Editor’s Note: Our senior editor Jay Nordlinger spent the better part of August in Salzburg, doing a job or two at the Salzburg Festival. His music criticism has appeared in NR and on The New Criterion’s website; further criticism will appear in the October issue of TNC. The present journal, composed of odds and ends, is supplementary to all that. For Part I of the journal, go here.
Around town, there are ladies from the Orient (as we used to call it) using umbrellas — not for the rain, but for the sun. Reminds me of the derivation of “umbrella”: a shade (rather than protection from the wet).
‐In sweltering halls, I take my jacket off. I’m a heedless Yank. European husbands look at their wives, as though for permission; shrug; and then take off their own. But I have to go first. The Yank has to lead them.
“And if this rube can do it, why shouldn’t we?”
‐When on foot, locals wait at stoplights, even when there are no cars coming. Even if it’s the dead of night. But my American feet are not so obedient. And when I cross, the locals cross, most of the time, even with some reluctance.
I feel guilty about doing it in one circumstance, however: when there are children waiting, along with their parents. We should set an example, I know …
‐So nice to hear “Beyond the Sea,” in the streets. Such a lovely, even ingenious song.
‐In Salzburg, people take pictures, constantly. You can’t blame them. It is a perfectly photographable city. In the old days, you felt terrible about walking in front of someone who was taking a picture. You made him waste his film. These days, you can be a bit bolder — because what film is there to waste? A picture-taker just snaps again.
‐This is something new, in the Mirabell Gardens: those silent people. Those people with powdered or painted faces, who just stand still, and who attract people for photographs. These ones are dressed like Mozart, I think.
I find them a bit annoying — as people do mimes — but I also know they work hard and have skill. And provide enjoyment, to some.
‐I meet a couple of people who were at the 1976 Winter Olympics, down in Innsbruck. One worked as a journalist; the other worked as a team physician.
I remember those Olympics for two things, above all: Dorothy Hamill and Franz Klammer. The former won the figure-skating gold. I was in love with her, like everyone else. I wrote her a letter. (I was twelve.) Klammer was the downhiller, who won in a near-reckless race, a race in which he displayed utter abandon and nerve.
No doubt it’s on YouTube. I’m not pausing to check, however. I’m barreling ahead to …
‐Fidelio. Beethoven’s lone opera is being staged here at the Salzburg Festival. It really isn’t Beethoven’s opera, however — it’s the director’s opera, for he has changed the story entirely. Subversion City (as the first Bush might say). I’ve written an article about it for National Review, here.
‐A veteran music critic from America e-mails me, “I don’t understand why the Europeans put up with such productions, Jay — it’s their music.”
I could give a two-hour answer or a 20-second answer. Here’s the 20-second answer: They’re terrified of being thought uncool. Stuffy. Fuddy-duddy. Traditional. They’re terrified of being pinned with the Scarlet C, for “conservative.”
Over the years, I have learned that the desire to be cool, or the fear of being thought uncool, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. The biological determinists will tell you that there is, of course, a biological component at work: safety in the mob?
Anyway, I think my 20 seconds are up …
‐I meet a friend who has just come from Bayreuth, and the Wagner festival. He saw The Ring. Das Rheingold, if I’ve heard correctly, is set in a Texas hotel. A man eating a hot dog squirts mustard on his shirt — that’s the Rhine gold. “And it gets worse from there,” says my friend. “That’s the production’s high point.”
There is one saving grace in this Ring, according to my friend: The star tenor is a very big guy, a hefty guy, and therefore hard to direct. He pretty much has to stand or sit and sing — which he does gloriously.
My friend’s remark is hilarious, trust me. I haven’t rendered it very well, but opera people would find it fall-down funny, believe me.
‐The next guest in our Salzburg Festival Society series is Luca Pisaroni, the Italian bass-baritone. He is singing the Count in the Marriage of Figaro this year. (At the festival, I mean.) He’s a tremendously personable guy, in addition to a first-rate singer and opera performer.
I ask him whether he feels lucky to have been born into the Italian language. Yes, he says — “except when I want to sing Schubert songs. Then I wish I had been born into German. I have a Schubert recital coming up.”
Years ago in this same series, I asked Ferruccio Furlanetto, the legendary Italian bass, “Can a foreigner truly sing correct Italian?” Yes, he said. Asked to name an example, he named Kathleen Battle. I relate this to Luca Pisaroni, and our audience. And he names Samuel Ramey (the bass from Colby, Kansas).
Another question for our guest: Are you happy being a bass-baritone? Do you have any tenor envy? “Oh, you can ask my wife,” says Luca. He has big-time tenor envy. Honestly, “I’m a tenor trapped in a bass-baritone’s body. Every time I open my mouth to sing a tenor aria, this is what comes out” — and here he sings a bit of the Count (provoking big laughs).
He says he knows every word and every note of every tenor aria. In his hometown of Busseto, he would listen to the classes of Carlo Bergonzi, the great tenor who lived and taught there.
But there is this virtue in being a bass-baritone, Pisaroni says: The roles are interesting and diverse. Tenor roles? They are romantic and heroic, and there’s a sameness to them. (Excellent point, which I’ve never thought of.)
Luca and his wife, Catherine, have two dogs: Lenny and Tristan. The latter is named for the Wagner character, of course (a tenor!). And the other is named for the late maestro Bernstein.
Luca has a pattern on performance days. “I’m not a morning singer,” he says (though he often has to participate in morning rehearsals). He walks the dogs. Eats some pasta for lunch. Takes a nap. And then, in the evening, is ready to go on.
I ask him about popular music, and he says he is a fan of the Rat Pack. Sinatra is great, of course — “but I would not put him above Dean Martin.” Dino, says Luca, “was a great phraser.”
Earlier in his career, Pisaroni auditioned for Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the veteran Austrian conductor. He began to sing the Catalogue Aria (i.e., “Madamina, il catalogo è questo,” sung by Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni). It was too straight for Harnoncourt. “More rubato,” he admonished (meaning, more license with time, more freedom of interpretation). “Like Frank Sinatra.”
I love that story.
The maestro told Luca, “Be with me at the beginning of the bar and at the end of the bar. What you do in between is your business.”
‐Pisaroni happens to be the son-in-law of Thomas Hampson, the famed American baritone (from Spokane, Washington). Hampson is in Salzburg this year too. He likes to tease me about politics, and lecture me about politics, and scold me about politics. I tell him he’s a commie and Euro. The truth, I think, is that he’s an American patriot who is often the right-most person in the room — considering the rooms he finds himself in, as an opera singer.
In any event, he is a joy to talk to. I’ve said that talking to Tucker Carlson is like taking happy pills. The same is true of talking to Thomas Hampson. He wants to talk to me about politics. I want to talk to him about music and girls. (His wife, by the way, is an Austrian aristo and babe.)
Maybe we could do half and half?
‐Salzburg is a great people-watching town. It’s also a great car-watching town — at least in front of the Sacher Hotel. There you see every manner of Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Lamborghini . . . Heavenly.
‐You know what else Salzburg has? Benches. Places to sit down. In New York and other American cities, you often can’t sit down. (Leontyne used to sing a spiritual: “Sit down, servant.” “I can’t sit down.”) I know the reason: We’re too politically correct to hustle bums along, so if they can’t occupy benches, there will be no benches.
Anyway, I’ve ranted about this before, and will spare you now — and say, See you tomorrow, for Part III.