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Three Women in One
KM joined me last night for Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes D'Hoffman , and both of us enjoyed the tales of Hoffman very much. The poet compared Stella, the singer he was unhappily in love with, to three past loves: an innocent, an artist and a prostitute, and told the tavern guests the stories of these loves. The innocent turned out to be a mechanical doll named Olympia. Putting on a pair of magic glasses, sold to him by the villain Coppelius, Hoffman fell in love with her. He was horrified to learn the truth when the glasses broke. Kathleen Kim who sang as Olympia was virtuosic in her aria. It took some art to sing all technique, completely artlessly. Alan Held, who sang as Coppelius, also sang as the other three villains. In the second story, Hoffman was in love with the singer Antonia who, unknown to herself, had too weak a heart to sing. But the evil Dr. Miracle persuaded her that her dead singer-mother would have her sing. She fell for the trick, and sang to her death....
Scraps and Bits
Thursday afternoon I heard for the first time an alto saxophone played like a woodwind, in a work for sax and piano by Bernhard Heiden (1910-2000). Born in Frankfurt-am-Maine, Germany, Heiden studied music composition under Paul Hindemith. He emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States in 1935, and was naturalized as an American citizen in 1942. The work I heard was called Diversion. It displayed the qualities described by Nicolas Slonimsky of Heiden's music: "impeccable formal balance and effective instrumentation." I have been listening to Quatour Ebène play string quartets by Debussy, Faurè and Ravel. The CD was a wonderful gift from W. The French quartet comprises four good-looking young men, who pose like a boy band on the CD cover. The subtlety of French music is a welcomed relief from my German and Russian favorites. A tall cool drink with a dash of what might be lemon. * Just joined PEN American Center as an associate member last week, for its searchabl...