On Faith, Brexit and Designer Babies

Last week was awful in terms of the news: conflict, conflict everywhere and not a drop of light at the end of the tunnel.  As if mass shootings, terror attacks and wars were not enough, politicians are clashing on every single issue and the general public picks up the cue. The Brits are still fighting over whether they should stay in the EU or not, the young now claiming their long life ahead was determined by geezers with one leg in the grave. Amid all the mayhem reports, a refreshing headline grabbed my attention the other day: "Baby-making could jump from the bedroom to the lab." Wow!

I've heard of genetic modification and tampering with embryos to create a baby with desired traits. But this is not about harvesting eggs and working on them, it is about creating a baby from any cell in the body; a skin cell for example. In the near future, according to the report, cells will be turned into eggs and sperm in a lab to produce hundreds of embryos. Those will be tested to see what genetic traits they carry, and parents will be able to choose which one they want hatched into a baby. People who otherwise could not have their own children will be able to have them made from non-reproductive cells. From the multitude of embryos they will also be able to pick the ones that do not carry a hereditary disease. And if they have a lot of money to spend they can have the embryo further engineered to produce a baby with the desired eye and hair color, the size of the nose, the height, etc.

These days, children who get stuck with silly names chosen by their parents, like North West or Apple and Pear, can change them when they grow up. Altering one's physical and character traits may be a little harder. Still, in the future, we may have more Caitlyn Jenners. Gone are the days when the family awaited the arrival of a baby with baited breath to see if it is a girl or a boy. There will be no surprises - pleasant or otherwise - any more.

Whoa!  I got carried away.  For a moment I forgot my own video packages on drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 40 million people in the region face hunger and even a larger number in India. A family moving from the parched Somaliland into the scorched parts of Ethiopia in search of food and water will be happy if the child is delivered alive, forget the hair color.

Then there is faith. A person who believes that a reward for killing in the name of God secures a place in heaven, with charming maidens serving refreshments  (as allegedly the Orlando shooter believed), is hardly likely to believe in creative baby making. Such a person is killing and ready to be killed to return things to what he imagines they may have been in some other time and place.

I am reading a book about Dracula - the real one, not the Hollywood creation. A fascinating and repulsive character at the same time: overly fond of impaling even for his own era, he also seems to have engaged in cutting off noses, ears, heads, women's breasts and genitals. It was said that Vlad III, nicknamed the Impaler, sometimes had children boiled in hot oil and made parents eat them, and did other stuff too gruesome to mention. But as we know, similar things happened during the war in the Balkans just a couple of decades ago, and are still happening at the hands of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

We live in a world in which technology and innovation are literally skyrocketing, but too many people still face  hunger.  There is poverty in the United States, "the richest country in the world." More than 45 million people worldwide live in "modern" slavery. Globalization was supposed to even out some of the differences and bring people closer together, but appears to have created an even wider abyss between fellow human beings - a chasm not different from the one separating the medieval Wallachian prince and his brother Radu the Handsome, a favorite of Sultan Mehmed II.  The brothers fought each other, one with atrocities, the other with Turkish support.

Those caught in the middle of the tensions are confused and angry.  Sometimes they feel helpless, like the young Brits who say that the elderly imposed an unwanted future on them. Other times they arm themselves with assaults weapons, like some Americans.  Readers' comments to media articles on any topic reek of racism, misogyny and hatred. Culture is no exception. Just check YouTube video clips from operas. If you happen to like a singer or performance someone else dislikes, you better keep your opinion to yourself unless you have high tolerance for insults.

So commentators, professional or amateurish, who hasten to praise the Brexit as a "momentous event" akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall, those who predict that other EU countries will follow suit, and those who hope that the U.S. under Donald Trump will close its borders, are missing the point. Britain was split almost in half on the remain-leave referendum and it seems that some members of the "winning" camp got cold feet the very morning after the victory.  More than a million are now demanding a second referendum. Whichever way the vote might have gone, it would not have reduced the tensions in Britain. Neither will the country fall to pieces because it stepped out of the bloc. "Nigdar ni bilo da ni nekak bilo"...as an old Croatian wisdom goes.

In the 1960s, the slogan "Make Love, Not War" began its tour around the world, and the Hippy era saw the Westerners enthralled with oriental culture and spirituality. The commercialization of yoga and meditation in the West is a lasting reminder of that time. The world "love" has disappeared from the intercultural discourse. Today, we are talking of "tolerance" and we are protesting "against hatred" at best. Some of the most religious of us believe that a faith can be "defended" by war and isolation, and that love has nothing to do with it. I am no proponent of a return to any "glorious" era of the past, but I do hope that a future generation of the "Brave New World," the one that will create babies in the lab, comes up with a new make-love movement, one less steeped in drugs and more in sharing.

Washington, Las Vegas and Our Presidential Candidates

During a recent visit to southern France, many locals asked where I and my friend were from. When she said she was from Las Vegas, people would invariably get excited and wanted to have long discussions about her city while no one cared about my hometown - the capital of the United States and the western world. This now reminds me of the situation with Donald Trump: everyone wants to discuss him, but there is little genuine interest in either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Perusing European newspapers online these days one finds the US news sections flooded with stories about Trump. His every utterance and every move is recorded and discussed in detail, and if Sanders or Clinton are mentioned, it is mostly in relation to Trump. Like: Sanders agreed to debate with Trump after Clinton refused. It's a good thing President Obama went to Hiroshima, to provide a little diversion although even he could not come out entirely Trump-free. He must have been asked a lot of questions about the Republican presidential contender to warrant the statement "world leaders are rattled by him."

But what about Americans? Trump has not changed much in the past few months. Neither has his rhetoric improved. Yet from a candidate that was initially considered nothing more than a clown in the presidential campaign circus, he has become a serious threat to Hillary Clinton, a Democrat and seasoned politician who seemed to have the presidency in her pocket.

Pundits offer explanations such as Congress fatigue, fear of terrorism, loss of manufacturing jobs, Trump's TV popularity, his (dubious) business achievements, straight talk etc. I don't buy any of that. I think Trump's formula for success is the same one that gave power to Yugoslavia's Tito, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Lenin, Stalin, Putin and, yes, even Hitler. They were the kind of leaders that could persuade masses, especially uneducated masses, that they had the strength to protect them from whatever. If there was no threat to the nation, one was invented.

As school kids in the communist Yugoslavia we were taught the locution: Yugoslavia is surrounded by troubles (BRIGAMA). The Croatian and Serbian word for "troubles" was an acronym made from the initials of the countries bordering Yugoslavia (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Greece, Austria, Hungary, ie. Madjarska and Albania). So from the earliest age, we were made to believe that our country was on the verge of an attack. Tito ruled uncontested for more than 30 years but after he died, the country he had built fell apart. Hitler's Germany went up in smoke, the Soviet Union disintegrated and the kind of Serbia Milosevic had in mind died before it was born.

Even though history proved Stalin to be a mass murderer equal to Hitler or worse, he enjoyed rising popularity after the Soviet Union collapsed and before Putin stepped in to take the role of a new "strong" leader. Some people still mourn Tito's Yugoslavia, and Hitler continues to fascinate the world albeit in a negative way.

About a decade or so ago, while I was driving my son to school, a local station was re-broadcasting the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate on foreign policy. I pointed out to my son how sophisticated the discussion was in comparison with the contemporary presidential debates. I particularly considered Bush junior a poor speaker at the time. Now I could point out how sophisticated his debates were in comparison with the ones we've had this past year. Trump especially is a terrible speaker with hardly any complete sentence in his diatribes, and every word of phrase he deems "strong" repeated at least two or three times. 

Example from his Rolling Thunder speech Sunday: "Make America great again! Very simple. Make America great again! So, in riding over, there are hundreds of thousands of people all along the highways, and they can’t get in! In other words, you’re very good at real estate. You got in! Congratulations! Congratulations. " His vocabulary is very limited and the language he uses to describe his rivals - "crooked Hillary" and "lying Ted Cruz"- is beyond the pale. And yet it does not seem to matter at home or abroad.

The amount of attention, including negative attention, Trump gets in the news media gives him status and importance. In the eyes of many people that translates into power. Every nation wants a "powerful" leader, but the United States, to maintain its status as the world premier superpower must have one. Being cruel and obnoxious is more acceptable than being apologetic if it is serves to project the image of power.  

I am reminded of a classic Serbian tale by Radoje Domanović of a people looking for a leader to take them to the promised land. They think that a silent stranger walking with a staff must be the wisest so they pick him. They follow him through thorns and wasteland as he seems to avoid a strait road. When he falls into a chasm, they jump after him. Many die on the way. When months later three remaining families confront the leader, they learn that he is a blind man.

Although the story does not apply to the United States, it illustrates how important an image is for a leader.

With the statue of Abraham Lincoln looking down, Trump delivered his usual crude oration on Sunday, with Rolling Thunder bikers cheering him on. A Vietnam War veteran was quoted as saying “He’s an asshole, and that’s what we need.” Another one said “We need to retake America, because we’ve lost it.” Wow! I must have been asleep. I never noticed we've lost our country. But I noticed that we've lost class. It almost seems as if no classy person would want to run for president any more.  Certainly no one like George Washington who as a teenager copied by hand 110 rules of civility that he followed all his life.  The current crop of presidential candidates seems oblivious to them. Thus wrote Washington:

 -  Speak not injurious words in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occasion.

 -  Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.

 -  Speak not evil of the absent for it is unjust.

But does anyone apply these rules in campaign speeches? In the past, leaders strived to sound educated, today they want to identify with the rude and the illiterate.  Maybe that's how they see the majority of voters. Europeans are commenting on Facebook: "America, you might call this an election, but the rest of the world is viewing it as your IQ test. And it's not looking good."

I have always believed (and been rebuked for saying it) that a nation has the leader it deserves. Especially in true democracies where the head of state is freely elected. This is not to say that every individual gets the leader he or she deserves. I tend to agree with de Tocqueville in that "a majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual." Come January, a new U.S. president will be sworn in, one that many Americans will not have wanted: a president elected by the majority and imposed on everyone.

The rest of the world will have to deal with our president too. And not everyone will be annoyed if it is Trump. Judging by the amount of attention he gets in the foreign media, he is more attractive to a lot of people overseas than either Clinton or Sanders, sort of like Las Vegas is more seductive than Washington.

Wagner: The End of Gods

Wagner's two notable heroes, Siegfried and Parsifal, are both naive, straightforward and uneducated. But Siegfried, who seems more intelligent of the two, ends up duped and vanquished, while the dim-witted Parsifal learns to recognize the evil and resist it. Thus he earns the honor of joining the ranks of selected knights that guard the Holy Grail and, according to Wagner, sires another hero, Lohengrin. Siegfried perishes without glory or issue as a result of betrayal and his own errors.

If Siegfried's demise reminds you of Greek tragedy, there is a good reason for it. Other than the name Nibelung in the title, Wagner's tetralogy has little to do with medieval German poem Das Nibelunglied, and what it does have is contained in Götterdämmerung. Wagner's other sources include ancient Norse sagas, German mythology, classical fairy tales and, yes, Greek drama. His ability to compress and modify elements from divergent sources into a more or less coherent story continues to dazzle with its brilliance. The Nibelunglied's Siegfried was neither a product of an incestuous union, nor a lover of his aunt. He subdued and abducted Brünhilde for his prospective brother in law Gunther.  There are several older sagas that differ in their accounts of Siegfried (or Sigurd), but in Das Nibelunglied, Siegfried loved and married Krimhild, Götterdämmerung's Gutrune.

Wagner's Siegfried is physically strong, beautiful and intrepid. He is intelligent enough to figure out that Mime is not his father, he is able to forge a sword, something a much more experienced Mime cannot, and he knows where to inflict the most effective blow to kill Fafner. All of those skills have made him cocky and overconfident, but have not prepared him to deal with treachery. As a boy, Siegfried would have taken advice from Forest Bird, but as an adult he laughs off the warning from Rhein maidens that could have saved his life. His braggadocio is perhaps his biggest flaw and he pays for it dearly.
 
Brünhilde's case is a little more complex. Generally considered The Ring's larger-than-life heroine  - the savior of the world - she makes her share of mistakes before doing the right thing. Siegfried's betrayal seems unforgivable, but to plot with Hagen to kill him in revenge? That's bad manners even in the pre-historic era. In the end, she returns the cursed ring to its rightful owners, but on careful analysis it was Wotan's plan for her (remember Wotan's dialogue with Erda in Siegfried). Brünhilde's downfall began when she first refused to give up the ring, a token of love from Siegfried. The moment she held on to it, the curse kicked in: Siegfried accepted a doctored "refreshment" from Gutrune and fell prey to Hagen's plot. If Brünhilde is a hero, she is that because of the tragedies that befell her, rather than any grand deeds on her part. That seems to be the case with most Ring heroes - their appeal is in their failures more than in their accomplishments.

Götterdämmerung, the Norns

The last installment of The Ring cycle on Friday was a glorious end of the gods. Director Francesca Zambello, achieved the right balance between dream and reality. The Norns in the opening scene worked with electric cables instead of yarns, while they discussed the past, present and future, providing helpful information for those who missed the first three operas. A cable (aka rope of destiny) breaking at one point portends bad future. All three singers (Lindsay Ammann, Jamie Barton and Marcy Stonikas) were excellent and I hope we are spared yet another review labeling Wagner's narratives as "excruciatingly" long. Zambello has done a superb job of making the Norns scene somber, but lively. I love that prologue even when there is nothing on the stage, because it unveils another nuance of the story every time, but on Friday just examining details on the stage along with the music made it fly by.

In the next scene, we are back at the Valkyre's rock last seen in Siegfried. Catherine Foster and Daniel Brenna reprized the roles of Brünhilde and Siegfried. They seemed to sing with vigor, but it was hard to hear them over the orchestra.

Siegfried's Rhein journey is accompanied by somewhat abstract projections of flowing water, which is all that was needed. The Gibichung Hall was austere and elegant in black-and-white, and shades in between. Eric Halverson's Hagen was older than expected, but had a voice that no orchestra could overpower. His take on Gunther's conniving step brother was as good as one could wish, but completely different from Gidon Saks's portrayal in the WNO's 2009 concert performance. Saks was a more brooding and moody Hagen, who could be seductive, insinuating and commanding by turns - the most sexy Hagen I have ever seen. Halverson projected power and self confidence, and was more of a bully.

Götterdämmerung, Hunting Scene

Brenna's Siegfried changed from an inexperienced young man, a boy really, to a self-assured grown up which Siegfried had become through his relationship with Brünhilde. The former demi-godess taught him all she knew, she said, but that clearly did not include how to recognize deceit. Having lived mostly in isolation, Siegfried has poor social skills and makes his first sortie into the real world completely unprepared. He trusts the lying Gibichungs, but not the sincere river maidens. His memory is selective: he remembers that he has gained the ring by killing the dragon, but forgets all about Brünhilde. What a confused young man! Brenna was good in Siegfried, but affirmed himself definitively in the crucial death scene of Götterdämmerung. 

Foster was not my favorite Brünhilde. She may have done everything right but, as far as I am concerned,  failed to electrify with her presence. The weakest scene of the evening for me was the meeting between Brünhilde and Waltraute. Foster was more of a revengeful daughter than a woman in love, and Jamie Barton was neither a fierce Valkyre, nor a desperate daughter.

As Gutrune, Melissa Citro was simply lovely. Her seduction of Siegfried was a charming combination of tease and restraint, her desperation over his death genuine, her remorse at having been part of a ploy that killed him convincing.

Götterdämmerung, Hagen and Gutrune

The male chorus was excellent throughout. Conductor Philippe Auguin was impressive yet again, though he turned up the volume too high in more places than I would have liked.

Rhein maidens wading through the river full of trash was Zambello's environmental message, creative and effective. Less creative and somewhat kitschy was the closing scene in which a young girl comes to plant a tree next to the now cleansed river, as a symbol of new and better world coming after the departure of corrupt gods. 

I couldn't quite understand the meaning of barbed wires and watch towers projected in black-and-white in the background before the hunting scene.  Good reason to see the opera again.

The great thing about Wagner's Ring is that it fits into almost any time and place. It lends itself to diverse concepts, settings and interpretations more than any other opera I can think of, and every production reveals another layer worth exploring. 

Wotan can be a male chauvinist or a henpecked husband. He did seek wisdom from women - the Norns, Erda - but for advice on legal loopholes he turns to a male, Loge. Having once made a wrong choice, could he have stopped the downright spiraling and get back on the right path? 

And who is the real hero of The Ring?  Is it Siegmund who refused glory in the name of love, or is it the fearless Siegfried? Brünhilde the Valkyre, or Brünhilde the woman? There is no definitive answer to any of these questions, which allows everyone to find his or her own. Perhaps that's a secret ingredient of Wagner's lasting appeal.

Siegfried - A Hero of Our Time

If Siegfried is your favorite Ring opera, as it is mine, getting to see a new production can be a mixed blessing.  Depending on the tenor portraying the title hero, the performance can offer four hours of pure bliss or just an average musical evening. WNO's rendition of the third part of Wagner's Nibelung Ring on Wednesday not only had charismatic Siegfried - it was outstanding in every way.

When we first meet Sigfried, he is a teenage orphan, adopted by Nibelung dwarf Mime who is grooming him for a fight with Fafner (giant-cum-dragon) over the Rhine treasure.  Like his brother Alberich and like ruling god Wotan, Mime covets the gold ring and headcover Tarnhelm, for their special powers. The evil dwarf hopes that Siegfried will get the gold for him just like Wotan hoped Siegfried's father would get it for him. Neither the dwarf nor the god can fight for the treasure themselves, one because he is too weak, the other because he is bound by a contract, which forbids him to fight the giant.

Mime trying to forge a sword, Act I, Siegfried

Wotan therefore needs a hero who would get the ring for him without implicating the gods. The hero must be a human and an enemy of gods. Siegmund may have been all of that, but Wotan's plan to use his estranged son, fell through when his wife Fricka convinced him (for her own reasons) that providing Siegmund with the god's invincible sword, no matter how indirectly, would still make him an accomplice.

There are countless interpretations of Wagner's story and intent, but this much is clear from the narrative. People who doze off during The Ring's lengthy recitatives may miss important details and subsequently watch the highlights without enough context. Among the multitude of questions that one hears these days is why is Wotan looking for a strong male hero when a female one ( his daughter Brünhilde) is standing right before him. Wotan explains it extensively in Act II, Scene 2 of Die Walküre and knowing the gist of that narrative helps understand the whole cycle. In Siegfried, I would suggest paying careful attention to Wotan's dialogue with Erda because it contains important clues to understanding The Ring's last opera, Götterdämmerung.

This is not to say that you can't simply sit back and enjoy the music. Daniel Brenna's Siegfried on Wednesday was captivating. He looked and sounded the age he is supposed to be - presumably late teens - so much so that I could almost hear him saying "whatever," or "you are hovering," and many other things my son used to say to me when he was a teenager.  He also made me think of many young U.S. servicemen shipped off to Iraq and Afghanistan, not quite knowing what awaits there. Brenna sang with a clear bell-like voice that sounded fresh till the very end, including the grueling Act III, after he had already been singing more than two hours and Brünhilde only began.

Daniel Brenna is a youthful and charismatic Siegfried

Catherine Foster's Brünhilde was a pleasure to hear and if you did not know she had hurt her ankle, you would not know it. She made it look like she was somewhat insecure on her legs because she was still waking up from her 18-year-long nap.

Alan Held showed us yet another side of Wotan - an aging god still holding on to power, but aware it won't be for long. Lindsay Ammann as Erda, was convincing as a wise Earth goddess who has gotten tired of the World and wants to retire for good. Her resignation is a last blow to Wotan, one that convinces him to accept the demise of the gods. Again, pay attention to what is said between them!

David Cangelosi as Mime provided the most entertainment for the evening, pausing with his shenanigans long enough and in right places to remind us of his evil intentions. Gordon Hawkins as his brother Alberich was straightforward in expressing anger and frustration at being duped. They made a good pair.

I was looking forward to Soloman Howard's Fafner and he was worth the wait. Howard has a deep, alluring bass and as a dying giant, he elicited compassion. Singing from inside a huge armored machine, which sensibly replaces the dragon in this production, gave his voice a sinister tint.

Jacqueline Echols was a chirpy Forest Bird, presented as a bookish young girl, intent on mentoring Siegfried, who is illiterate at least in some ways.  She connected well with Brenna.

The greatest hero of Wednesday night's performance was conductor Philippe Auguin. He spun some of the most beguiling sounds to be had from Wagner's score, and I'd never heard the WNO orchestra play so well.

First Day: Die Walküre

Wagner stipulated that his tetralogy is to be performed in three days and one preliminary evening. In this scheme of things, the first of the four operas, Das Rheingold, is a prologue. I don't quite get the logic of it, but nevertheless, this somehow puts Die Walküre in the first place. Indeed, it is the most popular and best known of the four Ring operas. Perhaps that's why it opened with more fanfare (literally) on Monday than the "prologue" two days ago.

Ring's "First Day" opens with fanfare on Alpenhorns

After seeing Christine Goerke in Florencia an el Amazonas a few years ago, I said she was my new favorite soprano. So when it was announced that she would replace the indisposed Catherine Foster as Brünhilde at least for the evening, I was curious but admittedly a little suspicious, despite her reputation as a Wagnerian. Florencia is one thing and Brünhilde quite another, and my taste rarely conforms with reviewers' opinions.

Well, Goerke dispelled any doubt I might have had when she hurtled onto the stage, seemingly from a riding session, for a meeting with her father. She was in excellent voice, sang effortlessly throughout, and her presence was electrifying after a somewhat disappointing Siegmund/Sieglinde duo (Christopher Ventris and Meagan Miller). It is a pity that Goerke's expressive voice was drowned by the orchestra in some of the most sensitive moments of her encounter with Siegmund.

Another star of the evening for me was Alan Held as Wotan. From a ruthless god in Das Rheingold he transitioned into a father torn between love and duty. His torment after killing out-of-wedlock son Siegmund is so genuine that I felt a lump swelling in my throat and I am far from sentimental. He was equally poignant in his farewell to Brünhilde. When I first saw Held's Wotan, he turned from the charming young seducer of Das Rheingold into a more mature man/god of Die Walküre and finally into an old tramp in Siegfried. This time around he displayed a more profound understanding of Wotan's character and his dilemmas. 

As heralded in Das Rheingold, Francesca Zambello's "American Ring" has undergone a lot of refinement since I last saw it. The popular ride of the Valkyres, with warrior women parachuting onto the stage, was spectacular and a clear favorite with the audience. I liked the way the uniformed women lined up before Wotan as if he were their military commander, not father. Real German shepherds were running across the stage to sniff out the runaway twins. And Wotan lit real fire around his disobedient daughter. That last scene was not only spectacular but a little frightening too.

Closing scene from Die Walküre was encored in my kitchen 

Some of the things that bothered my the first time around were still there and now I know why. When Placido Domingo sang Siegmund in the earlier production, I remember thinking: well, hasn't he aged, look at how his shoulders are stooped! But when I saw the same hump on a much younger Christopher Ventris on Monday, I had a better view from a seat closer to the stage, and saw that the problem was in the coat, not Domingo's back. The coat has a pleat in the upper back that opens when the singer bends, making him look like a hunchback. Hasn't the designer noticed that with all the bending between Siegmund and Sieglinde?

A propos bending, I used to think that Anja Kampe (WNO's 2007 Sieglinde) was unable to assume more than two different postures on the stage: one with her arms wrapped around her waist, the other with her arms spread out; both while leaning heavily forward. I was therefore surprised to see her as a seductive and quite creative Tosca two years ago in Berlin. Miller's Sieglinde on Monday showed a wider range of motion and expression than Kampe's, but bending forward was her main shtick as well, suggesting it has more to do with die Regie than the interpreter.

New patrons probably won't notice any of this as they get carried away by the drama unfolding on the stage. Zambello's concept of Americanizing The Ring worked very well in Die Walküre as it did in Das Rheingold, and how could it not with our CEO's acting like gods, many of our young people serving in the military, numerous children being abandoned by parents and women still being punished for being assertive. The first scene of Act I could be taking place in the Appalachia, or in any remote, gun-toting community that abides by its own laws and honor code. The encounter between Wotan and Fricka could have been a scene from a convincing new version of Citizen Cane.

In answer to the traditionalists who reject Wotan in a three-piece suit, here's how Sir Denis Forman paraphrases Wotan in A Night at the Opera: "I won the world by making some pretty dodgy deals with certain doubtful operators" and "I can't attack Fafner because the deal I did with him specifically excludes aggression." Forman was born in 1917 and the book is from 1994. We are in 2016 if I am not mistaken.

Wagner's impact is powerful - I was only too aware of it when the smell from my kitchen  back home reminded me that I had forgotten to turn off the stove before leaving for the opera. During the five-hour absence, what was supposed to be a home made beef soup turned into a pile of charcoals at the bottom of the pot.  My apprehension about the stage fire was actually a premonition.

Washington's Wagner Ring Draws Young and Not So Young

The night before the Washington National Opera's grand opening of its first complete Ring cycle, I was having dinner with friends who commented on the fact that the tickets were sold well in advance and that people were traveling from far and wide to see it. Almost like a pilgrimage, they said. But one gentleman hailing from California bemoaned the future of the opera in general. He said he was seeing only elderly people at the opera and wondered what will happen when this generation is gone. On the opening night Saturday at the Kennedy Center, the audience was far from old. In fact, grey heads were in the minority any many people looked younger than 30. There was not one empty seat in the venue that sometimes has difficulty filling the house for the most popular of operas. What magic is Wagner's Ring wielding to draw crowds wherever it shows up?  

For sure, much of its attraction is due to the timeless themes of love, power and greed. But I think what makes it irresistible is the way in which Wagner wrapped these themes in the tapistry of ancient myths and classical fairy tales, that fascinated us in childhood and continue to speak to our inner child. What woman would not like to be woken up by a kiss from a true hero and what man would not like to wield power over the world, or at least over his own life.  So it is consoling to see the rich, the powerful and the beautiful who are as flawed and as vulnerable as we are, and have to atone for their sins just like we do for ours.  

The opening night suggests that Wagner has young fans...

...and attracts diverse audience

I saw my first complete Ring in the 1980's thanks to the WETA Television broadcast of a Met recording. I planned to "suffer" through it as a matter of education. But instead of dreadful boredom and fatigue I expected, even the longest operas kept me awake and mesmerized.  I could not wait for the next evening to see who did what to whom, just as in the past I had waited for a new season of Dallas to see who killed J.R. And there started my love affair with the Ring.

In his book A Night at the Opera, Sir Denis Forman says: "There was a time when Wagner and especially The Ring divided mankind into the Wagnerites and the rest. Today the war is won." And guess who is the winner!

Das Rheingold, Scene 3, Alberich and the enslaved Nibelungs

On Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, when the first Ring cycle opened with Das Rheingold or The Rhinegold as the WNO calls it, the undisputed winner was Wagner. The first of the Ring operas was last seen here 10 years ago, the other three followed one by one. The production I remembered as being firmly grounded on the American soil - with gold prospectors, robber barons and Erda as a Native American in a fringed suede dress, moccasins and feathers in her hair - has seen much improvement. I liked it well the first time, but the new version has a dreamy quality to it, including video projections of falling water, the mist rising over the river and changes in costuming that suggest universality and timelessness. In another fun new touch, this production has Freia afflicted with Stockholm syndrome, reluctant to  leave her captor Fasolt. 

A couple of chat forums took me by surprise with expressions of outrage that Wagner's gods should be using cell phones and boarding a cruise ship called Valhalla, instead of entering some sort of Norse heaven. For me Wotan, Donner, Frohe, Loge, Freia at alia were not gods even in the original version, but rather a privileged upper class fighting to retain its status. If you believe Bernard Shaw, The Ring expresses Wagner's view of his own society. In his booklet The Perfect Wagnerite, which I highly recommend, Shaw gives a detailed account on the subject. There were greedy industrialists in the 19th century as there are greedy businessmen today. Ecologists could argue that The Ring speaks in defense of the environment and protection of natural resources. In any case, why would it be easier to find Wotan more believable as god than as a CEO of a global corporation? Even the British queen calls her domain "the firm." 

Francesca Zambello had good reason to envision places and characters from the Ring in the United States. As I watched Das Rheingold, every scene and every dialogue made me think of something happening in the world today: Wotan and his group - of the political leaders of our time, weakened by the need for money and their own vanity, Alberich exploiting the Nibelungs - of a Chinese industrialist squeezing the life out of cheap labor.  Laws in The Ring are made to be broken even by those who make them; heroes are naive and therefore vanquished... 

And all this comes wrapped in some of the finest music ever written. Maestro Phillipe Auguin did a great job on Saturday safely guiding a huge ensemble of singers, players and extras through the treacherous waters of the mighty river, which is Das Rheingold opera. Overall, I think I was more impressed than 10 years ago, and I was impressed then too. In terms of portrayals it was good to hear fresh voices.  Lindsay Ammann's Erda, William Burden's Loge, Rhein maidens of Renée Tatum, Jacqueline Echols and Catherine Martin and giants Fafner (Soloman Howard - can't wait to hear him in Siegfried) and Fasolt (Julian Close) stood out for me.  It was a little surprising to see the return of some familiar faces in no less than the main roles. Alan Held as Wotan was as solid as I remember him, and Elizabeth Bishop's Fricka was as bland as I remember her from a decade ago. I could never quite understand Washington's infatuation with Bishop, but there it is.

Overall, it was a memorable opening of the cycle, certainly worth a trip to Washington. Even though I know who does what to whom in the next installment, I still can't wait to see it.

If literature on Wagner is to be believed, few contemporaries liked him except Ludwig II and Cosima von Bulow. His progeny also has a dubious reputation. But even his worst enemies today can hardly deny the glory of Wagner's music. 

On Oedipus, Wagner and GSA

As Washington is getting ready for its first-ever full cycle of Wagner's Ring tetralogy, the British news media are aflush with a story of incestuous love between a mother and son, reunited after years of separation. The son who had been put up for adoption more than 30 years ago, found the mother during his search for biological parents and when he found her, the two fell madly in love. Now the couple is planning to get married and try for a child. They say their relationship is not incest, but a case of GSA, or "genetic sexual attraction."

I have noticed the story from London's Daily Mail on Facebook because of the avalanche of disgust, revulsion and disbelief it has unleashed in Croatia. The reaction must have been similar elsewhere. In the article, the British daily also includes an interview with an Australian father and daughter, both adults, who live as a couple and claim to be happy and enjoying great sex.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3529572/I-m-love-son-want-baby-Mother-falls-son-gave-adoption-32-years-ago.html 

Britain's Independent soon published more on the topic under the headline Gran and Grandson, Brother and Sister, Father and Daughter - the Weird World of Genetic Sexual Attraction.  The phenomenon reportedly afflicts especially family members who have long been separated.

Stories of incest under any name have always fascinated the world, in the way horror stories do.  The couples inspire hatred or pity, depending on whether they have entered the "sinful" liaison willingly or inadvertently.  Take for example Oedipus, the mythological king of Thebes from the ancient Greek drama that gave us the term Oedipus Complex. The tragic hero kills his father and marries his mother, but is as horrified as everyone else when he finds out what he has done. So he blinds himself and leaves Thebes for exile until he is somewhat rehabilitated in the second installment of the Sophocles's trilogy. But his burial place has to remain secret so as not to cause bad luck.

Siegfried, the central hero in Wagner's Nibelung Ring, is the son of twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who were separated as children and reunited after Sieglinde was already married to Hunding. Although the siblings' father, Valhalla's chief god Wotan, condones their sexual relationship because he expects them to beget a perfect hero needed to save the gods, he is forced to punish his out-of-wedlock children at the request of his legitimate wife Fricka. But Siegfried, the fruit of the incestuous union, himself falls in love and marries a long-lost aunt, Bruenhilde. Naturally, there is no happy end there either.

Wagner, The Valkyrie, Act I finale:  Twins Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love - photo Cory Weaver for SFO

The Sophocles drama as well as Wagner's Ring are entrenched in their status as the world's immortal classics. They serve to remind that "unnatural" sexual relationships can only end in tragedy.

In real life, it is a little different. In ancient Egypt, it was not uncommon for brothers and sisters to marry if it was in their interest. Cleopatra was first married to one of her brothers before replacing him with Roman conqueror Julius Caesar in a union that gave her more power. Until quite recently, it was perfectly acceptable for cousins in some European countries to marry.  Even Queen Victoria was related to her beloved consort Albert.  

Sexual relationships and marriages between close relatives have been shunned mostly because of the possibility of inbreeding. One of my most beloved fictional characters, Ursula Iguarian from Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, feared one of her children would be born with a pig's tail because she was married to a cousin.

The stigma attached to sex between close relatives compels those involved to keep it tightly under wraps, giving the impression that it occurs very seldom and only among mentally disturbed people. If a couple is discovered, the older, and presumably more experienced participant is accused of abuse. The younger is advised to seek counseling in order to avoid lifelong psychological consequences.

But sexual relationships between family members are not as uncommon as we would like to believe, and are often consensual.  They are not always a result of lengthy separation either.  Many daughters fall in love with their fathers and want sex with them, at least for a while, and sons also fall in love with their mothers.  In most cases, the attraction is suppressed and eventually outgrown, but not always.  Louis Malle's movie Murmur of the Heart deals with a mother-son relationship, which culminates in an unplanned sex encounter.  The next morning the mother tells the son "I don't want you to be unhappy, or ashamed, or sorry. We'll remember it as a very beautiful and solemn moment that will never happen again..." The experience seems to have liberated the socially awkward boy and prepared him for a more conventional relationship. Though uncomfortable to watch, the movie showed normal people in somewhat extraordinary, but still realistic situations.

In the news media, however, such stories reek of sensationalism and are intended to shock, horrify, repulse and fascinate at the same time. They suggest aberration and depravity - something that does not happen to normal people. When it does, it has to remain a dirty little secret. One person recently revealed in a chat forum that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with her brother for several years before both of them grew out of it and married other people.

"I mostly feel guilty because people say I should," she wrote. "I thought it was pretty great at the time, but it's hard to talk about it without people smashing the stigma in your face. Overall, I don't think it's that big of a deal, really. It was great at the time, nowadays I don't think much about it."

So, if there is lifelong trauma from having consensual sex with a close family member, it seems to stem from the social condemnation rather than from the relationship itself.   

People tend to express disgust for behavior veering away from proscribed social norms, and they like to make it illegal and punishable.  Same-sex marriage was all but unthinkable until recently, and not so long ago, gay and lesbian sex was widely considered to be unnatural. Even heterosexual sex between unmarried couples is still punishable by death in many traditional societies.  In the United States and other western countries, there is a growing movement toward tolerance of diversity in the area of gender and relationships, but now that the same-sex marriage is widely accepted, there seems to be a search for new monsters in the closet.

Meanwhile, the tickets for Washington's first complete Ring cycle are all but sold out. When Wagner's masterpiece starts to weave its magic in the Kennedy Center Opera House, few patrons will stop to think whether Siegfried and Bruenhilde are committing incest or just suffering from GSA.

When in France...

.... you don't have much choice but do as the French do.  That means forget doing any business between noon and 2:30 PM and after 7:00 PM.  At least in southern France where everyone considers it their God-given right (or human right or constitutional right or whatever) to have a leisurely lunch and time to digest it before continuing work.  Every time I go back to Europe I am amazed at how little people seem to work and still do all right.

Naturally, it is much easier to pop home for lunch if you live in a smaller town like Nice or Avignon where you can reach most addresses within 10-15 minutes.  But it's not only that. The cities and towns of France's south seem devoid of workaholism.  There's no competition to do a better job, and certainly no eagerness to serve a client.

I sat at a beach bar in Nice for half an hour before being able to entice a waiter to take my order. When a friend joined me a little later, she could not get a drink at all because they stopped serving.  It was 4:45 PM so one could assume that the bar closed at 5:00 PM. To our American minds, that was still enough time to order and finish a drink. A photo below would suggest that there were no tourists in Nice in March.  In fact, there were plenty. The restaurants just didn't allow them to eat outside proscribed meal hours. 

French restaurants are vacated outside "regular" meal hours....

.....not for the lack of tourists.

The locals know that and head for lunch promptly at noon among other reasons to ensure they don't come too late for the daily special, which could be gone within the first hour.  Since they prefer not to mingle with tourists, you can find them having their Sunday lunch at charming off-the-beaten-path villages, such as Bouzigues, a coastal community near Montpellier, known for its locally grown oysters.  A three course fixed-price lunch in a place like this can be had for as little as $15, sometimes including a glass of wine.  If you come too late, you may have to order à la carte, and pay twice as much for something similar.  We quickly learned to do as the French do.  After all, there is nothing else to do at lunch time but have lunch, so it better be satisfying.  And that it was. No one ever yanked our plates away as soon as we put down the forks, no waiter interrupted our conversation gazillion times to ask if we needed anything else, and most importantly, no one tried to push us out of the door in order to give our table to someone else.  You can spend all of the two or three hours while the shops are closed at that table (and long after you've finished your meal) enjoying the sun and the view. 

Le Marin restaurant in Bouzigues is popular with the locals 

Bouzigues is famous for seafood, especially oysters and this unusual squid

Closures are an important point to consider when planning a trip to France.  For example, I was not able to visit the famous Avignon Cathedral because it was closed for renovation until Easter when I was no longer there, but I was lucky to see the magnificent Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Nice whose two-year renovation had just been completed.  I also miscalculated in leaving my last full day in Nice, which was a Tuesday, to visit the Chagal Museum. As it happens, the museum is open every day except Tuesday. But having had similar experience with France before, I decided to take everything as it came and let nothing ruin my holiday.  Instead of the cathedral of Avignon, I visited the Ste Réparate Cathédrale in Nice and it was more than gorgeous. Since the visit was during the Easter Mass, I even got to see the Bishop of Nice (André Marceau) who presided over the spectacular service.

Avignon Cathedral was scheduled to open for Easter after an extensive renovation

I learned during my previous visits to France not to expect any street signs or directions in English and not too many in French either.  Even the most touristy places in France act as if no foreigner has ever stepped on their soil.  It is helpful not only to speak French, but also to be familiar with local customs and regulations because it will be assumed that you know them, unlike in the US where it is assumed that no one knows anything. If in doubt, head for the nearest Office de tourisme and get all the information you need before venturing out on your own. And remember, even the visitor centers can be closed for lunch as we found out in Aix-en-Provence.

Fortunately, people in southern France are much friendlier than the Parisians and very helpful when you get stuck, as we did literally in the old city of Arles.  It so happened that we had to spend an unplanned night in Arles so we had not learned much about it beforehand. I had always imagined Arles as a huge field of flowers painted by van Gogh, and so it was somewhat of a shock to run into an intricate network of narrow medieval streets while trying to locate our hotel. I got nervous about the very real possibility of damaging the rental car before reaching our destination. Between the cell phone contact with the hotel receptionist (miraculously, the phone decided to work in our moment of need after being dead for days) and the help of three young men passing by, we managed to maneuver the car out of the maze and drag our suitcases uphill to the 12th-century building converted into hotel Logis de la Muette.

Driving in the old city of Arles can be very tricky...

...it may be easier to park outside Arles and walk to your hotel

On the whole, it seems easier to use public transportation than drive a rental car in France, except....  The last time I traveled outside Paris I decided to try the railway.  French trains are beautiful, comfortable, relatively cheap and you can see a lot of the country if you don't have to focus on taking the right exit at hundreds of roundabouts along the way.  What I did not know is that railway stations in France don't tell you from which platform your train will leave until about 10-15 minutes before departure.  At a station with 20 platforms, it is almost impossible to catch your train if you are lugging a heavy suitcase.  I paid more than $100 for a new ticket, after missing a train from Paris to Bordeaux, which originally cost me only $30. So when I missed another train from Toulouse to Lyon, I simply refused to buy a new ticket and boarded the next train with the old one. Two conductors argued with me for about 20 minutes demanding extra payment, but I was adamant that their system was at fault and stuck to my guns. Eventually they gave up because the only alternative was to throw me out of the train. To avoid a similar hassle this time, I decided to rent a car for traveling through the country.

I still took a train for a couple of day trips because I could leave the luggage in the hotel and so it was more convenient than driving. One trip was to Cannes where you don't want to get stuck in traffic. And it would not be worth it. I don't know what I expected - perhaps some sort of European glamor - but I felt like I arrived in Florida or California. The street signs suggested the feeling was justified. Did you know that Hotel California is in Cannes? 

Cannes appears to be fashioned after U.S. coastal resorts

The public transportation in the area is so good that it would have been a waste of money to take a taxi to the Nice airport  (or anywhere else, really).  Just as long as you know which terminal you are going to and can rely on your fellow travelers to tell you where to get off. When the bus stops, you have little way of knowing at which terminal you are.

If you are prepared for all this, muddling through is more amusing than annoying because everything somehow works.  You just need to know how. I laughed my head off reading passengers' comments about the Nice airport while waiting for my plane. One woman, ostensibly American, wrote that she was happy to see a good new restaurant at the airport. But when she and her husband sat down for a meal, no one came to serve them, although the waiters had looked their way. When the couple plucked up the courage to summon one, he said they were no longer serving. These things are so funny when they happen to other people.

My hilarity subsided when half an hour before my flight I still did not have my boarding gate number.  An airport worker assured me it was too early to announce it.  Luckily my big suitcase was checked in and I was ready to break into a run, hell for leather, to catch my plane at any of the 30 something gates scattered around different levels of the airport.