L'elisir d'amore--A Night at the Opera

A night at the opera for the crew. We attended a performance of The Elixir of Love at Der Kronleuchter, the Regensburg city theater. Initially some, including me, were not all that keen on the opera. I like every sort of music under the sun, but I’ve never liked opera which I associated with over-trained coloratura sopranos, the fat ladies who must sing (and sing and sing and sing) before IT’S OVER.

But David convinced me that I couldn’t consider myself civilized until I saw an opera. Our students didn’t have to be convinced—they had to attend as part of their art history class, although to be fair, a number of them had already attended opera performances on their own. I guess I was really the uncivilized one.

But Domenico Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore (Milan premire, 1832) was an entertaining bit of Italian fluff without a fat lady in sight, well acted, well (not over) sung, closer to Broadway than Wagner. Well, the Italian libretto was sung in German, but the plot--a variation of the classic Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl--was not hard to follow although all the word-play was lost on me (Niki later told me the lyrics were quite funny).

Donizetti (1798--1848) was one of the most popular and prolific opera composers of his age. He is said to have composed over 70 operas but the exact number is unknown because many were lost after he went out of fashion. The year he died, however, one third of the Italian operas being performed were his. He was born poor but his talent was recognized and he was enrolled in a charity music academy along with his older brother (who went on to become the Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud II—now THAT would make a great opera). Donizetti is credited as the father of Italian comic opera who inspired Verdi and Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Synopsis of The Elixir of Love (premire Milan, 1832)
taken from http://www.operatampa.org/season/elixirsynopsis.htm

ACT I
Adina, wealthy owner of a local farm, her friend Giannetta and a group of peasants are resting beneath a shade tree on her estate. From a distance, Nemorino, a young villager, watches the bucolic scene, lamenting that he has nothing to offer Adina but love (“Quanto è bella”). The peasants urge their mistress to read them a story — how Tristan won the heart of Isolde by drinking a magic love potion (“Della crudele Isotta”). No sooner has she done so than Sgt. Belcore swaggers in with his troop (“Or se m"ami”).

The soldier’s conceit amuses Adina, but he is not dissuaded from asking her hand in marriage. Promising to think the offer over, she orders refreshments for his comrades. When Adina and Nemorino are left alone, she tells him his time would be better spent looking after his ailing uncle than mooning over her, for she is fickle as a breeze (“Chiedi all’aura lusinghiera”).

In the town piazza, villagers hail Dr. Dulcamara, who enters in a magnificent carriage that proclaims the patent medicine he is selling. The quack declares the potion capable of curing anything (“Udite, o rustici!”). Since it is inexpensive, the villagers buy eagerly. When they have gone, Nemorino asks Dulcamara if he sells the elixir of love described in Adina’s book (“Avreste voi per caso”).

Pulling out a bottle of Bordeaux, the charlatan declares this is the very draught. Though it costs him his last cent, Nemorino buys the wine and hastily drinks it. Adina enters to find him tipsy; certain he will win her love, he pretends indifference (“Esulti pur la barbara”). To punish him, Adina flirts with Belcore, who, informed that he must return to his garrison, persuades her to marry him at once. Horrified, Nemorino begs Adina to wait one more day (“Adina, credimi”), but she ignores him and invites the entire village to her wedding feast. As the peasants shout taunts (“Vedete un po’”), Nemorino rushes away, moaning that he has been ruined by Dulcamara’s elixir.

ACT II

At a local tavern, the pre-wedding supper is in progress (“Cantiamo, facciam brindisi”). Dulcamara, self-appointed master of ceremonies, sits with the bridal couple. “What a pity Nemorino cannot see how happy we are,” thinks Adina. Her mind is distracted by the doctor, who suggests they blend their voices in a barcarole about a gondoliera and her wealthy suitor (“Io son ricco”). When the duet ends, Adina goes off with Belcore to sign the marriage contract; the guests disperse. Remaining behind, Dulcamara is joined by Nemorino, who begs for another bottle of elixir; his pleas are rejected because of lack of funds.

Belcore returns, annoyed because Adina has postponed the wedding until nightfall; when he spies Nemorino, he asks why the youth is so sad. Nemorino explains his financial plight, whereupon the sergeant persuades him to join the army to receive a bonus awaiting all volunteers (“Venti scudi”). Belcore leads the perplexed Nemorino off to sign him up, enabling him to buy more elixir.

Peasant girls, gathered in the square, learn from Giannetta that Nemorino’s uncle has died and willed him a fortune (“Possibilissimo. Non è probabile!”). When he reels in, giddy from a second bottle of wine, they besiege him with attention; unaware of his new wealth, he believes the elixir finally has taken effect (“Dell’elisir mirabile”). Adina and Dulcamara arrive in time to see him leave with a bevy of beauties, and she, angry that he has sold his freedom to Belcore, grows doubly furious (“Quanto amore! ed io spietata”).

Scenting a new sale, Dulcamara claims that Nemorino’s popularity is due to the magic elixir. Adina replies that she will win him back through feminine charms. Reentering alone in a pensive mood, Nemorino takes heart because of a tear he has seen on Adina’s cheek (“Una furtiva lagrima”), but when she appears, he acts disinterested. She confesses she bought back his enlistment papers because she loves him (“Prendi, per me sei libero”).

Back in the piazza, Belcore marches in to find Adina affianced to Nemorino; declaring that thousands of women await him, he accepts the situation philosophically. Attributing Nemorino’s happiness and inheritance to the elixir, Dulcamara quickly sells more bottles before making his escape (“Ei corregge ogni diffetto”).

St. Emmeram Monastery

Today the art history class toured St. Emmeram Benedictine monastery which houses the remains of that saint and fragments of others. Naturally the rest of us went along as well.

Legend says the monastery was founded by St. Emmeram of Poitiers who came to ancient Roman garrison town Ratisbon (as Regensburg was once called) toward the end of the 7th Century to convert the Bavarian tribes from pagan idolatry. But that's why it's a legend. Emmerman didn't found anything.
Although I have no hard evidence, I think that Emmeram’s mission had less to do with turning the Bavarians from idolatry (which I think would require rather more than three years) than with converting them from a competing form of Christianity known as Arianism. Arians were followers of Bishop Arius of Alexandria (d. 336) who believed that Jesus, the Son of God, could not also be the Father (of similar but not same substance).

This was disputed by those who believed in a Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one). Arianism was declared heresy in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea but it took many centuries before it could be rooted out, especially among the Germanic tribes where it had been spread by pious Arian missionaries.

St. Emmeram befriended the local ruler, Theodo Duke of Bavaria, whose family had founded a small chapel to St. George around 652. Emmeram worked among the Bavarians for some three years with such success that, a century later when St. Boniface, known as the Apostle of Germany, reported to Rome on the condition of Christianity in Germany, Bavaria was the one bright spot with many churches and monasteries established and flourishing.

Perhaps the guilt of Duke Theodo had something to with that. It seems Ota, his daughter, had been seduced and made pregnant by one of his court nobles. She had confessed to Emmeram who told her to tell daddy it was he who had done the deed. Emmeram then decided it would be a good time to take that trip to Rome he’d been planning. So, was he trying to deflect the duke’s wrath from Ota and whoever her lover was? Or did he do it? Or was he just ...what? No matter. Enraged, the Duke sent his men after Emmeram. When they caught him at Kleinhelfendorf he was tortured, then taken to Ascheim and executed (I’ll spare you the gory details).

Subsequently the guilt-stricken Ota confessed and the equally guilt-stricken Theodo spent a lifetime making up for his sin. In 697, the remains of the martyr were interred at the Church of St. George which Theodo greatly enlarged. About the same time he founded the Benedictine monastery that became St. Emmerans.

The rest comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05406a.htm It was still further enlarged by Charlemagne about the year 800 and endowed with extensive possessions and many privileges. When St. Boniface, in 739, divided Bavaria into four diocese, the first Bishop of Ratisbon fixed his see at the Abbey of St. Emmeram, but later on it was removed by a subsequent bishop to the old Cathedral of St. Stephen, which stands beside the present one.

In 830, the then bishop obtained from Louis, King of Bavaria, the administration of the abbey for himself and his successors, and for upwards of a hundred years the Bishops of Ratisbon ruled the monastery as well as the diocese, but in 968 St. Wolfgang restored its independence and from that time forward it enjoyed the rule of its own abbots.

For some centuries it was customary to elect as bishop a canon of St. Stephen's and a monk of St. Emmeram's alternately. Many of the early bishops of Ratisbon were buried in the abbey church and their tombs are still to be seen there, as also is that of the Emperor Arnulph (d. 899). The abbots held the rank of princes of the Empire, and as such had a seat in the Imperial Diets.

The present church, which is a Romanesque basilica, dates from the thirteenth century, but was restored in a somewhat debased style in the eighteenth. It is one of the few German churches with a detached bell-tower.

The monastery was suppressed early in the nineteenth century and in 1809 the conventual buildings became the palace of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, hereditary postmaster-general of the old German Empire, whose family still (1909) reside there. The cloister garth, in the centre of which is a modern mortuary chapel, is now used as the family burial-place.

Two Postscripts.

One: The close historical relationship between the Benedictine Order iand Bavaria is said to be one of the pillars of Bavarian nationalism. This relationship is said to be the reason Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a Bavarian, took the name Benedict upon becoming Pope. One of the early goals of the Benedictine order was to root out Arianism among the Germanic tribes so it is interesting to note the New York Times editorial "The Pope without a Country" by the German commentator Martin Mosbach who wrote: Western theology has long been influenced by a creeping Arianism - the idea that Jesus was not of the same substance as God. It would be true to character if Pope Benedict were to invest all his zeal in the effort to recast the concept of the divine incarnation in a new language, which would once again render it understandable to modern-day theologians, teachers and intellectuals.

Two: There was some disagreement as to the importance in the history of St. Emmeram and Bavaria of the Cluniac Reform of the Benedictine order. In fact it was substantial. Emperor Henry III (r. 1017-1056) was a devoted proponent of the Cluniac reforms. Indeed his support laid the groundwork for the disasterous confrontation of his son Henry IV and Pope Gregory over the issue of lay investiture that ultimately brought down the Salian dynasty of German kings.

More Street Music

Regensburg is a great music venue. Every weekend it’s full of musicians playing for free—that is for whatever you put in their bowls. Some sell CD’s of their work , but contributions are their bread-and-butter.

Some are classically trained artists, some are journeymen just learning how to collect a crowd, others are beggars with instruments. Some music comes floating down to the streets from open apartment widows. Here are some of the performers you might see.

I never have to go far to find free music. Friday, as I came out of my apartment, I turned onto Untere Bachgasse following the sound of harp music away from Dornbergpark where I had intended to go. A 20-something lady with a half-sized concert harp was doing traditional Bavarian pieces and Veracruzano (Gulf Coast Mexican) folk music. It was pretty good—a little halting in places. She was coming along but hadn’t really mastered her instrument. Still I sat and listened for 15 minutes or so. If you listen you should pay the piper, and I do, but on a scale according to quality.

I had been heading for the park so I turned down Gesandtenstrasse but didn’t get far. At the intersection of Rote-Hahrengasse a jazz trio—clarinet, electronic keyboard and acoustic bass—was doing some tasty renditions of standards. It was clear the clarinetist had spent a lot of time listening to Aker Bilk, who geezers like me may remember for his early 60s hit “Stranger on the Shore.” Fortunately the clarinetist kept the vibrato under control and the pianist took some very interesting solos.
I was impressed by bass player as well, who never got a solo break (at least while I was there) but whose lines were fluid and melodic. As a former jazz bassist, I appreciate lines that don’t stay with tonic, third, fourth, fifth. I listened to the trio for 45 minutes, then, forgetting about the park, went to buy some groceries. They were still there when I came back by and I listened another 20 minutes or so.

Dave Bonney is a fixture of Regensburg street life and lately has been performing by the kaufhaus on Dom Platz. Tall, lean, with curly gray hair the New York native left America in 1970 at age 19 and never looked back. “You should have been here in the 70s. Regensburg had a real expatriate American scene.” For many years he was a mainstay at the Irish Harp but was banished after an unfortunate exchange with the owner’s wife. “All I did was tell her to get me another f---ing bier,” he said apparently still in disbelief. Dave is interesting but difficult. Ask any waitress in Regensburg about Dave and she’ll likely say: “Oh yeah. I had an argument with him.” His website says it all: Dave Bonney—Online and in your Face (http://www.davebonney.com/ the photo above is from his website). His latest CD, appropriately entitled “All Mixed Up” (which has gotten good online reviews) is available at http://www.cdbaby.com/.

Saturday I heard a truly amazing musician in Neuparrplatz, Alex Jacobowitz, undisputed master of (wait for it) the XYLOPHON! Now that’s not something you see on the street everyday, Chauncey. Using a four-mallet technique of his own invention, he did selections of classical repertoire—Mozart, Beethoven, Mussorgsky and on and on—along with Yiddish and Klezmer music. But most amazing were his mind-blowing performances of Bach fugues. Think about doing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—not with five fingers and a keyboard—but with four mallets, two in each hand, having to independently find and strike the correct wooden bar.
Jacobowitz, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, is a convert to Orthodox Judaism who performs wearing a kipah and, under his shirt, a tsitsit. His home is the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, but he loves Germany and German culture. Most of his touring abroad is done in Germany yet, oddly, he said he felt uncomfortable playing in Poland where 3 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I started to ask how he reconciled that with playing in the country where the other 6 million were killed and where the Final Solution originated, but thought better of it and did not.

According to his website, Jacobowitz “models his profession and lifestyle after a 19th century Chasidic musician named Michael Joseph Gusikow, who took Europe by storm in the 1830s by playing classical music on the straw fiddle, a type of xylophone that Gusikow himself invented. Gusikow was born into a family of musicians in what is now Belarus, in about 1806.”
http://www.alexjacobowitz.com/

Another unusual aspect of his act— Jacobowitz intersperses his music with humorous educational raps about music history and the composers’ lives. As a prelude to his performance of Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra he gave a lively and learned explanation of the periods of la Convivencia in Iberia from 718-1089 (the fall of Toledo) and from 1250 to 1492 (the fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews) when Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together in relative peace and religious tolerance.
Jacobowitz has written book of his experiences A Classical Klezmer: Travel Stories of a Jewish Musician some of which may be read in full text on his website.

Gypsy Life

Walking along Pfauengasse yesterday I came across a musician playing accordion and singing. Her act was unusual for two reason--first, you don't see many accordionists and second most street musicians are men. I took a seat on a concrete block across the street and listened for a long while as she did Irish and English folk songs, Spanish, and German pieces and slipped in some early Bob Dylan as well.
I don't know why, but I thought I knew her from somewhere. She definitely had something. People not only dropped Euros and kept walking by (the usual thing), many stopped to listen for sometime. Three older men stayed for at least a half an hour putting Euros in her case not once but four times.

Children especially liked the accordion and her voice. Babies in perambulators turned their heads and widened their eyes with delight as parents wheeled them by. Older children stopped, halting parental progresses, and entreated mom and dad for spare change.

I had my guitar with me. I had taken it hoping to find someone playing music. But it's bad form to cramp a street musician's act. Afterall they're trying to earn a living. But after listening for sometime I took out my guitar and a miracle! I was in tune with her accordion. I quietly fingerpicked some accompaniment from my spot across the street. It sounded pretty good and she smiled, which I took as sign she didn't mind. When she took a break, I went over and asked her if she knew Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy an traditional English seafaring song done by Maddie Prior and Steeleye Span. She didn’t.

Again I had the feeling that I knew her and I was about to say something when she asked: Don't I know you from somewhere? It was both odd and familar, like meeting an old friend for the first time.

I bought her CD--A Royal Hearts Flush and headed back to my apartment, ate a quick lunch, and played her CD. It was alright, but not nearly as good as her street performance. Who was this person anyway? I took the CD from the player and in tiny red lettering was the name Brigitte Graykastle.

On an impluse, I copied the words to Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy and returned to the street. Brigitte had changed locations and was playing at the Alter Korn Market. She smiled when she saw me and I sat down in a sunny place and listened. And as I followed her around for the rest of the day, I learned a few things about the life of a street musician. Street performers must have a license to play for money and the police did check to insure she was licensed and playing in the areas assigned her. Street musicians can play only 30-45 minutes in one location and it is illegal to play between the hours of one and three.

During her enforced break, Brigitte and I went into the Moritz to warm up with coffee. She told me about busking in Munich when she was 21 and her travel to Scotland to learn the highland songs and to speak English with a brogue. "People think I'm Irish. Then when I speak German they say: Wow, you really nailed the Bavarian dialect. I am Bavarian." And she smiles.

At 300 she took up a new location at Neupfarrplatz where she did what she called her second act singing the poetry of Robert Burns and Robert Frost set to her own music. Her last stand was Rathausplatz where she did international standards in French, Spanish, and Japanese as well as English. Near the end of her time, three young girls came by--obviously on their way to get a cone at the fancy ice cream shop near the fountain. They stopped and listened and as they did, I could almost see the light blub come on over their heads as they watched this talented confident woman performing--we could do that! The girls huddled for a moment then took out their ice cream money and tossed it into Brigitte's case.
Brigitte plays once a week in Regensburg. Stop, listen and show your appreciation.

Adieu, sweet lovely Nancy, ten thousand times adieu,
For I’m going around the ocean love to seek for something new.
Come change your ring with me, dear girl, come change your ring with me,
That it might be a token of true love while I am on the sea.

And when I’m far across the sea you’ll know not where I am.
Kind letters I will write to you from every foreign land.
The secrets of your mind, dear girl, are the best of my good will,
So let my body be where it might my heart will be with you still.

There’s a heavy storm arising; see how it gathers round,
While we poor souls on the ocean wide are fighting for the crown.
There’s nothing to protect us, love, or to keep us from the cold
On the ocean wide where we must bide like jolly seamen bold.

There are tinkers tailors and shoemakers lie snoring fast asleep,
While we poor souls on the ocean wide are plowing up the deep.
Our officers commanded us and them we must obey,
Expecting at every moment for to get cast away.

But when the wars are all over there’ll be peace on every shore;
We’ll return to our wives and our families and the girls that we adore.
We’ll call for liquor merrily and we’ll spend our money free,
And when our money it is all gone we will boldly go to sea.

Jewish Archeology

This afternoon on our tour of the Jewish archeological site at Neupfarrplatz we were joined by Professor of Marketing Fred Miller who chairs Regensburg Programs Committee.


The excavations that uncovered the foundations of the Romanesque and Gothic synagogues were carried out from 1995-1998 within what was the Jewish section of Regensburg—said to be Germany’s oldest Jewish community.

The dig also uncovered cellars of the houses of merchants whose long distance trade with the Near East made theirs one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in Europe. Proof of that prosperity was the discovery of a large cache of gold coins and a gold ring thought to have belonged to a synagogue official.

Also of interest was a small bronze figure of a high priest of the 15th century identified as Aharon.

Throughout the Middle Age, the Jewish community enjoyed imperial protection but in 1519, as Martin Luther launched his reformation and Charles, a Hapsburg of Spain which had expelled its Jews became Holy Roman Emperor that protection came to an end. The Jewish community was burned to the ground and Jewish gravestones taken and used elsewhere as buildingstone. On the site of the synagogue a Catholic church was raised which, in short order, became a Protestant Church as Regensburg moved into Luther’s camp.

The excavations also turned up remains of the Roman outpost of Castra Regina, founded by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 179 CE. One artifact found at that level was a figure of Mercury, not unlike the much later figure of Aharon.

Now the site of a large kaufhaus (department store), banks, and specialty shops, Neupfarrplatz has seen a number of historic events including a 1919 Communist rally of workers and soldiers inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartakis movement that swept Regensburg and the rest of Bavaria into a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic (Räterepublik Baiern). In 1933 Nazis chose Neupfarrplatz as the site of their Regensburg book burning, one of hundreds that took place in a single night throughout Germany. During WWII anti-Hitler demonstrators gathered there only to be crushed by Nazi troops.

Today Regensburg again has a thriving Jewish community and its relations with Christians are generally good. Yet the city fathers of Regensburg, the home town of Pope Benedict XVI, had to be prodded to acknowledge the city’s past anti-Semitism. When Jewish activists called for a historical marker explaining the 650-year-old anti-Semitic sculpture of the Judensau (Jewish sow) on the side of the Dom (St. Peter’s Cathedral) that defames Jews by showing them sucking at a sow's teats, city official refused. Finally, a little over a year ago, compromised was reached and a plaque put up calling attention to the Judensau.

This spring Regensburg was visited by U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Edward B. O’Donnell who met with Rabbi Dannyel Morag and other prominent members of the Jewish community. Later some 300 people attended his lecture at the university on the need for German-American cooperation to fight against anti-Semitism and for freedom, democracy, tolerance and global human rights.

Oh yes—the plague (a marvel of historical vagary) reads (in German only): "Nowadays, the relationship between Christians and Jews is one of tolerance and respect."
Good to know.