Salzburger Zeitung - 2013 Edition

Yes it looks like we'll be making it back to Salzburg for the 2013 edition of the Pfingstfestpiele.  Its been a bit touch and go the past few weeks - are we going or are we not?  I won't go into the sordid details except to say that the procedure at the Heart Institute last week determined that I do have a heart and that it is functioning, after a fashion, and should I follow a programme of exercise, diet and medication will for awhile yet. 

Now I'm not sure if the schnitzel at Triangl, Bazartost at Cafe Bazaar or Salzburger Nockerl at Hotel Bristol are on that diet but we shall have to see.  But I'm sure that a climb up the Kapuzinerberg and a stroll through Hellbrun Palace are considered exercises.  And the programme that Cecilia Bartoli has created for this year's festival is sure to be as soothing and healing as any medication a doctor could prescribe.  So I'll just look on this as following the doctor's orders.

Actually this trip was planned almost a year ago - the tickets for the Whitsun Festival go on sale a day or two after the current festival ends.  In a gesture of mad optimism - and let's be serious about this you have to be optimistic to book these things a year in advance at my age - I booked tickets for a rather full Whitsun weekend (more about that later).  As the months progressed the vacation plans became more elaborate with each passing week until we had a full two weeks of traveling in Germany as well as five days in Salzburg.

If things had been going according to plan this morning we would have gone to services at Dresden's Frauenkirche and about now we would be entering the Semperoper for a performance of Halévy's rarely performed La Juive - yes David I know another bloody French grand opera!  And tomorrow we would be boarding a paddle wheeler for lunch at the Meissen Factory.  However the "best planned lays of mice and men" often go up the tubes - to mix and mangle my metaphors.  As it stands now tomorrow evening (Monday) we will be heading to either Frankfurt than onward to Munich or London and onward to anywhere in Germany where we can catch a train to Munich.  Such are the vagaries of travel on airlines passes.

We'll be traveling with our little buddy Sidd and he's been given strict instructions to have me write a bit about our experiences at this year's Festival.  So hopefully at his urging I'll be posting another edition of Salzburger Zeitung.

May 12 - 1754:  Franz Anton Hoffmeister, German composer and publisher of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Clementi and Von Dittersdorf, was born.

Mercoledi Musicale

In my post yesterday about my first visit to Stratford I mentioned that the Beatrice for that production of Much Ado About Nothing was the Scottish actress Eileen Herlie.  Miss Herlie had a fascinating career.  Though 16 years younger than Olivier she played Gertrude to his Hamlet in his 1948 film version of Shakespeare's tragedy.  She was to repeat the role in the 1964 Broadway outing with Richard Burton - though at least this time she was 7 years older than her son.  That famous production was directed by John Gielgud who had directed her previously in the West End in Medea.  She was a member of Gielgud's classic company in his season at the Lyric Hammersmith and played frequently on the West End.

Fame - or infamy depending on your point of view -  came early in her career: in 1946 she appeared as the Queen (left with co-star James Donald) in John Cocteau's exercise in intellectual melodrama, The Eagle Has Two Heads.  As the Queen of an unnamed Ruritanian country she performed what was one the longest speeches in the history of the English stage.  Ronald Duncan's translation contained some 2,982 words; her twenty-one minute tirade ranged from memories of her dead husband to an invitation to a young poet, who resembles her dead beloved, to assassinate her.  It was a performance that left opinion divided and very few on the fence - it was either a tour de force of acting or a theatrical pony trick.

Herlie was to divide critics, and audiences, throughout her varied career.  Harold Hobson adored her but she was the victim of Kenneth Tynan's acid tongue on more than one occasion.  Her Medea was memorably sent up by Hermione Gingold as "the grreat tradddgic awktress".   A transfer to Broadway of Thorton Wilder's The Matchmaker brought her to North America in 1956 and she stay there until her death in 2008.  During that time, in New York and on tour,  she played classics, modern (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf), comedy, melodrama and musical comedy.

Eileen Herlie in  publicity photo for her
role as Myrtle Fargate in All My Children.
She was to play the role for 32 years.

Musical comedy?  Yes, though she really didn't have much of a singing voice the one thing Eileen Herlie had was presence.  In 1960 she held her own against Jackie Gleason and won a Tony nomination for Take Me Along, a musical adaptation of Eugene O'Neil's Ah Wilderness.  Two years later she appeared with Ray Bolger in the ill-fated All American.  With a script half-written by the young Mel Brooks - he failed to delivery act 2 and director Joshua Logan had to take over - and a story tailored to the talents of a fading star the show didn't stand much a chance of success.  But what it did have was Eileen Herlie and a lovely song that was to become a standard, Charles Strouse-Lee Adams'  Once Upon A Time.

Though it has been recorded by everyone from The Four Tops to Tony Bennett there is something quite touching and lovely about Bolger and Herlie's delivery on the original cast album.  Neither of them had great voices but they, and to my mind particularly Herlie, bring to it an aching melancholy of young love past, perhaps lessons learned and maybe even a quiet acceptance of the way life has turned out. 

In 1976 Eileen Herlie all but deserted the stage for the world of television soap opera.  She was to play the role of Myrtle Fargate on All My Children until three months before her death in 2008 at the age of 90.

As I said earlier - her's was a fascinating career.

May 8 - 1886: Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine.

Much Ado About Something

A planned trip to Stratford in August and the donation of a few items - designs, programmes and postcards - to the archives of the Shakespeare Festival triggered memories of my first visit there.  It has been 35 years since my last visit in 1978 but I believe the magic will still be there.

Robert Farifield's building for the Stratford Festival echoed its beginnings in the tent.  But he gave the Festival a performance space undisturbed by the whistles of freight trains or the cries of the umpire from the local baseball diamond that often fought for the audience's attention in the early days.

Back in 1958 my friend Bruce and I boarded a train at Toronto’s Parkdale Station headed for Stratford and its Shakespeare Festival   I was 12 at the time and Bruce was 14 - strange when I think that our parents had no second thoughts about us going on a trip like that alone. It was the first of what were to become regular visits over the next 20 years to the Festival town that Tom Patterson, Tyrone Guthrie and Alec Guinness put on the theatrical map five years earlier. The Festival had forsaken its original “big top” for a permanent home the year before; at the time a revolutionary design,  Robert Fairfield's circular structure built into the hillside surrounded the revolutionary stage that Tanya Moiseiwitsch had designed to invoke, but not slavishly copy, the theatre of Shakespeare’s time.

Tanya Moiseiwitsch designed this revolutionary thrust stage based on discussions she and Tyrone Guthrie
had about the ideal platform for performing Shakespeare.  Director Michael Langham felt the stage
was too "feminine" for the tragedies and histories and asked Moiseiwitsch and Brian Jackson to give it
a "sex change" in 1962. I recall being shocked by what I saw on entering the theatre for The Taming
of the Shrew that year.   I got use to it but still have a fondness for this first stage.

As well as well-known performers – Guinness, James Mason, Frederick Volk, Siobann McKenna, Jason Robarts Jr and Irene Worth – the Festival was developing its home-grown stars chief amongst them William Hutt, Douglas Campbell, Frances Hyland, Amelia Hall, John Horton, Douglas Rain, Kate Reid and a young and vibrant Christopher Plummer.  Plummer had first appeared on the thrust stage in 1956 as a charismatic Henry V in a ground breaking production by Michael Langham that bridged and celebrated Canada's two solitudes and featured Gratien Gelinas with members of Quebec based Theatre de Nouvelle Monde as the French King and his court. Plummer was to follow that with Hamlet, Andrew Aguecheek, Leonates, Mercutio, Philip the Bastard, Cyrano, Antony and in 1958 Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing.

A young, and very handsome, Christopher Plummer as Benedict, 1958.

It was that production that we boarded the train to see on a sunny July afternoon. In those days the Toronto Telegram sponsored a “special” Tuesday train to Stratford. For the price you got the 2 hours train ride, a bus upon arrival to take you to a local church – Parkdale United, as I recall – where the ladies of the parish had prepared a hot dinner. I don’t remember what exactly they served as a main course but I do remember desert was homemade cherry pie with fresh whipped cream. The Festival theatre was a short walk away and the buses waited to take you back to the station at the end of the play. The late night train from Chicago passed through at a convenient time and arrival at Parkdale meant getting home well after midnight. Fortunately there was no school the next day and Bruce’s mother was willing to pick us up. Several year’s later the late train no longer operated and the Telegram was no-longer published.  You could go up by train but the only way of getting back after the play was the bus – and I do recall a number of nights standing all the way from Stratford back to Toronto.

The wedding scene from that 1958 production of Much Ado About Nothing.  This Festival
postcard photo was taken from approximately where I was sitting that evening. I have
a collection of these postcards that will be going into the Stratford archives this summer.

Michael Langham at a rehearsal - 1988.

Sara Krulwich - The New York Times

The Much Ado was the second of the Shakespeare comedies that Langham directed at the Festival and as time passed he proved to be a master of the genre.  That is not in anyway to discredit his handling of the tragedies, histories or the problem plays.  His Romeo and Juliet with the oddly cast but somehow very right Julie Harris and Bruno Gerussi as the star-crossed lovers, Kate Reid, Tony Van Bridge and Plummer started as a light-hearted youthful affair filled with high-spirits and romance that spiraled into deep, aching and bewildering tragedy.  And both his Trolius and Cressida and Timon of Athens (with a score by Duke Ellington) proved less problematic then many imagined them to be.  His 1966 Bretchtian Henry V though not much loved at the time caught the pessimistic spirit of the period as accurately as his production ten years earlier had mirrored the optimism of its time.  The 1964 King Lear that he directed with John Colicos was a searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man - he often said that his time as a prisoner of war in Germany gave him new insight into the bleakness of that darkest of tragedies.

But he didn't restrict his productions on the stage that he knew better than anyone else to Shakespeare.  Langham also directed a bawdy but stylish The Country Wife, a funny but ultimately unsettling almost frightening The Government Inspector and first with Plummer than Colicos a Cyrano de Bergerac that was the ultimate romance-adventure story.  It has always been said that his crowning achievement was the 1961 Love's Labour Lost (a play he was to direct three more times at Stratford including his final production in 2008) - sadly I choose to see Henry VIII that year; at the time a historical pageant with elaborate Tudor costumes seemed more appealing then the heady word-play of a young Shakespeare dazzled by his love of the language.  Ah the callowness - and foolishness - of youth.

One critic referred to Eileen Herlie and Christopher Plummer's Beatrice and Benedict as being like
Brandy and Benedictine.   They seem to have brought out the best in each other.

But back to the events of that evening in 1958:  the fun of a train ride (I love trains), a delicious home-cooked meal and the thrill of that trumpet fanfare echoing from the terrace of the Festival theatre on a summer's night.  But that was nothing compared to the pageant that followed:  Vincent Massey, our Governor General at the time, was there with his party.  As the trumpets sounded a new fanfare he made his entrance resplendent in his red and gold uniform, his daughter-in-law Lilias on his arm and surrounded by the vice-regal party in dress-uniform with their summer-frocked ladies.  We all stood as God Save the Queen began and at the end of the anthem cheered - we did that sort of thing in Canada in those days.  But even that was to pale in my 12 year old's mind with what followed.

Desmond Heeley's citizenry of Messina had a look to them that was
more English country house than Sicilian palazzo. But it gave the
production an elegance and style that mirrored Langham's direction
and the company that he was building.

Suddenly that gleaming wooden structure was filled with ladies and uniformed gentlemen more elegant even than those in the audience.  Langham and Desmond Heeley had chosen to set the play in the 1870 and though they may have been looking to the Risorgimento, it was more English country house than Sicilian palazzo.  But given the players it worked:  Tony Van Bridge was a pompous, deadly serious, and more comic for all that,  Dogberry with Alan Nunn, his perfect foil, as an Uriah Heepish Verges; Conrad Bain and Mervyn Blake where slightly stuffy but loving father and uncle; William Hutt, an elegant and handsome Don Pedro - his lone estate at play's end was all the more puzzling for that; Bruno Gerrusi as a dark, threatening Don John; Diana Maddox and John Horton all organza and braid looking the perfect young lovers.  But at the centre of it all were Eileen Herlie and Plummer as Beatrice and Benedick.  A star may have danced at her birth but a whole constellation celebrated the sparring match, strange-woeing and eventual wedding between these two.  As one critic remarked they were a heady mixture of "benedictine and brandy" - each complimenting and bringing out the best in the other.

It was all very magical and I recall Bruce - who was a stage-struck as I - talking about it all the way home - I'm sure much to the annoyance of those around us who were trying to doze on the trip back. I had been going to the theatre since I was five years old but I believe I can honestly say that it was that performance of Much Ado About Nothing that sealed my love-affair with the magic of the stage.  And each year for the next 20 I would make the trip to Stratford, sometimes once but often five or six times, and I waited for that familiar fanfare and the lights to come up on that marvelous platform when once again that magic would be reborn.

May 7 -1920: The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, opens the first exhibition by the Group of Seven.

The Magic in the Flute

Legend says that the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg himself literally kicked Mozart out of his
palace - in truth it was his Grace's steward Count Arno who delivered the Episcopal drop kick.
In Emanuele Luzzati's drawing the young Mozart seems to enjoy the event.  But it seems some
little success and an admonishing Emperor Josef are awaiting his arrival in Vienna.

An article on Mozart's The Magic Flute by my friend David Nice over at I'll Think of Something Later led me (as David's writings so often do)  to do two things: download one of the great recordings of Mozart's masterpiece and search for one of several books I have on the work of Emanuele Luzzati as inspired by the genius that was Wolfgang A.

Never out of the catalogue since the day it was issued, the recording was produced by Walter Legge in Germany between November 8, 1937 and March 8th of the following year in Berlin's Beethovensaal. It featured the Berlin Philharmonic and the cream of Germany's operatic talent - or at least those who had not been forced to leave by the Nazis; but most surprisingly it was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.  Beecham had created some controversy in 1936 when he taken the London Philharmonic on tour to Germany and had agreed to the "request" not to include Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony in their repertoire - though a convert to Christianity the Nazi government still regarded Mendelssohn as a "Jewish composer".  To the discomfort of the authorities even Der Fuehrer was not exempt from one of Sir Thomas's comments.  When Hitler showed up late for one of the Berlin concerts Beecham was heard, in one of those mutters of his that could fill a room, to observe "That stupid old bugger's late!"

A computer reconstruction of the Beethovensaal, home of the Berlin Philharmonic
before the Second World War.  It was destroyed in the Allied bombing raids.
It was the major recording venue for HMV between the two Great Wars.

Though not an Nazi sympathizer - Beecham refused invitations to tour Germany after 1936 - he nevertheless honoured contracts he had with the Berlin State Opera in '37-38.  For HMV Legge assembled an all-German cast (though Danish-born Helge Rosvaenge made his career in Germany and Austria) and it seems that he audaciously replaced a few "unacceptable" members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra strategically with players from the Berlin State Opera Orchestra.  The Queen of the Night’s aria O zitt’re nicht, mein lieber Sohn (Tremble not, my dear son) was still unrecorded when Beecham left Berlin at the beginning of March and was recorded later that month with Bruno Seidler-Winkler conducting the Berlin State Opera Orchestra.

HMV's Mozart Opera Society issued four operas on 78s over the space of
several years. The First was the Glyndebourne Nozze di Figaro followed by
Cosi and Don Giovanni also from John Christie's country opera house. The
Beecham Zauberflote was the only non-British recording in the set. Along
with the Cosi it was to remain in the catalogue since its first issue and is
considered one of the great recordings of the 20th century.

Despite its slightly clouded history the recording was greeted with superlatives when it was issued on 19 double-sided shellac 78s as one of HMV's The Mozart Opera Society recordings.  As the LP era took over many other recordings were to appear but this pioneering effort was the one most frequently held up for comparison.   My own Flute of choice has always been the 1962 recording also produced by Legge under the baton of Otto Klemperer.  I recall hearing an LP transfer of the earlier Berlin recording and not being terribly impressed - it sounded as if it had been copied from the 78s clicks, pops and hisses intact.  But after several hearings of the 2001 remastering of Beecham's historical recording on Naxos I am inclined to place it very close second in my list of favourites.   Though the two conductors could not be more different in their approach they both capture the inspired lunacy of Schikaneder that is made magical by Mozart's music.   The surprise with Klemperer was always how jolly and warm, almost folk-like, the more comic moments sounded and with Beecham it is the sublime majesty of the more serious  - but then should I really be that surprised?  He was, after-all, a conductor of Wagner, Strauss and Delius.

Emanuele Luzzati's set model for the 1963 Die Zauberflote at Glyndebourne.  Ten
triangular screens, each manipulated by a stagehand hidden inside moved about
the stage under the direction of a stage manager using early wireless technology.

Luzzati's sketches suggest the positions he wanted for the screens and designs (each side had a
different colour and design theme) he wanted revealed for the various scenes as the opera unfolded.

That strange juxtaposition of the inane and the sublime has always been a problem both in the pit and on stage.  How do you reconcile the antics of Papageno with the proclamations of Sarastro; how do you handle that sudden switch of bad guys half-way through the first act.  How do you stage a work which, as Winthrop Sargeant observed, is often dramatically dull and where "in the last act - the Klu Klux Klan marches around and says "No!" while Tamino tries to become an Eagle Scout"? And Sargeant is right - it can all be very morally upright and lets admit it the stage is not really the place where moral uprightness shows to best advantage.  Often when stage directors have failed their designers have come through and found the magic in the Flute.   And an incredible array of designers have strove and in many cases found the balance between Mozart and Schikaneder;  amongst the more famous are Marc Chagall at the Met in 1967,  David Hockney at Glynedebourne ('78)  and the Met ('91),  Beni Montressor at the NYC Opera, William Kentridge at La Monnaie ('05) and La Scala ('11), Oskar Kokoschka, Maurice Sendak and again at Glyndebourne my beloved Emanuele Luzzati in 1963.


Every year, beginning in 1960, I ordered a copy of the Glyndebourne Programme Book and between those lavish publications and the marvelous recordings I had from the Festival (Le Comte Ory, Cenerentola, the 1936 Cosi)  I would armchair travel in tuxedoed splendor on the train from Victoria to the Sussex downs,  picnic by the HaHa, wander in the gardens and revel in Mozart or Rossini.  I first became aware of Luzzati's work when I opened that 1963 Programme Book.   I was immediately captured by his strange drawings - and remember wondering how on earth they were ever realized.  But I was even more intrigued by his use of 10 three sided screens maneuvered about the stage by a stagehand inside who took instructions from the Stage Manager on wireless headphones - how modern was that?  In subsequent years I was fascinated by Luzzati's designs for Don Giovanni, Macbeth and Die Entführung aus dem Serail.  All very different but all distinctively Luzzati.

I finally got to Glyndebourne in 1969, dined in the Nether Wallop and saw the new Luzzati-John Pritchard Cosi along with Pelléas and Werther.  But the following year was to be "the year" - as well as Janet Baker in La Calisto and Graziella Scuitti in Il Turco in Italia - I finally got to see that Magic Flute.  If in my memory book it takes second place to the Calisto (one of those truly great nights of opera that I can count on the fingers of one hand) it was still memorable for the performances of a young Illena Cortubas, Weishal Ochman and Hans Sotin - and the magic of Luzzati's designs.  At one moment dark and glittering, the next all bosky green and in a twinkling gleaming gold they perfectly captured the shifts from whimsy to wisdom that so intrigues in this silly-sublime final work of the equally silly-sublime Mozart.

Luzzati only designed that one production of The Magic Flute for the stage but he was to use the opera as the inspiration for designs of all sorts throughout his life.  Posters, playing cards, a full length animation and a children's book were all to give him opportunities to express the joy that the work so obviously gave him.  Though long out of print I was able to find that children's book online and decided that I'd make a short video combining those two things that my friend David had led me to search out:  Sir Thomas's recording from so long ago and Luzzati's interpretation for children - so different and yet often similar to his vision for the stage. 

Many thanks David - as always you led me to something wonderful.

May 4 -1919: May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations take place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.

Lunedi Lunacy

With what is currently happening in Canadian politics - and for that matter world politics in general - there is very little to laugh about.  However given the series of sleazy, badly Photo Shopped and flagrantly misleading attack ads recently released by our Great Leader's party against the new leader of an opposition party its good to see one that has at least some truth in it.

April 22 - 1993: Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser is released.

For West

For my darling Jackiesue and all those I've come to know, if only by name, through her. The people of West give meaning to the word "community".

I'm holding you in my heart, my thoughts, my prayers and I ask all my friends to do the same.


18 April

Mercoledi Musicale

Goodbye Dear Heart

Canada and music lost one of its bright shining stars yesterday.  Rita MacNeil, whose story is a familiar one to most Canadians of my generation, died yesterday.  She was a gentle loving person with a voice of silver and a heart of gold.  She released 24 albums between the first in 1975 and her most recent in 2012.  Eight of those albums went Platinum and 2 went gold.  She was proud of the fact that at 42 she was voted "Most Promising Newcomer" but even more proud of the relationship she had with her audience - they loved her and she repaid that love 10 fold.  No video could ever capture the honest love fest that was a Rita McNeil concert.

Back in 1990 I was working at Ottawa airport for Air Canada and the particular day that I have in mind I must have been working as an assistant agent on flight 113.  The flight started in Halifax, came through Ottawa and continued on to Calgary and Vancouver.  Most of the passengers had disembarked when I got a call from the In-Charge flight attendant.  He said:  I've got Rita (he didnt' have to say Rita who) on board and she'd like to get off.  She doesn't want a wheelchair, she just wants to stretch her legs and needs a bit of a hand.   Well he didn't have to say much more - I was down at the aircraft in record time and next thing I knew I was escorting Ms McNeil to the departure lounge.  She was wearing one of her kaftans - she once joked that it showed her figure to its best advantage - and her signature big floppy purple hat.  We chatted as we came up the jetway - she had just had an operation and was headed for Calgary for the first of a series of concerts out west.  In the lounge a few people approached her shyly and she - almost as shyly - chatted and signed autographs.   Come boarding time I took her down to the aircraft and mentioned to her that I had spent Christmas that year in Cairo with my partner who was working there.  I told her that we had played her Christmas album and that it really made us feel that we were home and just a bit homesick.  She squeezed my arm and in that soft voice said:  Well dear heart, for me that makes the recording of it all worthwhile.  She said thank you and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Here she is on George Stroumboulopoulos in December 2012 as she started another cross country tour.

And I know many people are posting Working Man as a tribute but if anything tells Rita's story it has to be her anthem Flying On Your Own.

Goodbye Dear Heart, everything you did was worthwhile.

17 April -1397: Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date (in 1387) as the start of the book's pilgrimage to Canterbury.

In the Face of Grief

I met Elizabeth several years back when I received a request to use a photo I had taken for a series of frankly silly pictures she was featuring on a Flickr page.  Through that request I started reading her blog and being struck by the humour and grace with which she greeted much of what the world handed her - good and bad.  And often the bad was extremely bad - and often she turned that into a source of creativity.  In response to yesterday's sadness in Boston she wrote a poem that expresses the "communal national grief" that is being felt by so many.  She has given me permission to post her  poem as a way of allowing you and I share that grief.

The Thorn Tree

The thorn tree in my yard
is six feet high and wide, with a crop
of inch-long needles bristling
along its branches. Yet it holds, within it,
a flock of trilling fluttering
sparrows. When I walk by
they quiet. But one foot past and they begin
again, caroling and chuckling.
In its dangerous arms they dart, turn,
then light unscathed
beside spiked teeth that bite me
bloody when I have tried
to trim it. I am so blundering, so
soft, so easy to wound.
The small deft birds laugh
behind my back and I long
for their winged grace
in this world of thorns.

April 15, 2013

 March 2012 - Her Word's Say It All
 October 2010 - Job's Wife

April 16 - 1170 BC - The calculated date of the Greek king Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War.

Lunedi Lunacy

I'm sure we've all read about the new HR procedures - I always hated that term HR, I mean what the hell are Human Resources???? Sounds so impersonal doesn't it? What am I saying?  Of course it's impersonal but then it probably always was; its just that when it was called Personnel it sounded a bit less clinical.  At least Personnel was close enough to personal that it sounded user friendly; resources sounds like something you dig out of the ground, process and then throw out when you've done with it.   Well okay maybe it is closer to the truth but damn it who wants the truth???

However I digress.  Here's a little video about a process that many companies seem to go through these days - after they've checked your FaceBook profile, Twitter account and X-Tube videos!

Gives a new meaning to Head Hunter doesn't it?

April 15 - 1924: Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.

HERE"S WILLY!!!!!

Oh for heaven's sake get your minds out of the gutter - this is a family blog!!!  Well sort of a family blog.  And brief as it will be this post is more like a word of warning than anything else.  I'm back!

I received so many e-mails and comments from friends and family about being MIA for the past month - well okay two e-mails and one comment in passing! - that I felt it was necessary I assure my fan base that I am alive and, if not quite 100%, well.  Though I've had all kinds of ideas for postings - some of which I actually started - I've found that after a day spent hunkered in front of not one but two screens writing and editing, the appeal of doing the same thing when I come home to my chaste and vacant couch is not all that great.

So of late I have been returning to the comfort of the home fires, having a cup of tea, playing with the HFH, having  a little nap, eating our simple meal with a glass of vin ordinaire, playing with the HFH, taking the medications that will if not cure then lessen what ails me, walking the HFH, then heading to the comforts of our big old four poster to fall asleep over a chapter of whatever book I happen to be reading.

However in the past few days I've felt a need to get back to postings of some sort, if not with the alarming regularity of the past.  Its not that there is a lack of things happening in Ottawa - though life here is not as crowded with incident as it was when we lived overseas it still has more than its share of pleasures.  There have been evenings of dance, drama and music; exhibitions to see and ponder over; restaurants and eateries; and friends and colleagues to enjoy good times with.  No it isn't Europe and it may not be as exciting as it once was but my life is still pretty damned good.

So I'll attempt to finish off some of those finer posts that taunt me in their drafted state,  perhaps do a few new things and see if I can get back into the swing of things.

So it appears that, for the moment at least,  I'M BACK!

April 14 - 1828:  Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.

Daylight Saving Time Explained

C. G. P. Grey has explained so much since that first ground breaking video in January 2011 when he explained the Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England. He has since gone on to produced 29 other explanations of things as diverse as the True Cost of the British Royal Family and the Myth of Santa - or was that the True Cost of Santa and the Myth of the British Royal Family???  Whatever! 

This evening as we in North America set our clocks ahead an hour - very early this year but since our neighbour to the South has decreed it even shall we follow - I thought I'd let him recap the complexities of our annual "spring forward".

And for those of my friends interested in the activities at the Holy See - no! no! not those activities, I mean the upcoming election of a new head of the Vatican State - Grey has a quick refresher on what it takes to become Pope.

09 March - 1959:  The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

Mercoledi (on Venerdì) Musicale

I know I'm a little late but I've just been so caught up in the Italian elections, the Pope doing his peek-a-boo thing, Canadian Senate scandals and another "Storm of the Century" that my music listening has been greatly curtailed.

However I will now make up for it by listening to - and hopefully you will join me in this - a potpourri of music in this witty Spanish (yes I know Spanish???? but music is an international language) cartoon retrospective of The History of Western Music.  (And no Jackiesue I'm sorry that doesn't mean Willie Nelson!)

Though Paolo Morales de Los Rios should more rightly have called it Historia de la Música Occidental, it really is a great piece of animatin.

Many thanks to John, my good buddy from Roman Days - honestly I saw more of him in Rome than I do here in Ottawa. Definitely my bad!

01 March - 1457: The Unitas Fratrum is established in the village of Kunvald, on the Bohemian-Moravian borderland. It is to date the second oldest Protestant denomination.

Lunedi Lunacy

No really its not aimed at anyone in particular!

Honestly it isn't!!! (snicker, snort)

25 February - 1570: Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Gung Ha Fat Choy - Gong Xi Fa Cai -

*The traditional Chinese New Year's greeting in Cantonese and Mandarin

Today is the fifteenth and final day of the celebration of the 6th year in the 12 year cycle of the solar-lunar calendar in most Asian cultures.  According to the astrology and legends of Northern Asia this is the year of the Snake.

And the predictions for the coming year:

After the turbulent year of the Dragon, the snake is a more positive sign, and it will likely bring advances in science, education and research. It is important to be open-minded during the year of the snake, which will be an exciting 12 months. Every one should be on the look-out for jealousy and secrets that work against their  interests.  It will be a year filled with new and different challenges.

For an individual horoscope for your own lunar sign why not check here.  But remember that much the luck for the year begins on your birthday - so in my case the predictions won't take hold until December.

The first month of the lunar calender is Yuan and the old Mandarin word for night was xiao: so today is the Yuanxiao (元宵节) or Lantern Festival.  The evening of the first full moon of the New Year is celebrated by filling the night with the light from lanterns and solving riddles inscribed on the lanterns, lighting candles outside houses to guide wayward spirits, eating glutinous rice balls (yuanxiao or tangyuan) and meeting with family and friends who are like family.

 In earlier times it was also a busy time for matchmakers:  young people went out chaperoned by parents or family and introductions were made between marital prospects.  With time the romantic (?) aspects of the festival gave way to the more generally festive in Northern countries; however it is still celebrated in Malaysia as a day when single women write their contact on mandarin oranges and throw them in a nearby lake or river.  The young men collect the oranges and eat them.  The taste is a good indication of how their relationship with the young lady will turn out - sweet or sour. Apparently the demand for sweet oranges is rather high this time of year.

The stories of how the Lantern Festival came to be are many and vary from place to place and often from century to century.  Some are very simple - Taiyi, the ancient god of heaven had 16 dragons and used them to control the destiny of the human world. Emperor Qinshihuang, who first united China, held the first Lantern Festival to ask Taiyi for good weather and health.

Perhaps the most complex also explains the name of the rice balls eaten on the last day of the New Year.   During the Han Dynasty a young maid at the palace of the Emperor was about to jump to her death when she was stopped from this rash act by a wish old man.  He discovered that she was despondent because she had not seen her family and done her filial duty in many years.  The wise man promised that she would see her family by the end of the New Year.

He set up a fortune-telling booth in the town and everyone who came to him to hear their fortune for the New Year was told the same thing:  on the 15th day of the new year the God of Fire would send a spirit dressed in red and riding a black horse to burn down the town.  The maid pretended to be the fairy and came with a decree on the 13th day warning the Emperor of the impending disaster.

The Emperor turned to the wise old man and asked for his advise.  The old man told him that the God of Fire love to eat tangyuan, those sweet, round glutinous rice balls stuffed with sweet sesame, peanut and red bean paste.   The Emperor decreed that everyone in town should make tangyuan to worship the God of Fire and hang red lanterns outside their homes and light fireworks.  This would both placate the God and deceive him into believing the town was already aflame.

That evening the whole town, including the young maid's family, gathered outside the palace to gaze in wonder at the decorations and feast on the sweets.  The maid and her family were reunited, the festival was a great success with the people and the Emperor hailed for saving them from the anger of the God of Fire.  It became and annual celebration and since the little maid had cooked the best tangyuan both the dish and the festival ever after bore her name:  Yuan Xiao.

Other than yaunxiao, tang yuen is also eaten during auspicious family celebrations and Winter solstice or “dong zhi” (冬至), which usually falls on the 21st or 22nd of December. The round and sticky dumpling balls symbolize family closeness and togetherness.

Sadly the website that allowed me to send Hui Chun, the traditional greetings for New Year's, no longer operates so I will send to all those I love, and to those that they love this greeting for the New Year.

 

And it bears a wish I wish for us all: May All Your Wishes Come True.

24 February - 1607: L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its première performance.

Mercoledi Musicale

I know I haven't written much about our cultural life in Ottawa since our return so you could be forgiven for thinking that I have been musically/theatrically/terpsicordilly deprived in the winter wasteland that is Ottawa.  And if you have that impression then it is entirely my fault.

Granted there is one ..lly missing from the list and that would be operatically but we will let that pass for the moment.   But for the other "arts" the calender - though perhaps not as crowded with big names - is still a crowded one.  Between our subscriptions for the NAC orchestra, two dance series, the Great Canadian Theatre Company, Chamberfest, the Cantata Singers and other groups here in Ottawa we are out often twice a week to concerts, recitals or plays.  In February we've had the National Ballet of Canada with their new production of Romeo and Juliet; unfortunately a late work day and exhaustion meant missing the Brahms Alto Rhapsody with the NAC Orchestra; Ballet BC in a programme of modern dance - the William Forsythe piece beautifully done, the rest... boh!; the NAC theatre company in a fascinating staging around and in  a swimming pool of Ovid's Metamorphosis; and last evening a piano concert by Angela Hewitt.

Miss Hewitt appears in Ottawa frequently - she is after all a hometown girl - and the concerts always have a special, almost familial, air to them.  She appeared here last year twice - once in the Chamberfest Winter series with The Chamber Players of Ottawa.  That evening one of the players had taken sick and the substitute did not have time to feel comfortable with the second piece of the evening so we had to make do with (!) Miss Hewitt playing Le tombeau de Couperin.  Several months later she appeared with the NAC orchestra for the Ravel Piano Concerto and hosted a small coffee reception afterwards.  She proved as gracious a host as she was a brilliant musician.

This time it was a solo concert with, on paper at least, an unusual programme of Bach and Debussy. It seemed an unlikely combination but the Bach French Suites 5 and 6 with their dance movements dovetailed with Debussy's Baroque influenced Pour le piano and the dance tempi of Suite bergamasque.  Even the encore - Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte - kept us in the realm of Baroque-influenced dance.

I will be the first to admit that Bach does very little for me.  I can admire the musicality, the originality, the line of Bach's music however I find that it very seldom moves me.  I recognize that Miss Hewitt is considered the preeminent keyboard interpreter of Bach and even her playing gives rise to only admiration for the genius of Bach on my part.  However last night her playing of the Sarabande in the Suite No. 5 gave me an emotional charge that both surprised and delighted.

I don't normally associate Debussy with passion - romance yes passion not so much.  But passion was a quality that Miss Hewitt brought to all three Debussy pieces.  It is always fascinating to watch the body language of pianists and, if possible, to watch their hands.  From our seats Mezzanine-left we had a perfect view of Miss Hewitt and the keyboard.   Though she is never less than elegant there was a marked difference in the way her arms were held and her body moved between the Bach and Debussy.   For the one more formal - I wont' say ridged - and for the other her body seeming to flow with the music.  For the Bach the hands moved majestically over the keys; for the Debussy they often seemed to flow and even the complex cross-hand playing had a remarkable fluidity.

She took the Clair de lune movement of the Suite Bergamasque the slowest I have ever heard it played.  There is always a danger with choosing that sort of tempo that things sound dragged or  fall apart and become disjointed but last night the risk paid off.  In a word it was "sublime" and I was as carried away as Miss Hewitt obviously was in this clip from a recent performance at CBC Toronto.

In a previous post I mentioned that Miss Hewitt will be giving a benefit concert at the newly re-built St Jude's Anglican Cathedral in Iqaluit this summer.  The original cathedral, and many of the native tapestries and art work that adorned it, was destroyed by fire - reportedly arson - in 2005.  The long struggle to rebuilt has been completed and the cathedral was consecrated in June 2012.  Angela Hewitt has strong ties to the Anglican church and promised to go to Iqaluit and give a benefit concert when the building was completed.  And on June 12 she will make good on that promise and I am sorely tempted to join her and a party of her Ottawa fans on the 2000 km journey to the North.  We shall see.

The original St Jude's Cathedral in Iqaluit was built in the shape of an igloo and the new Cathedral
follows that design concept.  The sanctuary (above) was hung with native tapestries from the regions
of the Arctic and the altar cross was made of narwhal bone - sadly most of the artifacts were lost in the fire.

20 February - 1959: The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.

 

Lunedi Lunacy

Why a potato makes a better gift than roses on Valentine's Day!

Well, there's a lot of reasons
I mean, roses only last like a couple weeks
and that's if you leave them in water.
They really only exist to be pretty
so that's like saying:
my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance.

But a potato!
Potatoes last for f......g ever, man!
In fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow things
even if you just leave them in the sack;
that part alone makes it a good symbol.

But there's more!
There are so many ways to enjoy a potato! You can even make a battery with it!
and that's like saying:
I have many ways in which I show my love for you.
And potatos may be ugly, but they're still awesome
so that's like saying:
It doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you.

I only wish my friend Lara had sent this to me last week - it would have been so much cheaper!

February 18 - Pedro Lascuráin becomes President of Mexico for 45 minutes; this is the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country.

Lunedi Lunacy

This one's for Simon:

Boy I don't want to be the other guy when he tells his mommy!!!!!

11 February -  1916: Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.

Lunedi Lunacy

I must say the one thing I don't miss about Italy is the TV shows. Sure this show was done in the early 1980s but I'm not sure who much things have really changed.  Well okay the girls and boys wear a bit less but they still do the same routines.

Here's Stefania Rotolo in OMAGGIO ALL'AMERICA

There is so much about this that is just wrong!

February 04 - 1859: The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt.

Winter Wonderland

Okay we get this straight from the beginning - I do not like winter!  Every year for four, five or, since this is Ottawa, six months I curse the gods that made my family turn left when they hit Montreal rather than right.  I dislike the cold; I detest wearing five layers of clothing; I hate the gravel that the soles of your boots pick up and deposit in entrance ways; I do not enjoy snow shoeing my way through drifts to get to the bus; and while I'm at it I'm not to fond of the bus which smells of damp wool and is awash in melting snow.  I do hope I'm making myself perfectly clear - I DO NOT LIKE WINTER!

However there are times when a falling of new snow on the landscape can have that look of a charming picture postcard and I sigh at the beauty of winter.  Just as long as I don't have to shovel or go out in it fine.  I am more than happy to look at it - marvel at the beauty of what cold can do to droplets of water and move on to the warmth of hearth, home and a glass of wine.

The picture I've used as a header the past few days is a winter scene from Saskatoon.  I'm not sure where in Saskatoon or even where I found it but it is rather lovely in a Bergman-Pushkin way. 

Can't you just imagine walking through this enchanting landscape: the silence; the whiteness; the virgin snow crunching under your feet; a rosy glow infusing your cheeks; a bone-chilling cold cutting through your undershirt, flannel shirt, two sweaters, scarf, goose-down coat, ear-muffs, toque, insulated gloves, two pairs of wool socks and mukluks.   No thanks I'll just sit here and throw another marshmallow on the hot chocolate:  winter really is lovely - in pictures!

03 February -1916: Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada burn down.

Requiem for A Penny

Tomorrow, February 4, 2013, will be the last day that the Royal Canadian Mint will distribute the noble penny.  A coin of the realm for the past 155 years, the last of those bright sparkling, or after a bit of use dull dirty, cooper circles was minted on May 4 of 2012.

Not of course that the penny will disappear - there must be thousands of jars in homes across the land brimming over with them.  After all what else did you do with them?  They weighed down in pockets and took up room in change purses so the obvious place for them was in that old pickle jar or that big faux-Chinese vase that Aunt Mildred gave you for your first apartment.  And when the jar/vase was full there was the fun task of rolling them, only to find that you only had thirty dollar and 49 cents - there was always that one roll at the end that you couldn't quite complete.  All that work with so little return.  Damn pennies - who needs them anyway?

Well our Government in their wisdom decided to address that pressing question in their Economic Action Plan 2012 - the penny would be produced no more!  And their reasons were manifold:  the excessive cost of producing the coin (it is rumoured that it costs 1.06¢ to produce 1¢); environmental considerations (not sure what impact a penny has on the environment but....); and the handling costs that it imposes on retailers, financial institutes and the economy in general????  That and that fact that being a nation of hoarders we apparently have millions of them at home.

And what will be the benefit to us as Canadian when the penny disappears? I mean there must be a benefit to us little folks or our Government wouldn't have made such a weighty decision.  Well according to the Great Leap Forward EAP2012 it will save us taxpayers 11 million dollars a year.  With such a dent in the national debt I can hardly wait to see what sort of tax break it affords me in the coming years.  I'll let you know how that turns out in a future posting.

Now lest it be thought I am against the disappearance of said coin I am not.  The economics of ceasing to produce something at a loss makes sense to even someone as vague as myself when it comes to dealing with the Economy. The thought of no longer receiving coins that will wear holes in the pockets of my Land's End all weather dress pants fills me with joy.  And the very idea of no longer having to wash the dirt of my hands after rolling thirty dollars and 49 cents of pennies gives me some satisfaction.  So I will not weep tomorrow as the Royal Mint doles out their last remaining stock.

However that does not mean that tears will not flow in the next little while.  The penny is still accepted as the smallest unit in our monetary system and will still be included in calculations on goods and services.  And given the various taxes throughout our fair land the price of almost every article purchased from a chocolate bar to a Rolls Royce ends up in pennies.  This will be no problem if you are paying with a credit card or a cheque.  However if you are paying with cash - and yes some people still pay with cash - it will be up to the merchant if they wish to take them or not.  Should they choose not to they have a rounding up/down system which should prove interesting.  If the price is $1.01 - $1.02 then you pay $1.00 if its $1.03 - $1.04 then you pay $1.05.  I'm not being cynical but I have a feeling - based on something a cashier at our work cafeteria said - that it will be the $1.05 more often than the $1.00 for most things.

However I will cease to be a Casandra on the subject and go off and roll my remaining pennies - though I am wondering what is going to happen to all that copper when its returned to the Bank of Canada?  At a current price of $3.75 USD per pound the Government should realize another couple of million which will shave even more off my taxes!  Again I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime the Royal Canadian Mint has designed a rather fun infograph on the history of our late (lamented?) penny.   A left click on the small version of it I've posted on the left will take you to "The 1¢ Story".