Corona Comforts

 Only once have I attended a performance by The Metropolitan Opera in New York. On April 28, 2010 my dear friends Jan and Elizabeth Lodal took me to see Wagner’s Die Walkure. I had seen operas before, but I am forever grateful that they introduced me to THE MET. To provide sustenance for music lovers, metopera.org has streamed their greatest works online free from 7:30 each evening until 6:30 pm the next day. What a gift!

Since March 17, I have watched thirty-one full operas and sampled many others that failed to keep my tired body awake. Fourteen years ago, the Met began showing LIVE in HD operas at movie theaters all over the world. Several times a season I have appreciated the convenient access, the close-ups, and the printed synopses. Backstage interviews introduced me to the hundreds of support staff, dedicated professionals on whom every opera depends: set designers, costumers, chorus members. Seeing these expertly recorded videos at home, I always looked in the credits for audio expert Chris Callus, son of friends Maggie and Al here in Quail Ridge.

Many operas I saw concerned death, dying, or betrayal; not one featured a happy couple married over fifty years like us. Mostly, I watched alone, but Steve joined me for Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Verdi’s Rigoletto. And he installed a vital link between my computer and the surround sound in our family room, so that I could watch on a large screen. In Week 7 the Met’s staging of Donizetti’s “Tudor Trio” kept me enthralled. Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth the First emerged from elaborate royal settings to become fully alive, then bravely meet their deaths. I’m thinking that Donizetti’s operas would be terrific soundtracks for Hilary Mantel’s Tudor trilogy about this tumultuous period of British history: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light. There is a BBC series on them that I will have to investigate.

After seeing Anna Netrebko as Verdi’s Lady McBeth, Steve would pop in most any time she was on stage. Who could not admire her singing Aida? In that Verdi opera, I also got to see a star turn by Ryan Speedo Green, the former Virginia reform school kid who wrote Sing for Your Life. The Met gave us plenty of reminders to donate. I sent a hefty contribution, but it was but a fraction of the priceless joy I had received.

Besides the classics, I enjoyed more recent creations. John Adams’ Nixon in China artistically portrayed a sea change in US foreign policy. Never thought I’d see Richard and Pat Nixon sing onstage, but they keep me wide awake. Thomas Ades’ The Tempest transformed Shakespeare’s play into a convincing drama of people lost at sea, who were then magically rescued and restored–a surprise happy ending that I needed after nine weeks of this madness. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Borodin’s Prince Igor, both sung in Russian, proved the musical genius of the “Russian Five” composers I had learned about when practicing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto in high school.

Hand in hand with watching opera came piano practice. I practiced and recorded YouTube videos of twenty of my favorite pieces. You can find several on my first post about Hunkering Down. My performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata is on Virtual Moonrise Party. What would I have done without my piano? A highlight each week has been a video/FaceTime piano lesson with my only student. Luke is learning fast!

My friend Nick Hagoort pointed out a New Yorker profile of Igor Levit, a pianist who streamed half-hour concerts from his home for three weeks during his lockdown in Berlin. His generosity reminded me of Dame Myra Hess, who organized 1,700 lunch-hour concerts at the National Gallery in London for six years during the Blitz black-outs that closed concert halls. Hess performed in many of these herself. She had already earned honor by arranging a movement of Bach’s Choral Cantata No. 147, so that the world would have Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as a piano solo. I have played this piece since I was 16 and finally recorded it a few days ago.

ART

Since museums were all closed, I turned my attention to art created by people in one of my book groups. In January I had bought a trio of abstracts painted by Joyce Mauney. They hang in my much-used laundry room and never fail to brighten my workdays with their colors and shapes.  Barbara Walton is using her time in quarantine to paint birds. I purchased her paintings of owls and a Painted Bunting.

And finally, here is a fresh work by my friend Carol Starr (Rice ’67), The Heron Intrigues:

READING

I’ve finished Natasha Boyd’s Indigo Girl, Andrew Forsthoefel’s Walking to Listen, Yuval Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Fannie Flagg’s The Whole Town’s Talking, Colson Whitehead’sThe Nickel Boys, and Julian Barnes’ The Noise of Time. Currently I’m reading and loving Tony Horwitz’s Spying on the South. For a couple of weeks, Steve and I read chapters of the book of Matthew in the Bible aloud to each other. Each day I peruse the New York Times and each week, absorb myself in the New Yorker. I mostly avoid television, except for PBS’ NewsHour, Met operas, and movies.

TRAVEL

Cambridge Science Festival? canceled. Savannah Music Festival? canceled. Chautauqua? canceled. Scotland? pending. We’ve hardly used any gasoline–just two trips to Delray Beach to see the moon rise over the Atlantic Ocean–April 8 and May 7. I’ve used some apps frequently: Blue Apron, Zoom, Facebook, Messages, FitBit, Words With Friends. Other apps await a vaccine: Waze, TicketMaster, AirBnB, Open Table, Tripadvisor, JetBlue. On May 20 we drove seven hours to Beaufort SC for a 4-day visit with well-isolated cousins and friends, but fundamentally, I traveled at home. On my daily walks I listened to our wonderful birds. I was more alert than ever before for beautiful trees and flowers and interesting birds. Here is an album of 38 photos of what I saw.

HISTORY

Steve and I have loved watching movies that reviewed the history of our lives. On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13 in April we watched the movie, Apollo 13, with screenplay by our fellow Rice alum William D. Broyles, Jr. Great to see smart people respond quickly to an unexpected emergency, apply ingenuity, and succeed in bringing three astronauts home.

The Last Picture Show, a movie based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, reminded us of where and when we grew up in West Texas. I have encountered Larry McMurtry three times: at Rice, on a flight from Dallas to DC, and at his bookstore in Archer City TX, where this movie was filmed.

I have a special place in my heart and on my bookshelves for Larry McMurtry.

 Shawshank Redemption, the 1995 movie based on a Stephen King novel, was terrific not only for the acting of Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, but also for the connection with the operas I was watching. In one memorable scene, a prisoner broadcasts an aria from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to the entire prison. They listen with rapt marvel. For his prank, Tim Robbins’ character gets two months in solitary confinement.

Sergio, a documentary released in January 2020, taught me history I didn’t know I didn’t know. Where is East Timor and how did a Brazilian diplomat bring peace there in 1999? Wow! If only he had had the chance to bring peace to Iraq.

On May 12, Steve and I watched a Harvard Business School Webinar on how the faculty ramped up to teach online in just two weeks, what alternatives they are considering for the fall semester (in-person classes at Harvard seem unlikely at this point). Dean Nitni Nohria, whom we’ve encountered at HBS reunions thanked alumni who have provided over 100,000 meals for Front Line Workers, In this unique period, I feel compelled to record my view of history.

ALL My Families

Through Cherrydale Zooms, Family Zooms, First Presbyterian Women Zooms, phone calls with brother Joel,  virtual sister Marjo, cousin Jerry, and more than a dozen friends in DC and Northern Virginia; emails to QR Chorus members; perhaps too much time on Facebook. I hope that some of these contacts brought corona comfort to others. We’ve missed our grandkids; they make only cameo appearances on Zoom. I don’t envy their parents having to juggle working from home and teaching. Guided by the “Pandemic” poem quoted in Hunkering Down, I have tried to “reach out my heart, reach out my words, reach out all the tendrils of compassions that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch,” just as my friends have done for me.

Faith, and Hope, and Love

Underlying these public facets of my life, there’s my personal Faith, and Hope, and Love. I feel very fortunate to share this pandemic experience with Steve, the love of my life, and friends with whom I share faith and hope. I’m grateful for good health. My sleep is “poor” to “fair,” but walking at least 3 miles per day, swimming, biking, and eating moderately makes me feel great. Steve has managed to play golf four or five days/week, though until last week, he had to walk and push his clubs in a trolley. The looming economic depression hasn’t hit us–yet.

Friends keep sending me examples of musicians sharing faith and hope. For content and quality, I like best this one by the NYC Virtual Chorale and Orchestra:  How Can I Keep From Singing?  I first heard this hymn in Shelby and Sean’s Unitarian Church in Dallas. These singers are from Grace Chorale, First Unitarian Congregational Society, and First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. Organizers and producers are the Podd Brothers, Adam and Matt. I pray we can all hear “endless song…above earth’s lamentation.”

How Can I Keep from Singing

My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation,
I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation

Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing
It finds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die?
I know my Savior liveth
What though the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth

No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?