Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree

Friedrich Schorr as Hans Sachs

We're early in Act II of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The scene is a street with houses on the left and right, separated by a narrow alley that winds toward the back of the stage. The right-hand house, grand in style, is the goldsmith and mastersinger VEIT POGNER's; the left-hand house, simple in style, is the cobbler and mastersinger HANS SACHS's. In front of POGNER's house there is a lime tree; in front of SACHS's an elder. -- As the act began, not long before, it is a pleasant summer evening, and in the course of the action of the act night falls.

At this point SACHS is in his workshop, unable to get out of his head the audition "mastersong" presented to him and his fellow mastersingers this morning, breaking all the rules, and yet, and yet -- Now, having just said good night to his apprentice, DAVID, he arranges his work, sits on his stool at the door, and then, laying his tools down again, leans back, resting his arms on the closed lower half of the door.

HANS SACHS: How sweet the elder smells,
so mild, so strong and full! --
It relaxes my limbs gently,
wants me to say something. --
What is the good of anything I can say to you?
I'm but a poor, simple man.
If work is not to my taste,
you might, friend, rather release me;
I would do better to stretch leather
and give up all poetry. --
[He tries to work, with much noise, but leaves off, leans back once more, and reflects.]
And yet, it just won't go. --
I feel it, and cannot understand it --
I cannot hold on to it, nor yet forget it;
and if I grasp it wholly, I cannot measure it! --
But then, how should I grasp
what seemed to me immeasurable?
No rule seemed to fit it,
and yet there was no fault in it. --
It sounded so old, and yet was so new,
like birdsong in sweet May: --
whosoever hears it
and, carried away by madness,
were to sing it after the bird,
it would bring him derision and disgrace! --
Spring's command,
sweet necessity
placed it in his breast;
then he sang as he had to;
and as he had to, so he could --
I noticed that particularly.
The bird that sang today
had a finely formed beak;
if he made the Masters uneasy,
he certainly well pleased Hans Sachs!

-- English translation (mostly) by Peter Branscombe

Friedrich Schorr (b), Hans Sachs; London Symphony Orchestra, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded May 10, 1930

Franz Crass (bs), Hans Sachs; Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Kurt Eichhorn, cond. EMI, recorded c1971

by Ken

Two weeks ago I set out to explore some of what I'm calling Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), offering as a sort of model, though a far from ideal one, Sir John Falstaff's massively self-pitying monologue at the start of Act III of Verdi and Boito's Falstaff, after dragging himself out of the Thames, decrying our "Thieving world! Villainous world! Wicked world!" (Eventually, believe it or not, this is going to tie up with our still-ongoing discussion of the underlying link between Schubert's "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's "Zueignung," and the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.)

Then last week I revealed ("Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days") that one of the OBDs I'm targeting takes place in a Wagner opera -- maybe Tannhäuser, maybe Tristan und Isolde, maybe Die Meistersinger, maybe Parsifal, or maybe even Lohengrin. In the process last week we heard a lot of music, and if you haven't taken it all in, it's still there.


I STILL FEEL BAD FOR NOT TALKING ABOUT LAST
WEEK'S PERFORMANCES, BUT I HAD MY REASONS

Promissory note for one of our still-to-come Operatic Bad Days

Along the way, we hear how Wagner made it
possible for folks everywhere to get married

MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we've got something more like a post. There's still work to be done, notably the addition of texts, but for now, whew!
TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATE: I wound up substantially rejiggering and in some aspects entirely reconstituting the Tristan and Meistersinger lineups, in addition to adding the promised texts for each, so progress is being made. I feel a keen need for fuller context-setting of the "days" dramatized in these excerpts, but fear that trying to plug the gap will lead to utterly exploding the post. Hmm. Still to come for sure: texts for Lohengrin [done!] and Tannhäuser.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: I've not only done the Tannhäuser texts but popped in as-brief-as-possible situation-setters for Tannhäuser, Tristan, and Meistersinger. At least for now, I think we're there, wherever "there" is, except for whatever cleanup of the wreckage I'm able to undertake.



by Ken

Last week we started talking about Operatic Bad Days ("On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not"), looking first at the case of Sir John Falstaff (courtesy of Maestro Verdi), dragging himself out of the Thames to drown his sorrows at the Garter Inn. Sir John, I think we can agree, got what he deserved and deserved what he got, but not so much with the two OBD sufferers whose cases always crowd my mind. By way of setting the mood, while I struggle with what was supposed to be an "easy" post, here's a tease. [SUNDAY UPDATE: Now filled out a little more!]

WAGNER: Tannhäuser: Act III Prelude


Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1961

Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec, recorded June 2001

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded Dec. 13-14. 1972

WAGNER: Tristan und Isolde: Act III Prelude


Symphony of the Air, Leopold Stokowski, cond. RCA, recorded 1960-61

Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Carlos Kleiber, cond. Recorded during a live performance of the opera, Oct. 7, 1973

Staatskapelle Berlin, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. From a live performance of most of Acts II and III, Oct. 3, 1947

WAGNER: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Act III Prelude


London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1974

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik, cond. From a broadcast performance of the complete opera, October 1967

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded during concert performances of the opera, Sept. 23-27, 1995

WAGNER: Parsifal: Act III Prelude


London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, cond. EMI, recorded January 1973

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Hans Knappertsbusch, cond. Philips, recorded live at the 1962 festival

Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Reginald Goodall, cond. EMI, from a recording of the complete opera, June 1984

THEN AGAIN, IN CASE YOU THINK YOU'VE STARTED
TO SENSE A PATTERN HERE, THERE'S ALSO THIS

On an operatic bad day you can sometimes see forever -- but oftentimes not

"Wicked world. -- There's no more virtue. -- Everything's in decline."

-- A man who knows a thing or two about, you know, things

A man staggers up to an inn . . .

The exterior of the inn, which along with its name bears the motto: "HONNY SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE." A bench beside the door. It's the hour of twilight.

Our man is seated on the bench, meditating. Then he stirs himself, pounds on the bench with a big fist, and turning toward the interior of the inn calls to the host.

by Ken

Even if we make clear that by "an operatic bad day" I don't mean a bad day for the audience (of which I often feel I've experienced not just my own share but a whole bunch of other people's) but a bad day for the main character(s) onstage, it may seem oxymoronic to be talking about "operatic bad days." Aren't they mostly pretty rotten? Isn't this what opera is usually about? Isn't it a significant part of what we normally think it means for something to be "operatic"?

The kind of bad day I'm thinking of, though, isn't just a day when everything seems to go wrong, even disastrously wrong. I'm thinking of the kind of day when the victim realizes that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events, and as a result, despite a certain lack of totally accurate perspective, owing to the inevitable bleakness of spirit, sees truth(s) stretching out as far as the imagination can see.

The part about the victim realizing that he/she has played a major role in setting off the unfortunate chain of events clearly excludes out companion today. In Sir John Falstaff's imagination nothing is his fault, and never mind that it was his own crackpot scheme to seduce one or maybe two of the merry wives of Windsor, not even for libidinous satisfaction but to tap into their not-so-merry husbands' coffers to provide himself with a bit of working capital, blindly falling into separate traps set by both the women and men of Windsor, that resulted in his being dumped unceremoniously into the Thames in that giant basket full of rank laundry.


SIR JOHN'S FEELING OF VICTIMHOOD CERTAINLY
IS EPIC, THOUGH -- RUNNING DEEP AND, ER, WIDE

Sunday Classics' "Sicilienne"-style sendoff for Chuck McGill -- as prélude to a tasting table of morsels from Gabriel Fauré

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't watched any Better
Call Saul episodes since before the Season 3 finale


The McGill brothers, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean), are seen here in . . . um . . . well, not-that-much-happier times -- this scene is from "Klick," the final episode (No. 10) of Season 2 of Better Call Saul.

by Ken

It's kind of embarrassing that it wasn't till the premier episode of Sieason 4 of Better Call Saul that I registered the death of Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), the big brother of our new-old friend Jimmy McGill, previously known to us, in Breaking Bad, as his later self, Saul Goodman. I mean, flashing back even in my dim memory, I had to have known from the Season 3 finale that Chuck was a goner in the fire that consumed his house. Still . . . . I guess I couldn't believe that the show's creative team, headed up by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, would let go of such an extraordinary character (which everyone on the creative team has told us in interviews was heavily influenced by the extraordinary and largely unexpected qualities Michael McKean brought to the role), with so much about him still to be explored. And I guess I had enough faith in the devious story-telling skills of Vince, Peter, and their team that I wasn't prepared to believe Chuck was really gone until the proverbial last nail was pounded into the coffin.

However, from the start of Episode 1 of Season 4, it became clear that Chuck was indeed kaput, gone, good-bye. Naturally one of the first things I thought of was -- well, here's how I put it in that unprecedented Monday edition of Sunday Classics of Feb. 23, 2016, "Special late-Monday Better Call Saul edition: Chuck McGill plays the Fauré Sicilienne!" (Set in front of Chuck on his baby-grand piano was an edition of the Sicilienne for violin or flute and piano.)


Original (2/23/2016) caption: Sure enough, there's a piano in Chuck McGill's living room! Given the light level, don't hold me to it, but isn't this Howard (Patrick Fabian), the managing partner of Chuck's law firm, arriving for his "delivery for McGill" in tonight's Better Call Saul episode, "Cobbler" [Season 2, Episode 2]?

At the time I wrote in part:

If there's one thing probably none of us expected to see, it was Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) at the piano playing the piano part of Fauré's Sicilienne. But there it was, at the top of tonight's Better Call Saul episode, with something like this score page just visible to Chuck, and to us, with the little bit of natural light that found its way into his otherwise-dark living room -- Chuck can't, of course, have electric light.

Eventually, of course, Better Call Saul masterminds Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and their team would gradually fill us in, in their patented time-hopping, circuitious way, but at this point I don't think we knew much of anything except that there was all too clearly a huge something-or-someone missing from Chuck's life, and now suddenly we had him playing the piano, with the obvious indication that the missing something-or-someone had something to do with classical music, specifically either the violin or the flute -- the version of the Sicilienne Chuck was playing from was for violin or flute and piano. (It took two subsequent episodes in Season 2 and another in Season 3 to fill for us the void left in Chuck's life left by the implosion of his marriage to Rebecca, indeed a violinist. Ann Cusack, who has played Rebecca, was back for the first episodes of Season 4, in -- kind of literally -- the wake of Chuck's passing.)

And at that time we heard the Sicilienne three ways --

For violin and piano:

Krzysztof Smietana, violin; John Blakely, piano. Meridian, recorded c1993?

For cello and piano:

Steven Doane, cello; Barry Snyder, piano. Bridge, recorded in Rochester (NY), January 1992

For orchestra, with flute solo (no. iii from Fauré's Suite from the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80):

Orchestre de Paris, Serge Baudo, cond. EMI, recorded June 1969


WE HAVE ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SICILIENNE,
BUT WE'LL ALSO NEED TO BACKTRACK A LITTLE