precise, and saw the Carmen Suite ballet for the first time. I really liked it, though we learned later that the choreography was entirely different than the original ballet of 1967, which itself told a story that was quite different from the opera and the novella on which it is based.

I saw the Bolshoi's version on the YouTube later, a version I assume adheres closely to the original ballet version. It looked and felt very early sixties to me, but I don't know that's how it was done when time was. There was very little information about the performance with the video, and my Russian isn't good enough to figure out the credits that went by too fast. (It's always been tricky for me to mentally transliterate and translate Russian, and it surprises the heck out of me when I can do it at all any more.) [I checked the credits again, slowing it down, and sure enough, it is the original choreography by Alberto Alonso. So.]

Prior to presenting the "Carmen" -- which in BRT's version follows the opera story a bit more closely, though there are some elements of earlier ballet versions as well -- the company presented two other ballets, a Mexican traditional "Huapango" -- which was pleasant but seemed to lack much energy -- and a new piece called "Bajo el Cielo de Nuevo Mexico" ("Under the New Mexico Sky") which I had a real problem parsing sufficiently enough to relate it to New Mexico in any way. Yes, there are notes, but if you have to read the notes to figure out how and whether the dance relates to the topic or subject, then I think there may be a problem with the production.

Some of the music was by Ottmar Liebert, and he lives in Santa Fe, so maybe...? No. It takes a little more than that... There were some photo projections that arguably were pictures of New Mexico skies... does that count? They could have been Minnesota skies for that matter. There are ways to capture distinctive New Mexico skies that read quite clearly "New Mexico." But photographing directly into the sun with clouds seen peripherally here and there isn't it -- and that's what the sky projections showed.

Here's one I took just down the street the other day:

New Mexico Sky

I've got tons more in the same vein... The skies here can be breathtaking and the sunsets can blow you away, but none of that was part of the photo projections in the ballet.

There were other projections of artworks by Kym Loc, nice artworks in and of themselves -- there was also an exhibit of them in the KiMo Theatre lobby -- but relating them to New Mexico was somewhat of a challenge. They related to the dance and dancers quite clearly, but how they and the dance related to New Mexico? I dunno. I guess because they're here? Sure. Why not?

The notes say the production was "inspired by the tranquility and beauty that blankets the region..." OK. Show it. "The skies, mountains, and flora combine to emit a presence that can be felt throughout one's body and spirit..." True enough; how about showing it?

The choreography and dancing was lovely and the music was evocative, though not necessarily of New Mexico.  Whatever connection between the dance and the place the choreographer (Loren Fletcher Nickerson) may have intended stayed internalized in my view, and that was a shame. On the other hand, I know how difficult it can be to translate a spirit and feeling onto the stage in any form that actually touches the audience and clearly communicates whatever is intended. In this case, I don't think whatever was intended got across.

All the music used for the entire performance yesterday was recorded, and especially in the "Carmen," I really yearned for live music.

We've attended several performances by  Festival Ballet Albuquerque which has a collaboration with the Figueroa Project. This was the first time we attended the Ballet Repertory Theatre of New Mexico. All I can say is that live music enhances dance performances immeasurably. Recorded music... doesn't.

Night At The Opera

Over my long years in The Show Business, I was involved with a couple of opera companies (Western Opera Theatre in San Francisco and Opera Theatre of St. Louis) and through them I became somewhat familiar with the Santa Fe Opera. It was actually the trip between San Francisco and St. Louis that served as my introduction to New Mexico, so in at least one respect, we're here because of the opera. (Getting here was quite an operatic production in the end, too, wasn't it? Well, that's a story yet to be told in full; we're still recovering.)

I'm not by any means an opera fanatic nor for the most part do I much care for operas -- at least not in the Grand tradition. I became fond of opera theater -- partly because of the people, they were wonderful -- but not fond enough to stay for very long in that realm.

My association with Santa Fe Opera has been very limited: a few visits to the facilities (the setting is stunning); some friends and colleagues who were once part of the company but are no longer; and attending a few of the season-opening parties back in the 1980's. There honestly wasn't much that attracted me to the Santa Fe Opera scene and I've had very little contact with it since; there is so much more in Santa Fe and New Mexico that I am more attracted to.

But last night I went to the Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe to attend an HD simulcast of the Met's "The Tempest." Readers may recall my praise of the Met's HD version of "Carmen" that was produced a couple of years ago. I decided to go because I had to be in Santa Fe for other reasons and I would have a few hours to kill in the evening -- and because I had a long and somewhat stormy relationship with Shakespeare's "The Tempest" dating back to my earliest days a theater producer and director. Since that was also around the same time I was involved with opera theater and about the time I first came to New Mexico, there was something of a tie-in with the presentation on screen last night. At least so I thought. And I think I was right.

This was (I believe they said) the Met's premiere of Thomas Adès "The Tempest." It's adapted from Shakespeare, and it's fairly true to Shakespeare, too, though the ending is a bit different (libretto by Meredith Oakes.) This production was set at La Scala in the 19th century (settings very cleverly designed by Jasmine Catudal.)  The setting didn't always serve the production as well as it might have, but it worked surprisingly well just the same.

The music was the challenge. Much more so than anything else. Adès is touted as "the New Benjamin Britten" and I thought, OMG this is going to be awful. I really had dread of what would be presented musically, and at first my expectations seemed to be met. Those poor singers! Jeebus on toast! It wasn't just that it was a struggle for them to do it at all, it was that the audience was pretty much being left out of the equation, as if it were all a self-indulgent exercise for the composer (who was also conducting).

But then something clicked, and I was surprisingly drawn into it. I think what happened was that I "got" the production's premise (which was simple enough but not entirely clear at the beginning) and the challenge of the music on my eardrums (and the alienation that produced) dissipated. There is nothing in it that you can hum to be sure (no earworms here), and yet it... fit. This is "The Tempest" after all. I don't think something melodically "beautiful" would be appropriate. What Ades came up with may not be definitive but it was ultimately appropriate.

I want to say I actually liked it, but I'm not sure I'm quite at that point. I still have visions of my own for "The Tempest" and one day perhaps... The truth is, much of what I had in mind all those years ago has been realized in one form or another in various adaptations and productions of "The Tempest" I've seen. This one carries it even further, and I appreciated that. But none quite put it all together, and that's where I feel this production was somewhat shy of the mark though it was certainly an outstanding effort.

The production ideas were good, but much of the staging by Robert Lepage was almost pedestrian. Some of it was stunning, though, and when it worked, it was really good. The way Ariel (Audrey Luna) was all over the place, for example -- often carried in the arms or on the shoulders of black-clad "stage hands" -- was really quite effective. I liked the way the image of La Scala was used and transformed throughout the production and how it became a metaphor for the play/opera itself.

But moving the cast and chorus around might have been handled with somewhat more surety and less plodding and/or stasis if the bulk of them hadn't been hampered by Opera Costumes of 1842. Transformations are an integral part of the story, but it seemed that very little use of the idea of "transformation" was made in the production -- except as the setting was transformed. I think much more could have been done. Of course what to do with the chorus is always one of those conundrums in opera, and in this case, the director just decided to bring them on, let them stand there and sing for a bit and then take them off. Repeatedly.

The Miranda (Isabel Leonard) and Ferdinand (Alek Shrader) were performed by a very attractive young couple, both with wonderful voices, but both of whom appeared to be gobsmacked by what they were expected to sing. They did it well, but it was clearly a challenge for them. Their idealized love seemed quite genuine, surprisingly enough under the circumstances.

The Prospero (Simon Keenlyside) was another matter altogether. He sang the role superbly, but strangely his character was not as central to the production -- either the staging or musically -- as I would have thought. He was actually an ideal Prospero to my mind, but he often seemed to have nothing to do -- though he might be onstage.

Unlike the Prospero, who seemed almost like a prop at times, the Caliban (Alan Oke) was the essential and in the end the central character of the opera. This was conceptually something I have gone back and forth over many times in thinking about and imagining "The Tempest" in production. At its root, it's a story of theft and abuse and revenge and redemption through idealized love. One can see Caliban as the "ugly" aspect of all of that (but there is much, much more in his character and condition) leaving him to his bitter fate at the end, or one can see him as a -- or even the -- key part of the redemption. In the Met production, the Caliban was both central and key, but unlike the others his "transformation" was left in doubt. I really liked his final scene, but I was not entirely satisfied with the uncertainty (!) of it. Maybe it's just the times.

Toward the end, I swear the man sitting behind me broke down in tears. I certainly didn't feel that moved by it, but I can understand if someone would be. The story is one that can bring you to that point under the right circumstances, and it was my impression that everyone involved in the production was aiming for an emotional release, a catharsis. A few tears toward the end are fully appropriate.

Unlike most of the other events I've attended in Santa Fe and New Mexico, I didn't wind up chatting idly with other attendees; in fact, as soon as it was over, I hustled back to my other destination in Santa Fe and thence home through a very light snowfall. In fact, there's about an inch of snow on the ground right now, really pretty in the morning sun. Some of our East Coast friends would probably rather not hear about snow right now... or tempests for that matter...

I'll be thinking about this production -- and the very concepts underlying it and Shakespeare's play -- for some time to come, however. I had more than a few options for time-killing in Santa Fe last night. Glad I chose this one.

"Carmen" and The Vanguard and the Insurrection of Mutual Aid...

"Carmen" is, of course, what it is, and for generations it's been one of the most popular operas ever created, if not truly the most popular ever. It was jeered initially in Paris in part because it didn't fit the pattern opera patrons had come to expect.

"Carmen" violated the rigid class divisions so apparent in the arts of the day; it wasn't about elevated people meeting or failing their honor and duty to one another and the gods, it was about ordinary people, and gypsies, tramps and thieves, the lowest of the low in Europe at the time, framed in terms of passion, love, longing and betrayal, utilizing the full range of operatic tools to tell its tale.

At its root, it is a tale of rebellion against the arbitrary imposition of authority -- and what to do about it.

Such tales were subversive at the time, as they still are. This is not a tale that opera patrons, then or now, would want told to the masses, that's for sure. It is one they can barely comprehend themselves.

The story came out of a post-Napoleonic Europe which was riven with rebellion and revolution right through to the extermination of the Paris Commune in 1871. Even that official horror didn't end the revolutionary fervor of Europe's peoples, let alone the rebellions in the colonial outposts of European empires. Try as they might, the Overclasses of the day could not keep the People down. Rebellion was assured; Revolution was likely. Massacre was not infrequent. But even massacre didn't work for long.

The panning of premiere of "Carmen" in Paris 1875, so soon after the liquidation of the Commune, has become the source opera-legend, in fact might make good opera in its own right, or at least a decent musical comedy. If one puts oneself in the shoes of the staid and very class conscious patrons of the Opéra-Comique at the time, however, it is not at all hard to imagine their contempt, and especially the contempt of the critics, at what they saw and heard. It must have felt almost like a slap in their collective bourgeois face.

"Carmen" was in some ways the story of what they feared most: wild and free people, in the person of Carmen, disrupting the calm and civilized society they were working so hard to restore after so much rebellion and revolution had so recently wracked Paris under the red banner of the Commune.

This was unacceptable.

The Commune was too recent a memory; what happened to it, though unmentionable, was too searing.

Conformity, conventionality, rules and order were the social requirements of the day, and not solely in Paris. Early versions of Marxist Communism were being worked out and tried. The Paris Commune was the first large-scale example that really seemed to work, if only briefly and haltingly. The potential of Marxist Communism was demonstrated, however temporarily, during the Commune, and that demonstration lived on in memory and legend long after the Commune was crushed and the Communards -- and a hell of a lot of random Parisians -- exterminated.

In today's world, the expiration of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the People's Republic of China into a capitalist dynamo was supposed to serve as the capstone to the triumph of the West and the end of History and all the rest of the reveries of the exploiters, plunderers and predators.

With the end of the Soviet "threat," and the transformation of China, the People's Struggle was supposed to be over: The People lost. For. Ever.

Yet The New World Order turns out to be far less substantive than even the rudest forms of Feudalism. It is, bluntly, a disaster of epic proportions. Not simply for the ordinary people -- let alone the Indignados and the Rebels and the Ignored Ones in every land -- it is a disaster for its makers. Those who have created this monstrosity of global domination are tied in knots by their own mindlessness and lack of even rudimentary judgement. That they have failed is cripplingly obvious. That they know not what to do now, except to lash out in fury at the phantoms of their misery, is plain.

Not only is another world possible, another world is critically necessary, because this one isn't working for anyone, and not for the Upper Orders, either. They have fucked up majorly.

The current social, economic, and political model is unsustainable by any measure.

The alternatives being developed are frightening to some observers who simply can't imagine there could be good faith attempts to rectify the situation in the midst of so much misery and carnage created by Our Betters.

They denounce the Vanguard, and they fear the Insurrectionists, both of which are essentially phantoms, because, like the bourgeoisie of Paris, they fear the liberation of what we might call the Gypsy spirit in human nature, to find and build a better future for all of us.

They are frightened to death that it just might work, and worse, there may be nothing salvageable from the wreckage of the past.

They are frightened, too, of the potential for violence in the transitional period.

A number of people have already been severely wounded by police fire and hundreds and hundreds have been injured while thousands upon thousands have been arrested and scenes of appalling destruction of encampments by the authorities have filled the airwaves during the initial phases of the Crackdowns on Occupy in this country alone. The numbers of dead and injured in the other uprisings and revolutions and civil wars around the world haven't even been counted, but it is on the order of many tens of thousands.

No matter how much we try, the transition to another world and a better future is not going to be a peaceful one. Whether it can stay mostly nonviolent is a question.

Where the global rebellions have turned into violent armed insurrection and civil war (Syria, Libya, eg.) it is painfully obvious that "international interests" are controlling both the conflict and the likely outcome, that without this sort of "helpful" interference, the People's Dictatorships being rebelled against would likely persevere against their domestic opposition. They are too frail now, and in many ways, too anachronistic, to survive in the face of the kinds of opposition arrayed against them.

But as we've seen in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, even nonviolent People's Uprisings don't necessarily result in that Better Future the People set out to achieve. There is no miraculous transformation in other words. Removing the Dictatorship only to have it replaced with even greater levels of quasi-pseudo-"democratic" exploitation, blunder, plunder and control by our Neo-Liberal Overlords (viz: Greece as well) is shocking to be sure, but not all that surprising.

The rebellion and occupation in Wisconsin delayed for a time some of the impositions of the Walker Regime, but it didn't stop them. And the resort to the electoral process to recall members of the State Senate failed to shift the majority. While the recall of Walker will be spirited (if he doesn't resign first in disgrace and under criminal indictment) the signs are it will not succeed, not even if the ever-saintly and ever-reluctant Russ Feingold girds his loinal parts and takes up the cudgel.

The System is broken and the prognosis is the patient's condition is terminal.

Something altogether different is called for, and that's why, as frightening to many as it is to contemplate, the red-and-black flag of the anarcho-communists/anarcho-syndicalists has all but become the Flag of Occupy.

In many ways it's ironic, given the inner turmoil and hostility, the many mutual anathemas and purges between the Socialists (as in Communist) and Anarchists in times of yore. But let's be blunt: even the Social Democrats of Europe, the moderated Communists, have grossly failed the People in their mad quest -- so it seems -- to please the Gods of Global Finance. Europe is such a basket case now largely because of the abject failure of the Social Democrats to adhere to the principles of social and economic justice that are their foundations.

Communist FAIL. Socialist FAIL. The vacuum must be filled -- or as we see, the Neo-Liberals/Neo-Cons take over -- and with such cheery malice and destructive intent. "Creative destruction" they call it. North Africa, the Arab Middle East, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, much of the wreckage of Eastern Europe, all laboratories for even more destruction and exploitation than has already been accomplished by their economic and military shock troops.

Who's next?

Of course the "Creative Destroyers" will fail in the end, just like every other similar effort in the past.

The opposition turns to Anarchist options in part because they stand outside the common theoretical, political, and philosophical mindset that has brought us to this point -- and already thrown millions over the precipice.

That red-and-black flag and what it stands for is looking more and more appealing...

Somehow I suspect it is no accident that Carmen wears a diagonally divided red-and-black gown in the final scene of the Met's stunning "Carmen" from 2010 (or was it 2009?)

That damn Gypsy Woman is as subversive now as she ever was. And just as then, the People must take care of one another.

Kropotkin anyone?

Momentary Change of Pace : "Carmen," Metropolitan Opera, 2009

Elina Garanca in the name part.

Part the First:
about 55 minutes.

Part the Second:

about 45 minutes.

Part the Third:
about an hour.
This "Carmen" is brilliantly staged, gorgeously sung, and Elina as Herself acts like she's having the time of her life. Well, they all do.

Momentary Change of Pace: Just Because -- Laura del Sol and Cristina Hoyos in "Carmen"

Long ago I posted a couple of scenes from Carlos Sauras's film of his Flamenco version of "Carmen," a truly brilliant 1983 movie that has become practically legendary in certain circles.

This has got to be one of the most extraordinary dance sequences ever filmed, and there are many in this movie. I'd say it is like nothing else ever put on film, but it isn't -- because there are several Carlos Saura flamenco movies floating around, including "El Amor Brujo", "Bodas de Sangre", and "Salome" that are artistic knock-outs.

Saura's brilliance, of course, is in the transformation of a very ancient, tradition-bound and specialized dance form into a story telling form for film, and in his stunning staging (especially for "Carmen").

The larger point being "We're not really stuck on the treadmill repeating the same things over and over; we can use so very much from the past to create something new and startling and wonderful."

It's a message we need to keep hearing.

OT: Everybody Dance Now

I love this scene. It's from El Amor Brujo directed by Carlos Saura. I first posted the YouTube link on this site in December, 2007.



Here's another scene from the same movie:



Saura, Antonio Gades, and Cristina Hoyos are brilliant in everything I've seen them do.

Check out their Carmen.



[Note, this post has undergone a number of corrections, additions and adjustments since it was first put up. There may be more.]