Zubin Mehta, Bianca Jagger, Gypsies, Michael Volle, Maria von Trapp, and more
Editor’s Note: Our Jay Nordlinger spent much of August at the Salzburg Festival, doing various jobs. Music criticism has been published in National Review and on The New Criterion’s blog. More will be published in TNC. This journal is for odds and ends.
About a week ago, I was in Chicago, or north of Chicago, at the Ravinia Festival. Buddy Guy performed. He had just turned 80. Buddy Guy, you remember, is a blues guitarist and singer.
Here at the Salzburg Festival, Zubin Mehta is conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. He, too, turned 80, earlier this year.
Buddy Guy is in fine shape, and so is Zubin. “A good year for octogenarians,” I think.
‐Bianca Jagger is in the auditorium — the Great Festival Hall. I wonder whether she lives under the Sandinistas, whom she did so much to support. Or does she choose to live in more liberal-democratic countries?
People vote with their feet, if they can. And the more money they have, the more their options, usually.
‐Every year in these Salzburg journals, I think, I write about the Gypsies, who dot the city, begging. It is such a racket. The Gypsies have regular positions, sometimes as little as 50 yards apart.
Some mornings, if not every morning, they have a meeting, getting their marching orders, or begging orders, I suppose. I have spied these meetings, now and then.
Generation after generation, this goes on. Children are born, and they are condemned: condemned to a life of begging, or worse.
I see the Gypsies at work, every day. Sometimes they are on their cellphones. Sometimes the women hold up pictures, purporting to be their family. It’s like a picture that comes with the frame.
They mutter one or two phrases, as you pass by. They do so mechanically, all day long. Sometimes they manage to utter their lines with feeling.
On my first or second morning, I find myself mocking a Gypsy — responding to her sarcastically. I immediately feel ashamed — and vow never to do it again. I’m not sure this woman had any choice in life.
I will not give money to the Gypsies, ever. They are part of a crime syndicate, after a fashion. I doubt any of the locals give to the Gypsies. The tourists do.
But usually I acknowledge them, speak to them. I don’t want to look past them, as though they were lampposts or garbage cans.
Yet I am so disgusted that their racket keeps going, generation after generation. I first saw them when I was a tourist, age 18. A little later, I saw them when I was a student in Italy. Some of the women held babies, as props. Now those babies are holding babies. Or maybe their own children are starting to?
Enough. I’m a pretty laissez-faire guy, but I’d ban this crap, I really would. If I were the Salzburg authorities — to take just one city — I would ban their begging, utterly. The cycle should be stopped, somehow.
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‐As usual, the Salzburg Festival Society holds a series of conversations, with prominent musicians. Our first such conversation is in a very classy joint: Schloss Leopoldskron (known across the world as the Von Trapps’ villa in The Sound of Music). First, there is breakfast in the Venetian Room. Then our talk is in the library.
One could get used to such digs.
Our guest is Michael Volle, the German baritone. He is the child of a clergyman, as so many singers are. Singing and the church are closely connected.
Volle says he grew up with Schütz, Bach, and Handel — no opera, not even Mozart, to say nothing of Verdi, Strauss, and the rest.
He loves Baroque music, especially from those masters. “I need Bach,” he says. He will spend the next ten or fifteen years singing one Wotan after another. (I am referring to the one-eyed god in Wagner’s Ring.) But he always wants to return to Bach, as well as Mozart.
In the course of our conversation, I ask him what singers he most admired as he was growing up. One name comes out of his mouth: “Wunderlich.” Why wouldn’t it?
I then say, “Schwarzkopf?” He makes a face. I wish you could see it.
There is a singer of today whom he especially prizes: Bryn Terfel. I find this remarkable, because they are in essentially the same vocal category — Terfel is a bass-baritone — and they are essentially the same age. Usually, rivalry rules the roost. But not here, not in Volle’s breast.
Indeed, he sought out Terfel’s teacher: Rudolf Piernay.
In Strauss’s Arabella, Volle sang with Renée Fleming, the soprano star. “She acts so normal,” says Volle. “She’s so down to earth.” He adds — and I love this — “The more mediocre the singer, the more airs the singer puts on.”
Ain’t it the truth, in various walks of life?
In these conversations, I often like to ask our guests whether they like any pop music. The answer is typically yes. So, “What do you like?”
Volle names Michael Jackson — whatever the late singer’s problems — and Al Jarreau. And Canada’s Michael Bublé. Volle has attended five of Bublé’s concerts.
Tell you something else: Volle participated in an experiment that became quickly famous. A scientific researcher asked him to sing during an MRI scan. (I may have the terminology slightly off.) Volle sang “The Evening Star Song” from Tannhäuser (Wagner).
You want to see the video? Here.
Michael Volle is not only a first-class singer, he is a first-class guest, or interviewee: smart, candid, warm, personable, fun.
‐For years, I have taken a walk that includes the pathway around the pond — the pond at Schloss Leopoldskron. And for years, I have heard snatches of the Sound of Music tour. It’s interesting to hear the guides, practicing their practiced lines. Especially the jokes.
Something else I have heard for years — not from Sound of Music guides: “No one in this country has ever seen The Sound of Music.” I’m not sure I believe it. And people utter the line with such pride. And a trace of contempt for Sound of Music fans.
This year, I hear someone say — with the familiar smugness — “No one in this country knows what The Sound of Music is, and we all know who Max Reinhardt was. In America, everybody knows The Sound of Music, but nobody knows who Reinhardt was.”
I would like to take a poll of Austrians on the question of Max Reinhardt: How many do you think know about him? A further question: How many know about The Sound of Music? Who wins, Maria or Max?
I should not end sourly — but maybe that’s enough for the first installment. Catch you tomorrow.