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Airplane travel is certainly not what it used to be. My return trip was uneventful but it was not always pleasant. More than ten years ago, returning from an extensive Asian trip, I thought otherwise. Waiting for my last connecting flight in LAX on my homeward journey I reflected on the marvels of traveling in the early 21st century. I had arranged my itinerary on-line, had paid for my tickets by credit card and had breezed through about a dozen different airports (and some of the best in the world: Singapore, Hong Kong and Kuala Lampur) without a hitch. I thought at the time that travel was just swell. How exciting it was to be alive in an age of technological wonders and convenience! Then 9/11 changed everything.
No one would wax ecstatic about the joys of travel now. It is difficult, underscored by precautions and a sense of fear. Airports and planes are overcrowded. We get slapped with extra charges right and left. We are scrutinized by an army of security guards. We hope they are effective. Sadly, we know only too well that sooner or later another catastrophe will occur. Hopefully, we think quietly, it will not be on our flight.
I attended the second and final performance of FH. The 2,000 seat theater was nearly sold out. The crowd was enthusiastic, if a little noisy. (Can you believe that someone would bring an infant to the opera? The overture wasn't even finished before it started wailing, annoying everyone in the vicinity.) There was a technical glitch in the second act, where the visuals were lost for a while. The tech crew must have been frantic backstage trying to get the problem fixed. Fortunately, they did. Despite these minor annoyances, I enjoyed the opera even more this time.
The longest scene, the encounter of the Dutchman and Senta, occurs in the middle of the opera. It could be taken for a static stretch, but one must understand how crucial it is in the development of the dynamic between these two characters. It would take just a few minutes to read the text. Set to music, this encounter lasts about twenty minutes. It begins slowly, tentatively and builds to an enraptured duet. And if that weren't enough, Daland enters and we are launched into an even more ecstatic trio. Music has the capability of probing the emotional depths of a situation, of expressing the unutterable, and of intensifying every nuance. That is why a text in itself might be banal, but the music it is set to may be sublime. In Kay Walker Castaldo's intelligent direction the two protagonists, meeting for the very first time (and we have just heard Senta's Ballad and her inner yearning for this mysterious stranger) circle each other slowly. It was like two fighters in the ring scoping each other out. This is the center of the opera, the wheel around which the rest of the story revolves, the turn of the kaleidoscope that changes everything. It was a brilliant stroke to have the characters also revolve around each other. The reviewer of the opera in the local press is, I am told, really a theater critic and not a musician. He criticized the static nature of the piece, failing to understand the nature of music, the very raison d'être of combining words and music.

Success!

The reviews are in: opening night of "Der fliegende Holländer" at Mobile Opera was a great success. It was also a historic event: the first Wagner opera and the first opera in German to be done in Mobile. Of course, I lack objectivity as I was intimately involved in the process, but I will say that I was very impressed with the entire production. Amanda Mace shone in her portrayal of Senta with gorgeous, consistent singing. Her voice just soars and fills the hall; Doug Nagel's Holländer was imposing, sung with riveting emotional commitment; John Pickle played the hapless Erik with a performance worthy of any opera house. Kay Walker Castaldo's direction made the story come to life in a sensible and touching manner. (We can be grateful that we are not subjected to the moronic eurotrash that one sees in many European houses these days.) But the most striking aspects of this production were Barry Steele's lighting and visual effects. It is not enough to call them projections; the images we saw were three-dimensional and they moved. At times it was like watching a movie. During the overture a life-size ship glides across the stage; in the opening storm we see rain, so realistic that you could see individual raindrops splat upon the ground. I expected a flood of water to cascade off the stage into the pit. During the transitional music to the second scene we fly across a rocky sea landscape and enter the window of a wooden building to find ourselves suddenly in a room of Daland's house. I don't know how many lighting designers are experimenting with this type of technology, but this might be the wave of the future. Who needs expensive, cumbersome scenery when you can project images that move? (There was one set piece, however, a moveable, multi-tiered platform that suggested different levels of the ship.)
In honor of the event I have composed two haiku. Here they are:

Dutchman comes to call;
Senta gaga over him.
Loud singing ensues.

Two acts follow first;
On and on and on it goes...
will it ever end?

All joking aside, I have come to love FH. It is Wagner's first true masterpiece. Despite being a transitional work, employing many operatic conventions of the time, it gives us a glimpse into the revolutionary style that was to evolve. FH is the first of the composer's operas that uses the Leitmotif.

Old Christ Church

The Anglican church on Seville Square was built in 1832. During the Confederacy it was turned into a hospital. When the Union troops took the town they continued to use the building as such. It was restored in the 1870's but was later turned into the town library. Only recently has it become a church again. It is simple, but charming.

Pensacola

The faux Victorian house is in the newer part of the Village. It is painted lilac, a color that might make eyeballs pop in other parts of the country, but in Florida it fits right in. The other building is a historical one, overlooking the inner bay. Many of the homes were built raised about ten feet off the ground to protect them from the inevitable flood waters during storms. I suspect that this part of the bay is less vulnerable since it is protected by a barrier island. That island, Santa Rosa, has been rebuilt with new beach homes since the last major hurricane nearly wiped it off the map. People are certainly stubborn -- or incredibly stupid.

Pensacolum iterum

Now that the orchestra has taken over I find myself in the curious position of having nothing to do. I was booked for a return flight for Sunday because Andy thought I would be assigned to take care of the supertitles during the performances. Thank Wotan I am not (it's a really boring thing to do). We looked into changing my flight to an earlier date, but it proved too costly. So, I am stranded here for another four days. My hosts, ever hospitable, have no problem with that. I will attend the second dress rehearsal this evening and then both performances.
After a cold, rainy spell it has suddenly warmed up again with temperatures at a balmy 75 today. I decided to head back to Pensacola and enjoyed a near perfect day there. The Pensacola Village area, which abuts the downtown, has many structures from the early 1800's. No fewer than twenty-two buildings are marked as historic landmarks. One wonders how these fragile structures have survived two centuries of hurricanes. It is a delightful residential area. Even the modern section adjoining it is built in the style of the old Creole Bungalows. The Pensacola civic leaders made some wise decisions. The street names belie their Spanish origins, such as Zarragossa, Salamanca, Tarragona and Aragon Streets. After a scrumptious lunch in a cafe overlooking Seville Square I drove over the bay bridge to Santa Rosa Island which fronts the Gulf. The white sands are perfect for a long walk, accompanied by the sound of the crashing surf.

Live Oaks

The Ben May Main Library, where we performed our recent concert, adorned by live oak trees.

Of Flora and Hurricanes

We are moving into the next stage in the rehearsal process for FH. As of today we will be in the hall (which happens to be the Civic Center, not far from the Larkins Center where we have worked until now). And as of today most of the working sessions will be in the evening. And they will be long. Actually, once the orchestra takes over my work is done. I will have a lot of free time.
I think I have already visited the most interesting places in the area. To the west are Pascagoula and Biloxi, both in Mississippi. The first is an industrial port city, the second is the home of many gambling casinos, something which holds zero interest for me. Besides, both cities were ravaged by Katrina and have not yet fully recovered. Further to the west, about two hours from here, is New Orleans. I have no interest in going there either. Since I have returned from Pensacola my hosts have showed me a book of photos commemorating the devastation to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. It moved up Mobile Bay with winds of 140 mph and was supposed to hit the city of Mobile directly. Instead, at the last moment, the storm veered to the east towards Pensacola. I was so impressed by how neat and fixed-up the that city looked. The reason for that would be that the city was nearly destroyed and has been rebuilt. The destruction was far-reaching and devastating. I saw photos of places I visited. Now there is hardly a trace of damage to be seen; at the time it looked like an atomic bomb had gone off. Even the beach road showed little sign of destruction. There were quite a few empty lots. Now I know why. The buildings that once stood there were swept away by the storm surge and the winds. Pensacola is to be applauded for having cleaned the place up so well and so fast. We remember that much of southern Louisiana is still abandoned. And that, I am told, illustrates the way things are done in Florida as opposed to other states on the Gulf Coast.
Today is a peach of a day, sunny and with temperatures in the mid 70's. The azaleas are coming out, along with the red-bud trees, forsythia and other species of flora unknown to me. The entire state of Alabama was once covered with pine forests. It is still the predominant tree as it thrives in the sandy soil. But there are other species of trees as well. Especially noteworthy are the magnificent oak trees which spread their branches out most luxuriously. They live for centuries. In the historic part of town Government Street boasts a long stretch of these mighty oaks on both sides of the street. The overhanging branches have created an arbor of shade like the gothic nave of a great cathedral.
Not everyone in the south speaks with a 'southern' drawl. As a matter of fact, few younger people do -- at least not in the city. Perhaps the local dialect is more prevalent in rural areas. Older, educated people are more likely to speak with that lovely, drawn out, molto lento cadence in their speech. It would be a pity if the local dialect died out. It is something distinctive and valuable. Our commercialized society is far too homogenized and Walmart-ized already.