Teutonic Travels, Part Three: München and the Staatsoper

Ludwigstraße, one of the main thoroughfares of central Munich, does not hint at its Italian influence so much as revel in it. Ludwig I, the first king of Bavaria, had a great love for Italian architecture and art, and he wanted as much of his capital to recall that tradition as possible. Thus does a visitor to Munich find himself walking through a number of Florentine arches. More often, however, Munich reflects its true position as the largest and wealthiest city of the Southern German world.¹ As one moves away from Ludwigstraße, the decor rapidly dissolves into the deep-red roofs and painted stucco walls that characterize picturesque southern villages. Alongside this old-world flair are the imposing edifices of some of Munich's monuments: the Frauenkirche, the Neues Rathaus² and the Theatinerkirche. Munich's appearance is therefore at once complex and forthright. The streets elegantly trim the city's many modern amenities with the ornamentation of Bavarian history, including Italian flourishes.

Following these streets leads to some pretty impressive places, as I learned throughout the past week. InWent assigned me to Munich for my mid-year seminar. There are worse places to deflate for a few days. Munich is Germany's most expensive city, and it shows. Besides the city's beauty, both art and industry thrive here. Munich houses BMW's headquarters, a bizarre edifice that seems to erupt from the ground like some massive piston. More memorable for me was the Bayerische Staatsoper, Germany's most important opera house. Fitting with the city's Italian undertones, this past week saw performances of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, a fairly typical buffa with infidelity, death threats, and all the other clean family fun for which opera is known.³



The performance was weak for a stage like the Staatsoper. Most of the leads struggled to keep their runs audible and in tempo. At times the orchestra swallowed them completely. David Alegret, whose name I can only assume means "aggravating" in Spanish, was particularly bothersome as Don Narciso. I suspect Mr. Alegret feared he would be unable to provide sufficient resonance, because he sang through his nose the entire evening. Insult joined injury when Maximillian Schmitt, playing the relatively small role of Albazar, sang his first notes late in Act Two. Here was a perfectly competent tenor relegated to comic relief while a Spanish Paul Lynde honked his way through the night. A miscasting if ever there was one.

The silver lining of this so-so ensemble was Valentina Kutzarova, who captivated my attention with luscious coloratura every time she entered. Her Zaida was the treat of the evening, especially compared to Alexandrina Pendatchanska's Fiorilla. Though Ms. Pendatchanska improved enough in Act Two to give a massive performance of her closing aria,⁴ she tended both to warble and to slide lazily during cadenzas into colorless, indiscriminate vowels.⁵ Alessandro Corbelli managed at least to amuse throughout the evening, if not impress. With a stocky frame, rumpled garb and a wiry gray disaster of hair, his Don Geronio resembled no one so much as Peter Falk's Columbo, pacing hunched about the stage with pensive hands clasped behind his back.

If some of the leads were not up to the task, their support certainly did not falter. Herbert Murauer supplied sets that were clever without intruding. Opting for contemporary setting, Murauer initially decorated the opening scene, a gypsy camp, with a single modern camper trailer. Through terrific use of the trapdoor, over thirty performers entered from that one camper. The directorial team kept the audience laughing throughout this entire procession. The leads may have failed to grab the baton from their ensemble, but not for lack of a strong setup.

Perhaps I wax a little too critical. It is not every evening this American expatriate gets to visit one of Europe's best opera houses free of charge. Would that my program bothered to bribe me more often.

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¹Vienna is in fact slightly larger, but the Münchner economy is much stronger. Conversely, Vienna has a higher overall quality of life, and is the home of Sacher Torte, arguably the best chocolate cake in the world. So it balances out.

²Firstly, this is something of a misnomer. The older city government building was destroyed in the war and subsequently rebuilt. Thus, the "new" Rathaus is actually the older of the two buildings. Given its massive size and drippingly Gothic style, it looks it, too.

Also, you have to love any language that calls a political office a "Rathaus."

³Il Turco also has a memorable mistaken identities cliché, but mentioning that didn't really fit into the above wisecrack. But yes, masquerade party, dramatic irony, blah blah blah, the whole shtick.

⁴("Warmups! I knew I forgot something!")

⁵To be fair to Ms. Pendatchanska, who is both talented and gorgeous, I am hopelessly biased against her. I hate Fiorilla. Hate her, hate her, hate her. My own mother could sing the role flawlessly, and I'd still be crotchety.

Working in Concert

In case you couldn’t tell by the prolonged silence, life has been a little crazy as of late.

Well, crazier, anyway.

As of this writing, I’ve just about finished up my semester at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. My official classes were never that rigorous to begin with,¹ but the choral groups kept me busy until our last concerts, which both took place this past week.

First came the madrigal choir’s final concert, which took place in the Dom. Nothing could have properly prepared me for that. I’ve certainly sung in old, resonant churches before. As you may recall, I sang in a church with a chamber choir back in December, and I’ve even sung in true cathedrals, such as St. Stephan’s Dom in Vienna. Indeed, I thought a lot about that experience leading up to the concert in the Dom. Foolishly, I assumed the experiences would be similar. But the concert in Vienna had taken place in August, in Europe’s hottest summer on record. My concert with the madrigal choir was in January… in a giant stone building… at night… and I had no coat.

To put it mildly, I was cold.

Aside from the deteriorating functionality of my fingers as the concert progressed, I had a good time. When I performed in St. Stephan’s, the audience were scattered everywhere, and the choir stood askance the altar at an odd angle, singing directly into one of the columns. Evidently, the Kölner Dom hires better event planners. Both choir and audience were stationed in the nave of the church. This resulted in a surprisingly intimate effect, considering we were performing in a giant Gothic-style refrigerator. It was also a privilege to be there. Outside of tour groups, laity do not normally enter the nave of the Kölner Dom. But with the Christmas decorations still in place, and the tomb of the Magi² glowingly brightly behind the audience like some sort of giant golden hearth,³ it was one of the more beautiful places I’ve ever sung.

For me, the concert also felt like a touch of home. Our repertoire was almost entirely in English. Though I’ve had a number of occasions to butcher foreign pronunciation in the past,⁴ I had never been on the receiving end before. In early rehearsals, the auditory barrage of mistaken emphases and f*@%ed-up fricatives was enough to cause a vowel movement.

After a while, with a little help from their resident native speaker, the choir sounded almost English. True, they still sang of Mary’s “woam” and the Baby Jesus laying in a “crehhdle,” but at least sounding joys no longer repeated from the “fields and flutes,” and the “rocks, hills and plans.” And I was thrilled when they stopped announcing, “Joy to the World, the Lord is Scum.”

The following evening saw me once again under the baton of Marcus Creed. As I’ve said here before, Creed is an excellent director, and he expects an enormous amount of professionalism and dedication from those he works with.

I am also greatly amused by his approach to the German accent. Professor Creed has lived in Germany for many years, traveling between Cologne, Stuttgart, Berlin, and many other places. German is spoken with markedly different accents in these different cities. Rather than attempting one of these accents or a mix of all of them, Professor Creed chooses to speak German with no accent whatsoever. He simply retains his own plummy English diction in both languages. The German students admire him, so I think it is a sign of admiration when they impersonate his pronunciation of stock phrases like “Ja gut” as “Yaw gewt.”

As for the concert, the evening progressed from modern to Romantic – an improvement as far as I’m concerned. We began with an incredibly minimalistic, percussive piece by a composer whose name is pronounced “No-No...” which was also my internal reaction when first asked to sing it. This screeching racket was followed by Vaughn Williams’ Flos Campi, a wordless work that I now dearly love. I’ve liked Williams since I first encountered him in college, and this piece has a spiritual quality I have rarely heard elsewhere. It was also a blessing to perform it at the Hochschule, where the performers took it seriously enough to achieve the desired effect.

The evening concluded with Fauré’s Requiem. As with Williams' work, I first became acquainted with Fauré’s music in college. Though I find his fascination with three-quarter time bordering on fetishistic, Fauré is also consistently lyrical in a way I have found almost nowhere else. The Requiem had been recommended to me by friends over the years, but this was my first chance to really engage the piece as it is meant to be performed. Compared to, say, Mozart’s Requiem, I think Fauré’s piece is simpler, but it retains elegance, and is at times far more spiritual. Between this work and the Williams, the evening was one of the more satisfying musical experiences I have had since my arrival in Germany.

Of course, this concert wasn’t in the same league with singing Disney tunes, but you can’t hit them all out of the park.
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¹In case you were wondering, the German word for “torpor” is Betäubung.

²In case you don’t meticulously memorize everything in this blog, there is a relic in the back of the Dom, a golden triple sarcophagus that is said to contain the final remains of the three wise men who visited Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem.

³While we’re on the subject, can I just mention I find this really creepy? Under all the lights, the thing looks like an irradiated gingerbread house, and inside there’s not one, not two, but three dead people. And who, for that matter, got these guys back together after they all died? Maybe they did reunion tours.

⁴My French is a horror, like something from an ancient forgotten world. Scientists have theorized that every time I try to sing in French, the world becomes a quantitatively worse place.

Glühwein, Women and Song

The Christmas season is in full swing here in Cologne. The Weinachtsmärkte opened fully last weekend, and to solicit them came both locals and travelers from abroad. As I have discovered, many of these seasonal travelers come from Britain specifically to visit the Christmas markets. I don't fully understand the logic behind purchasing €100 plane tickets in order to eat €2 roasted almonds, but then, the English also enjoy warm beer, so the lunacy is not without precedent.

To my great fortune, along with this English en masse emigration came Meagan, the lovely hostess of my last two visits to London. Together, she and I braved the extensive network of Weinachtsmärkte that have sprung up across Cologne like cinnamon-scented mushrooms. I bring to you now some highlights of our discoveries, which, we being hungry travelers, ended up being mostly culinary:

1. Glühwein -- For a full explanation of this marvelous substance, see last post. Suffice it to say that we drank our fair share.¹

2. Poffertjes² -- To be fair, the credit for this one goes to a Dutch acquaintance I made in Bonn a couple of weeks ago. Evidently a seasonal favorite in Holland,³ Poffertjes is breakfast transformed into the most unhealthy confectionary dessert imaginable. While Poffertjes poses as a mere waffle cup filled with miniature pancakes, the real magic of this dessert comes in the condiments. Appropriate toppings include syrup, butter, powdered sugar, whipped cream, Nutella, or preferably, all of the above. Sprinkle that bad boy with Baco-Bits and you've got the next American breakfast favorite.

3. Reibekuchen -- Also known as Rievkooche in Kölsch, these deep-fried potato pancakes make an excellent follow-up to Poffertjes if you somehow haven't managed a heart attack yet. Reibekuchen are usually served immediately after being cooked, so it is customary to eat them with a cooling condiment such as apple sauce, or if it's your second helping, Pepto-Bismol.

4. Himmel un Ääd -- I must exonerate Meagan and clarify that she did not at any time sample this unique dish. Himmel un Ääd translates to "heaven and earth" in the local dialect. It is so called because it is a mixture of mashed apples and potatoes, the apples which reside in heaven (i.e. on branches) and the "apples" which reside in earth (i.e. potatoes). Somewhere along the line, the Kölsch community decided to make this culinary concoction their own by adding blood pudding into the mix,⁴ a development I can't help but think of as the cooking equivalent of the snake entering the garden.

There's more to do at the Weinachtsmärkte than just eat and drink, of course. Particularly predominant are small shops and rides for the children. That said, having too little funds to purchase €15 Christmas tree ornaments and too much self-respect to ride the carousel,⁵ Meagan and I mostly browsed.

With the arrival of Advent also came my first major concert of the season. I have been singing with three choirs at the Hochschule, two of which are directed by Marcus Creed. Professor Creed has proven to be a prodigious conductor. He is generally reserved and quiet in demeanor, but he brings out a superb level of concentration and execution from the singers with whom I have seen him work. Among his other obligations, he directs both the Hochschule's main choir and its chamber choir, the latter of which I performed with on Wednesday evening.

I sang with the Claremont Chamber Choir through college, and I have grown to appreciate the sound a group of dedicated singers of that size can create. Even with that experience, I was very curious to hear what the chamber choir here would sound like. Though many of my colleagues in Claremont were music majors, this was an entire choir of music students, many of them with years of vocal training behind them. Thus I had little idea what to truly expect from the experience.

Our concert on Wednesday took place at St. Georgs, one of the smaller old Romanesque cathedrals. One could guess (rightly) by the modern look of town around St. Georgs that it was heavily damaged in the War. In its refurbished form, St. Georgs offers wonderfully resonant acoustics, ideal for an a capella choir. We performed two song cycles, one by Reger and another by Brahms, as well as a modern setting by James MacMillan of a medieval prayer titled "O Bone Jesu." It is easy to forget in the midst of preparing works of music that an audience will be listening with entirely different ears. So as the final note of the concert faded into the walls of the church, I was not sure what to expect from the little crowd in St. Georgs that night. They must have liked it, because they brought Professor Creed back for a total of five ovations, generous even for a German audience.

The past wonderful week did not come without repercussions. Regrettably, after spending my days out in the rainy markets and my nights rehearsing in a cold church, I have finally fallen ill. The doctor doesn't think it's anything serious, just a winter virus. At first, when I heard all I needed was probably some rest and lots of fluids, I was delighted. As it turns out, however, Glühwein doesn't count.

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¹Which, at €2,50 a glass came to one cup each. I can get a full bottle of wine for less than that. And I do.

²Pronounced by saying "Puffered? Tch! Yes!" quickly.

³I have no way to confirm or deny his claim, but I have my doubts. Almost all the Dutch I have met are very thin, and no one could eat Poffertjes with any regularity without resembling a Germanic Wilford Brimley, both in weight and diabetic condition.

⁴And you know they didn't pick something like blood pudding on a lark. There had to have been trial and error involved, which just makes me wonder: what didn't make it?

⁵Fine: they wouldn't let me. Are you happy now?

Street Music

When I was in Austria last summer, I toured Burgenland singing with a classical music festival. Our little band managed to fill virtually every venue we visited. This experience gave me a real appreciation of what music lovers Europeans can be. Likewise, while I worked in Austria last summer, I was able to hear a number of free concerts in one of Austria's best venues. As I went about my errands today, I chanced upon great music three times, and I thought both the quality and serendipity of the experiences were worth sharing.

Along the west bank of the Rhine lies St. Kunibert's Basilica, one of the more impressive Romanesque churches of Cologne. As I walked past, I heard the distinct sound of a powerful organ as muffled through thick walls. I went inside to find one of the largest organs I have ever seen. At the bench was one Gerhard Blum, who filled the church with Baroque music for the next twenty minutes almost without pause. Besides three assistants of some sort, I was the only other person in the church. After he finished playing, I stopped him for a moment to get his name and thank him for the pleasure of his playing. He seemed in a hurry, so I let him go, but I afterwards regretted not asking him when I could hear him performing again.* It had been a while since I had heard live music that impressed me so.

I was not long in waiting for more. I came across another act about a half kilometer south on the Frankenwerft, a scenic part of the western Rhine filled with charming restaurants. This time it was some sort of amateur drum corps, performing an ongoing circular routine to cheer on the spirits of runners in the day's marathon as they blasted past. Their performance place was at the base of a semi-circular staircase between Frankenwerft and the Rhine, and an appreciative audience assembled on that staircase as they played, including a pair of homeless men who managed to get a decent portion of the crowd to dance. I watched this routine slowly develop into a small impromptu street party, which was still going on when I left for the evening.

Just south of Frankenwerft on the Fischmarkt I came across a street band composed of accordion, fiddle and bass. I have seen them a few times in this vicinity, and while it would probably be a stretch to say they have a following, the crowd usually appears pretty appreciative. One would think the band makes enough in tips, since they come around so often. The band's repertory was very familiar: an Oompah rendition of Joplin's "The Entertainer," what I believe was "Monty," and selections from Fiddler on the Roof. If for nothing else, my day was worth hearing two entire outdoor restaurants break out together into singing along to "Wäre ich ein reich Mann."

This town is starting to grow on me.

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* It turns out Herr Blum is the Kantor at St. Kunibert's, so if you're in town and Baroque music is your thing, Mass at the basilica is probably a safe bet to hear him.