Short Takes and Retakes (Round Two): More of the Same

Oppenheimer and Barbie — or, more poetically, Barbieheimer

“Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”

The opera world over in Europe, but especially in the U.S. of A., has been undergoing quite the momentous change of late. Turmoil, if you don’t mind the expression, has become the accepted norm. It’s developing into more of a burden than a boon to lovers of the art form. In similar fashion, the movies and the movie industry as a whole have been hit with bombs, bombs, and more bombs – both literally and, well, figuratively speaking to boot!

The past year’s box-office boxing contest, then, between reigning champs Oppenheimer and Barbie, which ended in a virtual draw, brought unexpected sighs of relief for the (ahem) “security” and efficacy of the cinema — that is, for the time being. But I wouldn’t rest on my laurels if I were them. Online streaming services have grown more efficient and have permanently (and irrevocably) taken over the limelight, at least for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, pathbreaking operatic works, along with old war horses cloaked in new clothes, have draped the staid Metropolitan Opera House’s stage over the past few seasons alone.  While the current season continues to hobble along its pathetic path, at “last look” the plethora of new productions have taken on a veritable samey, samey, “ho-hum, so what’s next on the agenda” attitude. “Relevance,” that dirty little term of art, is once again rearing its head and permanently in vogue at that venerable institution, with decidedly mixed results.

Where to turn? What to do? Who to call?

Well, in my book it’s time to take stock of where we are, where we have been, and where we are bound. In other words, to rehash my “Short Takes” outlook on the season’s past and possible future. A critical, if not too judgmental (hah!), look at what worked and what didn’t, and not just about the opera.

Yes, we’re in for a bumpy ride of puns!

Paris, Texas (1984)

German director Wim Wender’s heartfelt paean to the American Southwest and his love for all things nostalgic (music being among them) reached its summit in this classic cinematic take of a mysterious loner’s return to his roots.

Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984)

Filmed on location and starring the irrepressible, dour-faced craggy emblem of the arcane, the inscrutable character actor Harry Dean Stanton, who gives an Academy Award-standard performance of haunting melancholy and repressed emotions. Stanton plays a scruffy, haggard-looking fellow named Travis, about as American as one can get.

This beautifully photographed film also boasts sterling turns from every cast member. Plus, that incredibly atmospheric Ry Cooder slide-guitar music score – a classic by any definition of the term – which vibrates with subliminal meaning at every turn and every time it’s played. A certifiable classic through and through!

Relationships are broken, then re-established and broken again in a truly moving yet lowkey finale that takes its sweet time to get to where it wants to go. But don’t let that lull you into inaction, as it’s well worth the extra mile and effort to stick with this one – right up until the end.

There are no murders or bank robberies to speak of, nor are there any so-called “action sequences” or mindless car chases to disrupt the quiet and solitude. Instead, an ambience of calm resignation descends upon the whole proceedings, one that is maintained and carried throughout. All of which are to this picture’s credit.

8½ (1963)

A certifiable puzzler of a foreign feature when it first came out in the early 1960s, this Federico Fellini-directed and produced work, which many film scholars and avid fans claim to have been the director’s finest motion picture, is a real oddity of a showpiece.

Fellini, who was known in Italy and abroad as kind of a maverick and an inveterate innovator and spinner of tall tales (the winner in that category was Sergio Leone), took the Italian neorealist style to its ultimate extreme in this highly eccentric, peculiarly semiautobiographical depiction of a veteran filmmaker (played by perennial Fellini and Vittorio De Sica leading man, Marcello Mastroianni) who struggles with ennui and lack of (cough, cough) “direction.”

Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (or Otto e mezzo) from 1963)

Marcello’s got the screen equivalent of writer’s block, to put it mildly, which either prevents him from shooting a makeshift science-fiction epic (with no visible script to speak of and a modest, shoestring budget) or worse, an ad hoc musical extravaganza. Take your pick!

In our estimation, the picture’s focus is more about (and you can agree or disagree with me about this reading) Signor Fellini as Tuscan opera composer Giacomo Puccini, or (if it pleases you) Maestro Puccini as movie director Fellini. Fundamentally, it’s the auteur theory in action, a wild and utterly bizarre view of a filmmaker as both creator and creation, a self-directed study of a showman who’s run out of ideas. So he turns the focus back onto himself and his myriad problems: with finances, with hangers on, with fallen women (a favorite Fellini topic), with inspiration (and the lack thereof), with ex-lovers, and with cinema itself.

Oh, yes, it’s odd all right, and it’s weird and completely engaging, yet in the end the film winds up being neither here nor there. It’s certainly everything, everywhere, all at once (poke, poke). A “takeoff” if you will, on a life lived through the art of the cinema; and a true curiosity piece. And that’s being kind!

Fire Shut Up in My Bones

Journalist and writer Clarence Blow’s autobiographical tome about his early life as a victim of sexual abuse has been turned into an opera by jazz and film-score composer and musician Terence Blanchard.

The opera, such as it has evolved over the years, finally had its long-awaited debut at the austere Metropolitan Opera House. We’ll take a deeper dive into this moving, emotionally laden work at a later date.

Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Photo: Metropolitan Opera House)

But for now, our main reaction to this piece is that the book, structured as a jeremiad (or tell-all reflection), along with its stage adaptation, is equivalent to putting one’s hand into an open wound: You try to stem the bleeding tide, although it continues to hurt like hell. The pain, the soreness, the festering injury and the disgust at how and what you feel completely takes over and overwhelms you.

Despite it all, you try to plow on and through the muck. To bind the wound somehow, sometime, somewhere. Still, you must soldier on – in spite of the pain and the hurt, with self-knowledge and self-acceptance being at the heart of it all. A most difficult piece to appreciate and absorb in one sitting. There are notable comparisons to the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, which are as inevitable as they are unavoidable.

“What Time’s the Next Swan?” – A Long Awaited Lohengrin Returns to the Met

It’s been a long time coming, folks. Ever since outré director Robert Wilson and his decades old Kabuki/Noh Theater version of the knight in (no) shining armor ever-so-slowly crossed the Met Opera stage, there have been relatively few performances (with a brief exception for the revival) of Wagner’s romantic opera Lohengrin – that is, until now.

Personally, I happen to adore this work: so beautiful, so gorgeous, and, in the best case scenario, one where the viewer is constantly reminded of a living, breathing medieval pageant taking place before one’s eyes. Certainly, director Wieland Wagner’s fairytale setting of his grandfather’s work at Bayreuth (in the mid-1960s) had aspired to pave the way for many of my generation as the standard bearer in how this opera should be sung and presented onstage.

However, lately there have been dozens upon dozens, if not numerous modern interpretations of this story of a Christ-like figure, a guardian of the Holy Grail, whose father, Parsifal, happened to have been Wagner’s final take on the legend of the poor fool made wise through compassion. Remember, Lohengrin the opera came first, while Parsifal came last, but Parsifal the character was, in fact, Lohengrin’s father (how THAT situation happened to come about is never explained – pure fool indeed!).

The Met Opera Lohengrin, staged by Francois Giraud, with Piotr Beczala as Lohengrin

With that out of the way, what can one do with such a dislikable antagonist as Frederick of Telramund? He’s a cardboard villain, a veritable mama’s boy easily manipulated by his heathen housewife, the powerful witch Ortrud. A worthless weakling egged on by an evil force, the high and difficult tessitura for Telramund is pure torture for any singer willing to tackle this ungrateful part. Russian baritone Yevgeny Nikitin did about as well as any singer could do with the put-upon knight. However, his bark in this instance was about as worse as his bite, the humanity of this two-dimensional being coming out in tiny spurts. That Nikitin avoided making a meal out of this punishing assignment is high praise in itself.

As for the wicked Ortrud, kudos indeed to soprano Christine Goerke for giving powerful life to such a vile villainess, one so loathsome that the listener simply cannot be blamed for thinking that Wagner lavished his finest dramatic writing on this duplicitous creature alone. A good or even mildly passable performance always seems to pass muster with audiences. Here, the result was stupendous in Goerke’s capable hands (or voice, for that matter). Honorable mention must go to soprano Tamara Wilson for her capable and finely-spun turn as Elsa, along with Gunther Groissbeck’s powerfully delivered King Henry the Fowler (an historical character).

As for the title role, it was literally and quite figuratively a godsend! Not since the halcyon days of Jess Thomas and Sándor Kónya – two worthy exponents of the virtuous swan knight – has the part of Lohengrin been so wonderfully and expressively sung and acted. Polish tenor Piotr Beczala exceeded himself in delivering mellifluous tones and gorgeous, long-lined legato singing, not to mention potent, full-throated pronouncements with equal abandon.

At once princely and regal, at other times caring and tender, Beczala had power in reserve for his grueling third-act encounters, the voice unleashed at just the opportune moment. His romantic conception of the part, as defender of what’s right and as Elsa’s champion, while earlier held in check, was finally unleashed at key moments, to include a ravishingly lovely, “Ich liebe dich” (“I love you”) to his intended bride and the solemnly delivered “In Fernem Land.” I bet half the audience swooned at those phrases!

As worthy of mention as Beczala’s performance was, all honor and praise surely must go to the Met Opera Chorus members who out-sang and easily outranked even the mighty Met Opera Orchestra, to chorus master Donald Palumbo’s deserving credit. I have never heard such an ovation for a chorus, a well-merited and never-too-late recognition of how prominent and vital a part these voices meant to Wagner’s most popular stage piece.

As for Francois Giraud’s conception, it was basically in line with his earlier and immensely successful Parsifal, yet nowhere near as moving or absorbing. Dark storm clouds hovered above the participants, topped off by an obvious hole in the ceiling – reminiscent, to some extent, of the crack in the earth that Parsifal enters into when he pays a visit to the evil Klingsor’s magical kingdom. We need not add that Met maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin presided over the entire affair. He drew some ethereal sounds from the string section, along with the mighty brass element so essential to the overall success of this work.

Schindler’s List (1993)

We want to make our heroes into paragons of virtue. Unfortunately, many of them are not heroic, nor do they realize that the so-called “good” they do comes from a different part of their being.

These “heroes” are only too human, with all the pluses and minuses, the faults, the false starts, the unsteady and tentative steps toward realization that many need to take. Many trip over their own feet, or fall all over themselves in trying to do what is right. But what is right in most circumstances? What is wrong, and what is worth doing? Are they both right and wrong at the same time, and in most viewer’s eyes? What of the other participants in the drama? How do they capture the essence of what is right and what is wrong? And what of the evildoers themselves? Is there such a thing as good and evil?

Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993)

In Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, the director-producer recognized this dichotomy in his characters, especially that of the far from noble Oskar Schindler. Those so-termed pluses and minuses simply could not, nor would not cancel each other out. We are not the stuff that mathematics or higher arithmetic make of us. We are humans, fallible and incorrigible humans. We stumble, we fall, we pick ourselves up. But we can learn from our mistakes. It’s what makes us human.

It’s also what made Schindler human, when he finally admits to himself that he could have done more, he could have saved more of “his” Jews. At the end, Schindler breaks down in tearful resignation. He’s both humbled and ashamed. Still, he is reassured by those same survivors, the eleven hundred or so “Schindler Jews,” who were eyewitnesses to the struggle. From this tiny fraction rose a mighty fortress, an impenetrable wall of descendants, a testimony to what is right and righteous for those who hold true to the concept that we all share in the burden of looking out for humanity. For in preserving humanity, we preserve what is human and humane in ourselves.   

(End of Round Two)

To be continued…

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

They Lived for Their Art — The First Ladies of Opera: Callas, Tebaldi, and Milanov (Part Two), ‘The Cream of the Crop’

Renata Tebaldi and her so-called “dimples of steel” (Photo: Decca Records)

Verdi, Puccini…Oh, and Verismo, Too

With Callas’ rise, the bel canto revival movement took off as never before. Historically, that same resurgence had already begun, what with post-World War II reconstruction of many of Italy’s opera houses – some of which had been damaged during the worst of the era’s aerial bombardments – along with the renewed interest shared by the country’s major conductors.

We can thank such farsighted figures as Messrs. Vittorio Gui, Tullio Serafin, Antonino Votto, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Mario Rossi, and later Carlo Maria Giulini and Claudio Abbado (to also include the scholarly insights of Australian-born Richard Bonynge) for leading the charge in this fruitful, albeit belated direction. Still, without the requisite artists available to give bel canto the impetus it so richly deserved, there would be no “revival” as such.

Given the challenges required to bring this unique art form back from its premature demise, readers can sit back and marvel at the sheer breadth and beauty of such previously neglected works as Rossini’s La Cenerentola, L’Italiana in Algeri, Il Turco in Italia, Il Signor Bruschino, La Gazza Ladra, Mosè in Egitto, and, of course, that grandest of all grand operas, the massively constructed Guglielmo Tell.

Added to these were the unearthing of such treasures as Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, the complete version of Lucia di Lammermoor, the so-termed “Tudor Trilogy” of Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux, and the French-language adaptation of La Favorita. Alongside which, Bellini’s output remained at the heart of the restoration effort, what with Callas’ participation in Norma and La Sonnambula, in addition to periodic forays into I Puritani and Il Pirata, works that demanded the full gamut of vocal and histrionic accomplishment.

In all, the difficulty of doing operatic justice to such refined material as these rested solely with the singers. Besides La Divina, audiences were indeed fortunate to have heard the likes of sopranos Margherita Carosio, Lina Pagliughi, and Pia Tassinari, mezzos Ebe Stignani, Giulietta Simionato, and Fedora Barbieri, tenors Tito Schipa, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Mario Filippeschi, and Giuseppe Di Stefano, baritones Gino Bechi, Tito Gobbi, Renato Capecchi, and Sesto Bruscantini, and basses Italo Tajo, Giulio Neri, Nicola Zaccaria, and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, among others, in both live and recorded interpretations of the above oeuvres.

What of early-period Verdi, or the best of what Puccini had to offer? How about untapped material from the recently mined verismo repertoire? Surely Callas wasn’t the only artist around to have wandered into this still-fertile field.

For that, listeners can wallow in the beauty, refulgence, and emotionally charged artistry of Italian diva Renata Tebaldi. Dubbed by many as the “cream of the vocal crop,” Tebaldi was an exact contemporary of the previously discussed Maria Callas (see the link to Part One: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/they-lived-for-their-art-the-first-ladies-of-opera-callas-tebaldi-and-milanov-part-one/) .

At the time – specifically, from the 1940s to about the late 1960s – Tebaldi and Callas’ basic repertory had overlapped to a minor extent, which makes comparisons to these widely divergent singers that much more compelling, if not altogether challenging.

Tebaldi, Rudolf Bing, and Callas at Met premiere of ‘Adriana Lecouvreur‘ (Photo: Met Archives)

First of all, let me get this off my chest: I love and treasure both of these fine artists. In my record-collecting and/or listening experiences, I’ve had the unique opportunity to hear many if not all of their officially released recordings, in addition to quite a few live performances, along with YouTube extracts and other sources.

To say that I favor one artist over the other is unfair, in that and in terms of their vocal resources and repertoire I have grown to admire and appreciate their differences as much as their similarities.  

With regard to repertoire, both singers signed recording contracts with the period’s major labels: Callas at EMI-Odeon/Angel, and Tebaldi at Decca/London. Private or pirated examples of their art can also be found, some of which favored offbeat material.

In the Beginning…There Were Influences

The course of female vocal artistry, in particular that of the spinto (“pushed up”) and/or lirico spinto varieties, can be traced back to the turn of the last century and all the way up through both worldwide conflicts.

From there, one need only catalogue the vast array of native Italians, among them the glamorous Lina Cavalieri (a personal favorite of Puccini’s), Rosina Storchio (the first Madama Butterfly), Gilda Dalla Rizza, Mafalda Favero, and the ageless Magda Olivero. Of course, no discourse concerning soprano vocal quality could possibly be complete without mentioning the incredibly compelling figure of Claudia Muzio.

Golden Age Diva, Italian soprano Claudia Muzio (Photo: Wikipedia)

Both Callas and Tebaldi have been compared, at separate intervals, to the short-lived Ms. Muzio, mainly for that artist’s unique ability at expressing the pain of existence with a voice drenched in pure suffering, in between the sighs and whispers of one who knew, instinctively, that her time on this earth was limited. As to whether Muzio influenced Callas more so than Tebaldi… well, then, that’s a debate for the experts!

There were other artists of equal stature, of course, whom writers and critics often cite as having been instrumental to Callas and Tebaldi’s development. Of these, the highly volatile Paduan-born Lina Bruna Rasa, as Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, bears listening to (her portrayal, under Mascagni’s baton, reminds one of an untamed stallion); as does the dramatic soprano dynamism of Celestina Boninsegna, or the later Caterina Mancini, in anything by Verdi; or even the Italian-American Dusolina Giannini – all of whom were instructive in their individual ways.

As for Tebaldi herself, serious vocal studies ultimately took place at the Conservatory in Pesaro, under the wing of verismo specialist Carmen Melis. This proved especially significant in tailoring the young aspirant’s natural inclination toward works by early- to late-period Verdi, as well as practically all of Puccini’s output, not to mention individual contributions by Ponchielli, Boito, Giordano, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Cilèa, Refice, and others.

Born in Pesaro, Italy, on February 1, 1922, Renata Ersilia Clotilde Tebaldi, like her contemporary Callas, grew up in a divided home, with her father (a cellist by profession) and mother having separated early on, possibly from an illicit affair before Renata was even born. Tebaldi’s mother and grandmother raised her at that point.

A survivor of an early bout with poliomyelitis, the youngish Renata took to singing in her church’s choir. This led to more structured vocal studies with different tutors and teachers at different times (i.e., the previously mentioned Melis, among others) and at regular intervals, culminating in an eventual 1944 debut as Helen of Troy (Elena) in Boito’s Mefistofele in the city of Rovigo.                  

It did not take long before the ambitious novice came to the attention of another former cellist and discerning musician, Arturo Toscanini. The notoriously commanding “Maestro,” as he was called, can be quoted as having labeled young Tebaldi with possessing “the voice of an angel,” many decades before Welsh artist Charlotte Church could claim the honor. Tebaldi’s earliest forays in Parma, Toscanini’s hometown, resulted in her appearance in works by Puccini (Mimì in La Bohème), Mascagni (Suzel in L’ Amico Fritz), Giordano (Maddalena in Andrea Chénier), and others.

Moving on to Teatro alla Scala, in Milan, and other European opera centers, Tebaldi’s creamery-butter tone, house-enveloping personality, tallish big-boned figure (like Callas, Renata stood head and shoulders above her leading men), and charmingly dimpled cheeks(!) conquered many a skeptical critic, which despite a somewhat stiff stage deportment made her a favorite among the paying public.

Her North American debut occurred at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House as Verdi’s Aida around 1950; while her initial Metropolitan Opera appearance took place on January 31, 1955, as the most feminine and genteel of Desdemonas in the same composer’s Otello. Her partner for that occasion was the leonine tenor Mario Del Monaco.  

The Sound of Solace

I first heard of Tebaldi on or about the late 1960s. There was so much talk on the radio and in the newspapers regarding her undertaking the flamboyant part of actress Adriana Lecouvreur in Francesco Cilèa’s similarly titled work that I simply had to tune in to see what all the fuss was about.

Listening to the WQXR-FM broadcast of the opera, I was bowled over not only by Tebaldi’s enveloping characterization and flirtatious manner, but by the fullness with which she hurled that marvelously seductive sound into the Met Opera auditorium. “My goodness,” I thought to myself. “What tenor could possibly withstand such an assault?”

Well, my concerns were quickly put to rest, as I also heard, for the very first time in my listening experience, the mammoth-sounding roar of one Franco Corelli. Standing a shade or two over six feet, the rolling thunder that poured out of Corelli’s throat was met, note for note, by his attractive leading lady: the stunningly beautiful Tebaldi, in powdered wig and lace gown. I wasted no time in recording their Act One repartee, which (if memory serves) I was able to capture on a small open-reel tape machine – the first among many live performances preserved for my subsequent listening pleasure.

At about the same period, my dad, who readers of this blog surely recall as having been a die-hard opera fan, told me about a film version of Verdi’s Aida that was playing at a downtown movie theater. At the time, I was obsessed with this opera, having already recorded the complete Second Act from a live radio performance of the work (that featured Leontyne Price, James McCracken, and Robert Merrill in the leads).  

Upon witnessing this Italian-made production, I must confess that I had little to no knowledge of what opera would be like on film or in the theater. The one thing that caught my eye was that the “singers” (mostly actors in dark makeup or flowing robes and wigs) had barely parted their lips, whereupon the most overwhelming noise still poured out. “That’s odd,” I remember thinking to myself. “So much sound, for so little effort. That can’t be right!”          

Instead of Tebaldi as the enslaved princess Aida, there rose the robust visage of Sophia Loren – curvaceous form and all! Instead of mezzo-soprano Ebe Stignani, a pre- and postwar star of the Rome Opera, as her rival Amneris, there went Lois Maxwell. Most James Bond fans may recall Ms. Maxwell as the person who played Miss Moneypenny to Sean Connery’s 007. I was shaken, if not stirred by all this. And so on, and so forth. So this is opera? What a disappointment!

Sophia Loren as Verdi’s Aida, from the 1953 film of the opera (voiced by Renata Tebaldi)

To be perfectly honest, I was not in the least disturbed by the soundtrack. The “acting,” by turns amateurish and effortful, via these non-singing substitutes, was…well, appalling, as one might infer. But those voices! Ah, those voices! Now you’re talking!

Tebaldi’s sound, in deluxe quadraphonic stereo, literally filled the auditorium. The voice was so lush, so vibrant, that I became an instant fan. But the best singing of all came from the Amonasro. Portrayed by veteran baritone Afro Poli (who also played Scarpia in another Italian-made production of Puccini’s Tosca), that snarling rasp of a voice belonged to the impressive Gino Bechi. The final farewell to life, where both Aida and her lover Radames (sung by winsome tenor Giuseppe Campora) are entombed forever and a day, raised the rafters with their bawling and bellowing. No wonder they died a slow death! Lights out.

My feeling was that Master Verdi would be rolling in his grave if he had witnessed and heard what had been done to his grand opera. Still, how thrilling, how enticing, how positively overwhelming these big voices seemed to my teenaged ears. I simply had to buy a recording of the complete opera, no matter what. So out I went, looking in all directions for the next available record shop.

At the time, the only ones in my Bronx neighborhood were discount department store E.J. Korvette’s and a Sam Goody or two somewhere in midtown Manhattan. I had already invested in a budget version of Tebaldi’s first Tosca, a monophonic recording with our friend Signor Campora as her lover Cavaradossi and Italian baritone Enzo Mascherini as a slightly over-the-hill Scarpia. Would Tebaldi’s stereo remake of Aida be up for sale? The one with Bergonzi, Simionato, MacNeil, and Herbert von Karajan presiding? Wow, that would have been awesome! Not a chance.

Another choice would have been Callas’ EMI/Angel version, with Richard Tucker and Gobbi, Serafin conducting. Nah, that wasn’t available either. Instead, I settled for the old RCA Victor edition with Zinka Milanov, Jussi Bjoerling, Leonard Warren, and Fedora Barbieri. Not a “bad” choice by any means, and one I will devote more time to when the discussion turns to Madame Milanov herself.

‘The Girl’ and the Setting Sun

For a sampler of Tebaldi’s art, there are dozens of recital albums to choose from – both for online download and on multiple platforms. All are pleasing to the ears, which remain prime examples of the singer’s career accomplishments: that lush, full-toned, voluminous outpouring only Donna Renata could provide.

This was just one of her many attributes. Never known as a compelling stage figure or a particularly commanding one, Tebaldi nevertheless poured her heart and soul into endeavors that many felt went beyond what they had formerly thought of her acting abilities.

They would help to save what came next.

With that said, Tebaldi experienced a major vocal crisis sometime around the middle to late 1960s. Some have attributed this decline to the earlier passing of her beloved mother, a terrible moment for any person but more so for such an emotionally attached artist as herself.

Added to which, Tebaldi’s assumption of the lead role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, a torture test for even the finest of performers, exposed the singer’s late-career limitations, among them a hardening of her middle voice, difficulty with pianissimo passages, and squally unfocused top notes. Still, the deluxe 1967 Decca/London recording of Gioconda, while well-received by most reviewers, displayed different aspects of her art. For instance, her acting in this and other assignments – always an issue in the past – had undergone a miraculous transformation.  

Incredibly, as the voice began to age or “deteriorate” (in many people’s minds, it never recovered its former luster), Tebaldi’s ability to convey character, especially that of the pistol-packing Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, remained one of her best if not the best aspect of her interpretation from among the short list of performing artists willing to expose themselves to this torturous assignment.

Tebaldi as Minnie, in Puccini’s ‘La Fanciulla del West’ (Photo: Louis Melancon)

If I hadn’t heard the broadcast myself, I would have had a hard time believing it. The Act II confrontation between the “Girl,” Minnie, and the rough-and-ready Sheriff Jack Rance (a snarling, mustache-twirling Anselmo Colzani, who substituted for an indisposed Cornell MacNeil) has become part of Met Opera legend. Far from the best-sounding version – after all, this was a live radio broadcast – we can state, with absolute certainty, that the hair-raising “game of chance” sequence will have audiophiles on the edge of their seats.

Listen to how the incessant drumbeat reflects the emotional heart-pounding situation surrounding both Minnie and Rance (THAT was Puccini’s doing), as the participants square off in a life-or-death round of poker – all of which to save Minnie’s bandit boyfriend from hanging. Audiences will relish the fact that our heroine’s situation, reminiscent of an episode from the silent serial The Perils of Pauline, will resolve itself via her slipping the winning hand into her stocking.

When the last round of cards is dealt, the orchestra blasts out a thunderous fortissimo, as Minnie pretends to faint. She orders Rance to fetch her some water. In the interim, Minnie takes out the cards and replaces them with the winning ones. Of course, Rance suspects that dirty work is afoot – he’s no fool. But that wise old saying, “There’s no fool like an old fool,” rings especially true where Rance is concerned. As he himself is “stuck” on the Girl, the Sheriff purposely lets Minnie win the round and keep her wounded beau, the bandit Ramerrez.

Still believing he can outsmart her, Rance rages that he’s won her at last. “That’s what you think!” Minnie slams the winning hand onto the table and cries out the immortal line for all it’s worth: “Three aces and a pair!” (in Italian, “Tre assi e un paio!”). The live audience went wild with shouts and bravos, so much so that they drowned out what came after: one could barely make out Rance’s exit line, “Buona notte!” (“Good night!”).

With Minnie’s uncontrollable hysterics in the air at having duped her foe – Tebaldi’s wildly off-pitch warbling notwithstanding – the curtain fell to riotous applause. The ovations lasted well after the act’s conclusion. And the panelists at the intermission’s Opera Quiz were STILL talking about it many minutes later! Tebaldi had raised the “wow” factor up to 11.

On a trivia note, Callas had been tapped to record La Fanciulla with Corelli and Gobbi, but situations and crises being what they are, this event never came to pass. The final Angel/EMI edition of Puccini’s sagebrush saga was finally issued with Birgit Nilsson as the Girl (a role she never, ever sang on the stage!) and only minor artists in support. Whereas Tebaldi’s officially recorded Decca/London take from 1958 featured frequent costar Mario Del Monaco and the redoubtable “Big Mac” MacNeil. At that point, she had not yet assumed the role on the stage. In this writer’s opinion, the wait was well worth it.

Tebaldi receives French Distinction Commander of Arts and Letters at Minister of Culture in Paris, February 18, 1987 (Photo © AGIP)

Tebaldi never married, although she hinted at many loves in her life. According to some wags (either Met Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing or archivist Francis Robinson, depending on whose memoirs you consult), “Those dimples were made of steel.” As far as that rivalry between her and Ms. Callas, well… Surely, there were prickly encounters in their past, but all of that alleged “bile” transformed into sweetwater under the bridge. In fact, the two divas expressed a mutual admiration for one another’s artistry, if somewhat forced.

Tebaldi retired from the opera stage in 1973, at age 51, performing Desdemona at the Met one last time, the role of her 1955 debut there. Renata Tebaldi passed away at 82, in her home in Milan, on December 19, 2004. But her voice and legacy continue to live on.

Renata Tebaldi: Recommended Recordings

• Adriana Lecouvreur (Del Monaco, Simionato, Fioravanti – Capuana) Decca/London
• Aida (Simionato, Bergonzi, MacNeil, Van Mill, Corena – Von Karajan) Decca/London
• Andrea Chénier (Del Monaco, Bastianini, De Palma – Gavazzeni) Decca/London
• Un Ballo in Maschera (Donath, Resnik, Pavarotti, Milnes – Bartoletti) Decca/London
• La Bohème (D’Angelo, Bergonzi, Bastianini, Siepi, Corena – Serafin) Decca/London
• La Fanciulla de West (Del Monaco, MacNeil, Tozzi, De Palma – Capuana) Decca/London
• Madama Butterfly (Cossotto, Bergonzi, Sordello – Serafin) Decca/London
• Manon Lescaut (Del Monaco, De Palma,  Borriello – Molinari-Pradelli) Decca/London
• Otello (Del Monaco, Protti, Romanato, Corena – Von Karajan) Decca/London
• Turandot (Nilsson, Bjoerling, Tozzi, Sereni – Leinsdorf) RCA Victor

(To be continued….)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

‘I Will Face My Fear’ — The Mind-Killing Little Deaths of ‘Dune’ (Part Eleven): The First Shall Be Last, The Last Shall Be First

Sci-Fi Channel’s ‘Dune’ miniseries 2000: Gurney, Lady Jessica, Paul, Chani, Stilgar

Past and Future Leaders

As Paul reunites with his forces and prepares for the final confrontation, the ghost of Duke Leto (William Hurt, in a brief cameo) materializes before him to acknowledge his son’s progress from novice to leader.

This is the spot where Leto hands off the reins of power to his natural-born offspring. Consider this incident tantamount, if you don’t mind the Christian analogy, to Jesus receiving the Lord’s blessing from the Gospel of Matthew 3:17: “This is My beloved Son, whom I love. In Him I am well pleased.” Or, in a more literary realm (and in another context), the Ghost of Hamlet’s father paying a nocturnal visit to his namesake.

But the conflict between mother and son continues, both dredging up the past as they attempt to piece together what has come before – and, more importantly, what lies ahead. This is another key moment, in which the actors, Alec Newman as Paul Maud’Dib and Saskia Reeves as Lady Jessica, insisted they should perform on the fly (director John Harrison’s first thought was to cut the scene, but he wisely let it stand come airtime). The thrust of the argument is this: must the things they see come to pass, or can the future be changed?

A nuclear-style explosion and the participants’ attitudes and reaction to it give life to Paul’s “Second Coming.” The combination of parallel story lines culminating in Rabban’s death and the next chapter of Paul’s rise to leadership will lead the way.  Note that the same little boy whose father was executed by Rabban as he cried out “Muad’Dib!” is the same one who carries the Beast’s severed head aloft in the prior scene. Hah! Payback’s a bitch, is it not?

Paul enters the Arrakeen palace with Stilgar and Otheym; the dead and dying bodies of the Sardaukar, the Emperor’s elite guards, are strewn about the great hall as lifeless monuments to the battle raging on outside and the resultant carnage within. The viciousness of the slaughter, the merciless manner in which the Fremen achieve their victory is presented in all their gory detail. “As graphic and savage as all wars deteriorate to,” according to Harrison’s commentary.

As Paul, Alec Newman has his head cocked to the left (or our right, as the viewer), his pale blue eyes glowing brightly, due to the spice’s miraculous properties. Paul, in the scene to come, will reiterate, with absolute conviction and certainty, that without the spice the Navigators will become blind, the Bene Gesserit will lose their grip, and all trade and commerce will cease to exist.

Then, after a short pause, Paul tilts his head to the right so as to show that he, as the head of the new order, will have changed the course of events for the planet Arrakis, if not that for every inhabitant. Subtly, too, Paul shifts his head once more, back to the left (and our right). We take this to mean the new order is now in place. Nothing can change what is coming.

Paul Atreides (Alec Newman) as Maud’ Dib, lays it all out in ‘Dune’ (2000)

We come now to the final confrontation between opposing forces. This is, without a doubt, the climax of the series – a fitting conclusion to the saga; a Greek tragedy of immense proportions, an Odyssey of a kindred sort, and a testament to those stories of old that we, as young adult readers, took most to heart. We stared at fantastic drawings and paintings, we marveled at recreations of heroes, heroines, villains and monsters, all of which stirred our imagination and thirst for ever more relatable fantasies.

Pretty boy Feyd Rautha will continue to taunt Paul with boastful threats of what he will do with Chani(!) after he takes possession of her. Chani, for her part, will reassure her consort that she does not fear the outcome of their clash. Indeed, none of us need be concerned, for the result has been preordained.

Still, Feyd is a most resourceful foe and not to be taken lightly: a vicious, cold-blooded killer and brute, like his badass brother Rabban before him, and overly confident of his abilities. But there’s something else that Feyd Rautha lacks that will give Paul the advantage in their duel to the death: and that is, the inevitability of fate and how it works to bring about that which has been foretold.

To be precise, it could have been any one of the participants: Stilgar, Otheym, Gurney Halleck, or the ferocious Fremen. The outcome would have still been the same: victory for their side. For prophecy has a way of working its insidious way into men’s minds. What about the minds of the women? Ah, there, too, we will find that, in the end, their voices will be the ones that matter.

For now, the die has been cast. The spice must flow.

To recap, Paul has entered the body-strewn palace with his forces. As he takes in the gory sights, he remembers what life in the palace was like prior to his father’s death. It has been many years since Paul Atreides has stepped onto these grounds. Finding his way into his parents’ quarters, Paul tries to comfort a weeping Chani.

“Tell me again about the waters in your homeland, Muad’Dib,” she asks poignantly. There is no triumph in her voice. No sense of victory, of a war being fought and won; only sadness and regret, despair at the loss of so many loved ones. What have they suffered through if not death and destruction? Despite all that, Paul describes to her the lushness of what he knows from his home world Caladan and how Arrakis will one day become.

Chani is overcome with grief and torment, along with thoughts of her slain son. She is inconsolable in the face of so much pain and loss. They embrace, warmly. “Then, it’s over?” Chani asks.

“Almost,” Paul replies.

Back to the throne room. Paul, in full regalia, is flanked by Gurney Halleck, Reverend Mother (and Lady) Jessica, and Chani by his side. Stilgar is also there, as is Otheym. They “greet,” if that’s the proper term (more like “receive”) the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, who treats Paul rather too dismissively for a failed head of state. The Emperor hints that, in a word, he can summon the other Great Houses to rally around to his cause. Bad move!

“Your word means nothing anymore,” is Paul’s curt retort.

 Taken aback by this obvious insult to his person and power, Shaddam fires back: “I am the Emperor!”

“Not for long,” Paul responds calmly. He signals to his guards to bring in the representatives of the Spacing Guild, including the long-faced, lugubrious talking Guild agent, the one who Paul had captured earlier on.

The Spacing Guild agent does not take kindly to Paul’s bossing him around. But Paul, wiser than his years, informs the lot of them to look into the future, as they have the ability to do so. What do they see? Paul rises from his place on high and descends to their level. He paints a grim picture for them, if his orders are not obeyed – one of which is to destroy all spice production on Arrakis. If this is carried out, he claims, it will ruin the Spacing Guild and everyone else whose lifeblood depends on the spice’s flow.

It’s more radical that that! Paul threatens to bring death to the Makers – those giant sandworms out in the high desert, the ones who produce the spice, thus “killing the cycle of life.” This is an abomination, they howl. But Paul is deadly serious. It is no idle boast but a very real possibility. A catastrophe? Yes, by any means. But it’s much more than that: It is a blatant display of power and resolve. Paul means to have his way with the Spacing Guild and with the former “Great Houses,” if that’s what you want to call them.

In sum, Paul has them by the you-know-where and is perfectly capable of squeezing them for all they are worth. You can bet on it!

Cast of ‘Dune’ 2000 miniseries from the Sci-Fi Channel

The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam is horrified. She angrily charges Lady Jessica to silence her son. But Jessica throws her taunt back in Reverend Mother’s face: “Silence him yourself!” The Emperor, fearing his hold on power is about to loosen, turns to the Spacing Guild agent to confirm if this can truly be done.

“They know I can do this,” Paul answers for them. “That’s what they fear the most.” As he says this, Paul approaches the disbelieving Emperor and what remains of his court and followers. “They know precisely where we are,” he gloats, his eyes glowing with a piercing blue light, “and what we can do.” Paul does not mince words. Things can get much, much worse.

In the end, Paul has used their methods against them: the very monopoly on trade and commerce that the Spacing Guild and the Great Houses have been resorting to for millennia will vanish overnight. Is this what they really want to happen, a reversal of who rules and who gets ruled? The worker bees become the bosses by governing the hive, while the queen and king become their slaves? Workers of the world, unite? And is Paul truly capable of burning down their houses?

“If I am not obeyed,” he goes on, “the spice…will not…flow.”

“It would be suicide!!!” the Emperor stammers out. Oh, yes. Indeed it would.

Stepping out from the crowd, the haughty Princess Irulan (only she’s not so haughty as she was before but rather looks upon Paul in a most admiring fashion) offers herself as a concession, a bargaining chip if you prefer; a gesture of peace and one the still irritated Emperor is loathe to accept.

Both Lady Jessica and the Emperor try their best to interfere. Neither is in agreement with this proposed solution. Yet, Irulan knows, probably better than anyone else, that the cards are stacked against them and in Paul’s favor.

“What choice do we have?” Looking at the Emperor with determination and forbearance, Princess Irulan tries one last time to convince him to go along with the idea: “Father, here is a man fit to be your son.”

Paul Atreides after combat with Feyd Rautha in ‘Dune’ miniseries 2000

Battle to the Death

Throwing in his own two cents, the still very-much-alive Feyd Rautha challenges Paul to a duel to the death. Paul turns to Gurney and asks who this rash fellow might be. Gurney fills him in on Fey’s ruthless nature and offers to kill the Baron’s last surviving nephew as a gift.

In his mind, Paul remembers his slaying of the rugged Jamis, his first unpleasant killing. He is not at all pleased by this turn of events, especially since he recently avoided a fight to the finish with Stilgar for leadership of the Fremen clans. But then, as Muad’Dib, he is in a very different position from where he was early on. He’s no doubt convinced himself that, as the Savior of his people, he has no choice but to accept the challenge of leadership – and before a receptive audience, too.

In another respect, Paul has been waging war for years. He is battle hardened and tested, a proven warrior to himself and to his men; while the Baron’s self-obsessed nephew is plainly a pretty boy – if a patently odious one; more of a prancing pony and a show-off, but a devious and dangerous adversary, nonetheless.

With all that occupying his thoughts, Paul is still able to strengthen his resolve, in the knowledge that, though he is mortal, his status and reputation as a leader will carry him through to victory. These are the differences that separate one combatant from the other.

Paul sighs to himself. “So it’s come to this,” he whispers, half to himself and half to Gurney and his retinue. Feyd demands satisfaction – and satisfaction, for lack of a better word, is what he will get. Their duel to the death becomes the climactic sequence to the entire saga, and the best scene in the series.

“May thy knife chip and shatter,” Paul relays to his opponent. It is the ritual cry of the Fremen to a fellow combatant, an acknowledgment that all are mortal and life is tenuous, held onto by a thread.

The Emperor offers his crysknife to Feyd as a gesture of support. Feyd accepts it and will fight in Shaddam IV’s name. Not satisfied with that, Feyd continues to issue off bald-faced threats at Muad’Dib, treating him with contempt and taunting his consort Chani for all it is worth. But Chani is not afraid.

Feyd Rautha, the Emperor, and Princess Irulan in finale to ‘Dune’ miniseries 2000

Paul goes through with the ritual. He takes his crysknife and folds it in his arms, crossing them across his bare chest. Feyd sneers at him. He appears smug and over-confident, which he must do if he is to hold up his end as defender of the late Baron Harkonnen’s fiefdom. They are both acting within the sphere and boundaries set forth by the feudal system they adhere to, and by their respective positions within that system.

Dark, foreboding shadows descend upon the throne room as the battle begins. The light continues to pour in from the right, making the duality of dark and shadow, right and wrong, that much more prominent. The stakes are, indeed, high.  

Trans lights, which bathed the shadowy interior of the palace (a huge set, according to director-writer John Harrison) from the back and to the right, express both the darkness and foreboding of what has transpired and the coming out of that darkness into the light of “reason” and Paul’s pathbreaking ideas. It’s a superb use of staging, grouping, individual moments, and spotlighting specific to character and detail, along with the personal stakes involved in the developing story line.

Harrison did not want too many jump cuts in this action sequence, and no “whole hog” Matrix-y special FX either, as he phrased it in his commentary. But he also didn’t want to shy away from kung fu or other martial art form. The final result was a seamless blend of wide and medium shots. This gave credibility to the actors, who rehearsed this scene intensely over the course of several weeks.

In sum, this was the culmination of six months of shooting which, it must be mentioned, was worth the extra time and effort that were lavished on the entire project. The rudimentary CGI components, while not always seamlessly coordinated and at times sticking out prominently like the sorest of thumbs, nevertheless lent purpose and meaning to what could have been a dull, routine affair.

Paul gets the jump on Feyd when, after our pretty boy all-but appears to gain the upper hand, he hears Paul call out to him, using the name “cousin” (which Feyd was, as it was already revealed that the Baron was Lady Jessica’s father). This throws Feyd off his game, enough to distract him to the point that the younger Muad’Dib has thrust his crysknife deep into Feyd’s chest, killing him instantly. It’s all over at that point.

The victorious Paul (Alec Newman) and the Princess Irulan (Julie Cox) in ‘Dune’ miniseries

The Spacing Guild and the long-faced agent slink silently away and over to Paul’s side, accompanied by their gloomy-sounding exit music. The shocked Emperor sees his daughter, Princess Irulan, stride over to where Paul is standing. They eyeball each other for a brief instant as Irulan studies the victorious winner with hungry eyes. For his part, Paul joins Chani (his official consort) on the dais, while the Emperor strides slowly off and out the door – alone and unaccompanied.

Chani gazes lovingly at Paul, and he does likewise. As for Irulan, she is alone at the other end of the great hall, casting a very long shadow on the beautifully tiled palace floor – a power still, but only onto herself.

Lady Jessica, or Reverend Mother Jessica as she is now called, is given the final word. Yes, Jessica has survived. In fact, all the major women characters are the only ones to have lasted. Frank Herbert, the novelist and visionary exponent of the saga and its official sequels, was one the foremost auteurs of science fiction to have given women a prominent place in their stories. So it is only fitting that Lady Jessica summarizes the proceedings with her epitaph.  

“There, so haughty, so confident,” Lady Jessica comments. “Let us hope she finds solace in her writing and her books. She’ll have little else.” Jessica continues: “She may have my son’s name, but it is we, the ones who carry the name of ‘concubine,’ that history will call ‘wives.’ ”

The story concludes with a replay of Grame Revell’s marvelous Middle Eastern-influenced scoring.

“The saga of Dune is far from over…”

 (To be continued)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Eleven): Benny and the “Bullet” (Conclusion)

Bottom feeder par excellence: German shepherd dog barking

The real trouble, as Sonny saw it, wasn’t so much Benny Junior or his father Benny Senior, the surly super, but their full-grown dog Bullet. Named, appropriately, after the loyal and highly intelligent German shepherd once owned by TV and motion picture cowboy star Roy Rogers, this South Bronx variation on the black-and-tan hound was as mean and vicious a mongrel as Benny and his sort-tempered dad had been – more so, in their canine’s case.

      Bullet had the unfortunate tendency of hiding out in the darkest regions of their basement. Coincidentally or not, both Stratford Avenue complexes shared the same basement and laundry facilities; and each were connected by long, dark passageways that allowed residents as well as outsiders easy access to the two buildings. To gain entry, anyone, including Sonny and his family, could climb down a short set of steps into a narrow tunnel-like structure that opened up onto a claustrophobic courtyard revealing the twin complexes’ backsides. From there, pedestrians could follow one passageway to the left and into 1245 Stratford Avenue, or the other passageway to the right into 1255 Stratford. Rows of empty or half-filled garbage cans lined both pathways, which made walking to the adjacent elevators somewhat treacherous, given that the basement lighting was of poor quality.

        Somewhere along those two dimly-lit shafts – equivalent, in Sonny’s mind, to the monster Grendel’s legendary lair – lurked a growling modern-day facsimile in the German shepherd Bullet. Why the beast was allowed to roam free among the empty garbage cans and around unsuspecting tenants was a mystery few if any of the neighborhood’s residents could provide an easy answer to. There was no doubt the dog’s prowess as the guardian of their realm, a makeshift Cerberus in charge of the South Bronx Underworld, gave tenants peace of mind in that its presence was deemed sufficient enough to ward off strangers and unwanted intruders. Maybe so. But it did next to nothing in easing Sonny and Juanito’s concerns for their safety, or those of their close friends.

       Sonny hated to go down to that basement. For one, he was afraid of the dark (and it could get extremely dark under the poor lighting conditions); for another, that mangy mongrel sensed Sonny’s fear, which made his apprehension about going there that much worse.

       In retaliation, Sonny invented all sorts of excuses for avoiding that dreadful place. Poor Sonny! He couldn’t help it if he was afraid of both dogs and the dark. Unfortunately, Sonny let his imagination run wild with surreal visions of his being attacked by a wild mongrel named Bullet; of his being torn apart, limb from Puerto Rican limb, while that ferocious beast gorged on his skinny innards, chewing his arms and legs as if they were meatless chicken bones. Just the thought and image of that mangy mutt devouring his extremities gave Sonny the shudders, which never helped when Mami insisted loudly that he go down there and take care of the laundry. Pronto!

       Sonny’s fear of dogs stemmed from an early encounter with a ferocious boxer. Walking in his usual leisurely gait from his family’s apartment to the Clason’s Point Branch of the New York Public Library building, just under the elevated Number 6 Pelham Bay line subway station at Soundview Avenue, little Sonny had once been accosted by a leash-less beast prowling the front yard of some lax neighbor’s homestead.

Soundview area of the South Bronx, near Clason Point

       “Oh! Damn it!” Sonny shouted. “Freaking dog! You scared the crap outta me!” was all he could say to the barking but belligerent animal. “Okay, I’m outta here,” Sonny muttered under his breath. “Asshole neighbors, why can’t you keep your mangy mutt bottled up?” The boxer’s massive form, certainly not as large as the super’s German shepherd Bullet, was formidable enough to thwart any potential thieves from operating in the vicinity of the local subway station. Under cover of darkness and with the passing noise of clanging subway cars overhead, any burglars worth their salt would be able to do their dirty work undetected. With the boxer on patrol, however, they were forced to think twice, maybe three times at that, before committing any offences under its watch.       

       That early encounter soured Sonny’s taste for dogs as pets – but not for cute little puppies – to a noticeable degree. For the moment, though, he was happy to give the animals a very wide berth.

       One afternoon, as usual, Mami charged him with dropping off the trash. Sonny had performed this service a hundred times (a rough but no less exaggerated count on his part) and was at the least willing, for the time being, to help his mother out while the vacationing Papi was absent. Not that Papi was any more delighted to be taking out the garbage, which he felt was purely “woman’s work.” No matter, what had to be done had to be done, and Sonny was the one to do it. Sonny took a deep breath and sucked in his gut. It would be over in a minute, he reassured himself. After all, dogs don’t stay in one place for long, now, do they? Nah, not a chance! They move around a lot. Always pacing back and forth, especially German shepherds. It’s in their blood, in their makeup. Sufficiently pumped up, Sonny convinced himself that all would be well. In and out. That’s the ticket. Nothing to be concerned about.

       “WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! ARGH!!!!!”

       Caught completely by surprise, Sonny was startled. No, he was scared out of his wits! Bullet’s massive head and shoulders, those prominent black-and-tan markings on its upper back, that big brown snout, those salivating jaws of death growled menacingly at Sonny from the darkest nether regions of the basement entrance. “Crap, crap!” Sonny shouted to himself. “Freaking bitchy dog was outside all this time!” He began to panic. “What the hell do I do now?”

       Its mouth agape, Bullet gave out a warning snarl, the kind that was typical of the breed but reminded Sonny more of those nasty Doberman Pinscher’s he had heard so much about. Bullet continued to growl noisily at him, the drool dripping from its curved jaws. It was sending out a signal, and the message was: don’t mess with this beast. No dummy, Sonny got the hint. This was the break he had been waiting for. He knew, from bitter experience, that dogs (most of them, anyway) warn you ahead of time regarding their intentions. Take the hint, he reminded himself, and you will be fine. Maybe. Keep the hell out of their way, go about your business, and they will get the idea you pose no threat to their well-being. Uh-huh.

       “Keep your distance,” an agitated Sonny whispered to himself. “Good advice for me, good advice for Mr. Bullet here.” Storybook images of the Big Bad Wolf with Little Red Riding Hood, and of Peter and that Russian Wolf, filled Sonny’s imagination. Still, he stood his ground, petrified, unable to react or to move. At any second, Sonny expected this guardian of its realm would pounce on him with all its vicious might, sinking those monstrous jaws and dagger-like teeth into his scrawny little forearms. Or worse, into the pulsing veins in his neck, the blood gushing forth every which way, his heart throbbing, his vessels popping out from his sweaty bead-filled brow and forehead. Copious drops of blood gushing forth unchecked onto the basement floor. The beast’s hot breath, spewing fire and brimstone and God knows what else it had, onto his lineless facial features…This was it! The end! Goodbye, world!!!

       “Bullet!” A sharp, irritated voice sounded from nearby. “Bullet!” the voice shouted again. “¡Para te! ¿Me eschuchas? ¡Para te con esso! Bullet! Stop that!” the voice repeated, over and over again. Until the chastened German shepherd backed off its attack. “Good dog. Good dog, Bullet,” repeated the voice. Sonny stopped to listen. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, another of his minor faults. But within a few seconds Sonny was able to focus long enough to make out superintendent Benny’s hulking form. His voice, now palpably soft and tender, was communicating with Bullet in Spanish, reassuring the frightened animal that all would be well.

       Where did the super come from? Where was he hiding? Amazingly, Benny Sr. must have materialized out of the shadows, in time to exert control over the miscreant mutt, now docile and at his beck and call. Bullet stopped in his tracks and went over to its master’s side, licking Benny Sr.’s hand and fingers and nuzzling its huge head into the super’s underarm. “Good boy, Bullet,” Benny the super repeated. “Good boy. Good Bullet…” The super continued to pet and reassure the animal for what seemed minutes. Whatever brought the vicious beast to heel and resolve itself not to cross the line of decorum came as a godsend to Sonny, who for a split second thought he might crap in his newly bought Wrangler jeans pants. Sonny stood there for the moment, his mouth slightly agape, and thanking the Lord for his good fortune. He had noticed that, in a flash, old Bullet had transformed itself from the hound from Hell into man’s best friend, as it was meant to be.

Playtime on the old South Bronx backlot baseball

         The threat thwarted, Sonny remembered that he still had the trash to drop off. Never mind that the trash can he chose wasn’t from their building’s complex. What the hell! Sonny dropped the trash bags into whatever receptacle was available and ran, with all the speed an eleven-year-old could summon under the circumstances, right to their building’s elevator. Lady Luck continued to smile at and rain down on young Sonny’s form. For there, waiting for him with hands on her hips, was Mami – holding the elevator door open and beckoning her son to go in.

      “Santiago, ¿qué pasó? ¿Por qué te esta tomando tanto tiempo? What took you so long?” she insisted.

       “Sorry, Mami!” Sonny blurted out. “I didn’t mean to stay out so late!” Sonny was glad to see his mother. Glad? He was ecstatic. He gave Mami the warmest, lovingest hug his sore arms could manage. Sonny would never again take out the garbage. Not in that building, he wouldn’t, nor in any other building. And in no way, shape or form would he ever, EVER, insist on their getting a dog or any animal for a pet. Not if he could help it.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Ten): Benny and the “Bullet”

1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenue, the South Bronx

Superintendents in the South Bronx had one tough job. In addition to overseeing the grounds, doing the maintenance and repair work, and striving to keep their cantankerous tenants in line and up to date with their rent, most New York City superintendents also took responsibility for their buildings’ security.

   In fact, many of the superintendents, called “the super” by a majority of the residents, considered themselves to be the first line of any building’s defense. But there were always those who took their tasks as makeshift policemen a trifle too seriously, while others could not have given a day’s worth of crap if their buildings went to pot. 

       If some of the local troublemakers weren’t adding graffiti to their building’s outer walls, they were creating a nuisance by playing loud music at all hours of the day and night, and generally making the other tenants and neighbors resemble pawns in the nonstop turf wars that soon enveloped the South Bronx and other areas of blight in the city that never sleeps.

       Taking out the trash, keeping vandals away and at bay from renters’ homes, changing burned out light bulbs, getting the elevators to run properly and efficiently on any given day, seeing to the upkeep of laundry facilities, and, worst of all, trying to control the ever-growing pest population – rats and roaches, as well as rival gangs, among the worst offenders – these were fulltime jobs for most “supers,” be they good or bad.

       Speaking of which, the superintendent of 1245 and 1255 Stratford Avenues happened to be a dark-skinned, dark-haired native Puerto Rican from Guaynabo named Benjamin Cardona, whom everyone called “Benny” for short. By the foregoing description, anyone who glanced at Benny might have pegged him for a Mexican descendant. The young people, Sonny and Juanito among them, never called him by his real name. He and others like him were invariably referred to as “The Super.” If only they had lived up to their moniker! Things would have been a whole lot better, and life a whole lot easier for residents and their families, had that been the case. That’s not to say that Benjamin Cardona, or Benny, or The Super, wasn’t up to the task.

   As with most such immigrant laborers, Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez was a decent enough fellow, a hardworking individual in his late thirties (or maybe early forties – it was hard to tell by his looks alone), with several kids of his own to care for and a diligent working-class spouse who Sonny rarely got to see, and whose name he never got to know. “Mrs. Super”? That was as far as Sonny got with that.

       If Benjamin Emanuel Cardona Lopez had his faults, it was that he gave people who didn’t know him personally the appearance of always being irritated with something or someone. He couldn’t help the fact that his thick, difficult-to-comb hair was jet-black in color; that he had a five o’clock shadow at 11:00 a.m. in the morning; that his darkly tanned facial features and heavily lined brow, chin, and forehead gave Benjamin the look of a reconstituted caveman come to life. What nature provided him in sour looks and disposition did not, by any means, extend to his height: the super barely clocked in at a heavy-set, five-feet and seven-inches.

       “Dang, he’s one tough looking dude,” Sonny mumbled to himself upon seeing the busy superintendent leave his basement apartment. “He could’ve been a superhero, right Juanito?”

       Juanito nodded. “Yeah. Superhero. This must be his day job!”

       “Right on,” Sonny replied, giggling to himself. Even in his work clothes, Sonny gathered, the super gave off nothing but bad vibes. “He’s no Clark Kent.”

       “You got that right,” Juanito chimed in. “That guy Kent was mild-mannered, and he worked for a newspaper.”

       “Hah, yeah. But this guy… Man, I don’t think he can even write! What a joke!”           

       To both of the brothers, the dark-complexioned superintendent resembled a surly, no-nonsense, sour-tempered tough who took no crap from anybody and lacked a relatable sense of humor. Sonny pictured the super Benjamin as the incarnation of a Western villain, or maybe a Mexican bandit, the kind who sports a big black hat with thin black mustache, riding into town looking for trouble.

       “You know who he reminds of?” Sonny said to his brother. “He’s like that fake Mexican bad guy played by Humphrey Bogart, you remember the guy… Uh, Morell, I think his name was. In that movie with Errol Flynn…”

       “Yeah, Virginia City,” Juanito quickly answered.

       “That’s it! Virginia City! Hah!”

       Not one of Bogart’s better screen assumptions, Morell was a mix of half-breeds. Half Mexican, half American, part mangy mongrel, all phony baloney. And with a fake Mexican accent and that little black mustache to top it off, not to mention old Bogie’s growling, rabid-dog vocal mannerisms. An uproariously and obviously false movie portrayal, completely over-the-top and patently stereotypical.

       “You think he’s Mexican?” Juanito asked, turning to Sonny.

       “Who, Bogart?”

       “No, the super.”

       “Nah, he’s Puerto Rican. Like us. Papi told me so.”

       “When did he tell you that? I don’t remember.”

       “It was a while ago, when he first came here.”

       “Who, Papi?”

       “No, man, the super! Benjamin, not Papi. You deaf or what? Wake up!” Sonny was getting irritated with his brother. The two of them had a difference of opinion as to where the superintendent Benjamin had come from. Juanito was sure that his looks and stature were more in line with a Mexican wetback than with your average Puerto Rican-type. But Sonny knew better, which is why he had asked Papi, who had some intimacy with the man, for clarification.

Humphrey Bogart as the bandit Morell in ‘Virginia City’ (Warner Bros., 1940)

The super had a son, Benjamin Cardona Junior, the firstborn of his father’s three children, the other two being a cute little girl and a tiny baby brother. Everyone knew the oldest as Benny. His mother always referred to him as “Junior,” which made Benny wince.

   Benny was a real spoiled brat of a child, a tarnished chip off the old Puerto Rican block. A snotty, know-it-all, “I’m better than you are” type of fellow, roughly cousins Lucas and Linus’s age, which would have made him two or three years older than either Sonny or Juanito. And Benny knew he was a snot rag, too. He carried this chip on his right shoulder, for all the world to see. A twenty-four/seven, pain-in-the-rear-end kind of punkish bully who thought nothing of accosting anyone his age or younger and mercilessly pummeling them for the sheer sake of pummeling. He made any kid’s life pure hell on the block, which was why Benjamin Cardona Junior got into more street brawls and fistfights than any other similarly aged juvenile in their South Bronx neighborhood.

       You learned quickly that if you didn’t get in the first blow – and make it count! – Benny would go at you with tooth and nail and anything else that was convenient or at his disposal. The mystery behind Benny’s perpetual sour mood was never resolved. It seemed odd, too, that such a good-looking young teenaged boy, as Benny appeared to be – with the same jet-black hair as his father, but much softer facial features, including a cleft chin and hazel-colored eyes that he obviously got from his highly attractive mother – would behave in such a perversely pugnacious manner. What was he afraid of?

“Bronx Boys,” or street toughs (ca. 1960s) (Photo by Stephen Shames / LensCulture)

       That’s what bullies often are, Sonny learned from his Papi. “It’s the fear, mijo,” Papi would try hard to explain to him. “You see, they always afraid o’ somethin’.”

       “What are they afraid of, Papi? What? They’re bigger and they’re stronger than me, and they’re tougher, too. Who’s gonna challenge them about anything?”

       “Is not like that. That have a big fear, they afraid of losing the battle.”

       “I don’t understand,” Sonny questioned, puzzled by Papi’s terse response.

       “They fear they gonna lose their status as tough guys. If they go soft, for any reason, they think they lose the respect of everybody. So they always gotta be on the edge, you know? Always lookin’ to beat somebody up, to prove they are macho or whatever.”

       “But you’re not like that, Papi. Why are they like that?”

       Papi looked at his son and displayed a knowing half-smile as he answered him. “You young yet. And you smarter than that Benny. Much smarter. You don’ need to be ‘fraid o’ nothin’, you are your own person. You know who you are. You understan’?”

       Sonny listened to Papi’s explanation and, after thinking about what he had said, realized that Benny was at a disadvantage when it came to facing up to or playing with the neighborhood kids. By virtue of his position as the superintendent’s son, in his mind Benny felt responsible for holding up his end as someone who could not be taken for a pushover. Which put him always on the edge. And because that was the case, el joven Benny had no choice but to be constantly on the lookout, to be belligerent and bellicose when he thought it served his purpose.

       What a poor state to be in, Sonny felt with a tiny modicum of understanding. A young man, with enviable “matinee idol” good looks, had been forced to duke it out with the neighborhood toughs, just to prove to his old man that he could take care of himself – when that was uncalled for, except in the super’s kid’s mind. Once Benny Junior gave you that smoldering “evil eye” look, that “I’m gonna kick your freaking ass” stare, your hide was his, or so he thought. Because of his attitude about everything and everyone, Sonny and Juanito, along with the other neighborhood kids, avoided Benny at all costs. He would continue to spell trouble for them as long as his father was the superintendent. And that had to change.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

Stream of Consciousness: Leonard Bernstein, an American Master “Revealed” in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ (2023)

Young Lenny Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) at his Carnegie Hall debut, in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

Conducting One’s Life in Public

What is this we’re watching? Lenny snorting cocaine? Lenny having affairs with young men? Lenny getting married, Lenny having children? The gala premieres, the boisterous nightlife, the concerts, the debuts, the banter, the repartee? Where’s the “radical chic”?

In the new film Maestro (2023), Bradley Cooper stars as the dearly beloved American-born conductor, composer, and lively raconteur Leonard Bernstein, first as a young prodigy (in appearance, not so much), then in middle age (better), and finally at age 70 (best!). The gray hairs and wrinkles complement the overall picture.

At the start, Bernstein gets a 9:00 a.m. wakeup call to take over the Boston Symphony later that day from an indisposed Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall. He’s lying in bed with another man, so audiences are clued in right off the bat as to where this biopic is going: to Lenny’s intimate, indiscreet side.

Not to mistake Lenny for Lenny Bruce, the foul-mouthed standup comic interpreted by Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse’s 1974 film, the title of which has already been used. But “Lenny” as in Leonard (born Louis) Bernstein, our titular maestro. This Lenny made classical music history in Carnegie Hall, leading the orchestra in Robert Schumann’s “Manfred” Overture.

In the next section he’s with choreographer Jerome (“Jerry”) Robbins working on their ballet Fancy Free, about three sailors on shore leave in New York City. The two of them are laboring over the score, spouting rapid-fire dialogue analogous to the work’s free-flowing dance movements. So far, so good.

Bradley Cooper, who also directed, cowrote and coproduced the film, gets the manic nature of the man down pat, that visceral, ever-vacillating disposition, and his high voltage personality; a veritable ball of fire, restless, urbane, full of pent-up energy and vigor. Lenny, his dynamic as well as his bombastic sides – all present and accounted for in his best scores.

As Cooper envisions, Bernstein is a man possessed, one who pours every ounce of resources into his music and into his conducting duties, which blossomed after his history-making debut. Early on, lyricists Betty Comden (Mallory Portnoy) and Adolph Green (Nick Blaemire) are pictured entertaining the gang at a dinner party for theater folk.

Into this urban setting comes the lovely Felicia Montealegre (vulnerable Carrie Mulligan, well cast and richly deserving of an Oscar) of Chilean-Costa Rican-Jewish descent. Bernstein’s talkative sister Shirley (a marvelously loquacious Sarah Silverman) is there, too. She introduces Felicia to big brother Lenny. An equally incessant and lively chatterer, Lenny and Felicia are shown chain-smoking and making small talk. They’re the life of any party.

Felicia Montealegre (Carrie Mulligan) with Lenny (Bradley Cooper) in the park

Scenes depicting Lenny and Felicia’s lives whizz by in haphazard fashion, the early portions of which are captured in high-contrast black and white, while subsequent episodes are imbued with a richer color palette. We witness the couple’s first kiss and their manic reactions to one another. But already we feel the manifest tension present, the clash of iron wills: Bernstein trying to analyze Felicia and getting the basis for her lack of theatrical success all wrong. It’s not “fear of success,” as Lenny hints to her, but an unfortunate lack of luck.

Well, no, it’s not that either. Lenny compares his situation to that of fellow conductor Artur Rodziński moving in and Bruno Walter falling out of favor. Surely fate, one gathers, must have had a hand in Bernstein’s success. But it hadn’t rubbed off on Felicia. Still, both he and Felicia fall deeply in love and get deserved ovations for their respective performances. Inevitably, Lenny misses his wife’s last minute Broadway stage appearance which leads to increased friction between them.

In Cooper’s vision, Bernstein is comparable to an electric light bulb gone wrong: You can’t turn him off, since he’s always turned on. He needs to be at the center of everyone’s attention. For instance, we see Lenny together with composer Aaron Copland (Brian Klugman), a fellow closeted gay man, who develop a lifelong friendship. But where are Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti? Oh, look, there’s Serge Koussevitsky (Yasen Peyankov) giving some advice. One situation leads to another, when suddenly we’re whisked off to where Fancy Free is being rehearsed. “Not serious music,” is someone’s critical assessment.

Next, we see “Three Dance Variations” performed in a dream sequence that, if Cooper had viewed the Coen Brothers’ farcical Hail, Caesar! (2016), would ring a bell with anyone over its “gay” thematic. Did this sequence actually occur? Not likely. But even if it did, what does it have to say about Leonard Bernstein the maestro, the first great American conductor of a major American orchestra; the never-at-a-loss for words, vivacious and ubiquitous homegrown talent, the concert and television personality?

Dance sequence from ‘Fancy Free’ in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ (2023)

We hear the song “New York, New York,” and indeed it is a wonderful town. Yes, we get it. Life and art will mesh, no doubt about it. They complement each other and ultimately blend together (as songwriter Cole Porter’s song “Friendship” once informed us) until one becomes inseparable from the other.

This leads viewers back to our couple, who decides to give marriage a whirl, even if Felicia confesses to Lenny that “she knows exactly who he is.” Meaning: She’s on to his closeted lifestyle. Later, Lenny and Felicia, along with Jamie and Alexander Bernstein, their children, are interviewed by Edward R. Murrow at their apartment in Manhattan. There’s talk of his turning Romeo and Juliet into a musical (the inevitable West Side Story), a film score for On the Waterfront, and the early TV program Omnibus, but also precious little context or insight into any of these productions. Where are the televised Young People’s Concerts? Where is Bernstein’s rabbinical obsession with having to explain everything to everyone? You’ll have to look elsewhere for them.

The film’s formula is this: Bernstein as composer/creator versus Bernstein the performing artist. As a conductor = the public life; as a creative force = sitting alone in one’s room. Viewers are treated to Lenny’s intimate inner life instead of his much grander outer one. With his ever-present lighted cigarette in hand, puffing away at every opportunity, Lenny’s life it seems goes up in smoke.

Now, about that “prosthetic nose” controversy: It’s not as large or prominent an issue as the press has made it out to be. In fact, Bernstein’s most evident physical characteristics, in this author’s view, were his unusually large earlobes. As far as Bradley Cooper’s interpretation is concerned, it both “is” and “isn’t” Lenny. He does a better job of conveying the crustiness of the conductor’s 70-year-old persona than he does with the younger, flashier dynamo.

As for Felicia, Ms. Mulligan depicts her as sacrificing her professional life for a dual role as dutiful wife and mother to the maestro and their children. There’s lots of talk between them, some of it involving namedropping, most of it nonstop, fast-paced, rapid-fire staccato, furiously delivered – verbal hemorrhaging as my friend Gerald Thomas once put it. In fact, the best scene in the picture concerns the couple’s Thanksgiving Day quarrel, hurled at top speed in a stream of consciousness give-and-take of allegations, charges and countercharges, all at a literate level far above your standard husband-and-wife banter. The intellectual heft is breathtaking, to say the least.

We’re also privy to bits and pieces of music associated with the maestro, i.e., the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5^th Symphony; there’s Bernstein’s friendship with his mentors Copland and Koussevitsky; and Lenny’s gushing pride in his wife and young son.

Carrie Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

In the Mahler piece, we see Felicia’s superimposed image, tiny in comparison and overshadowed (as it were) by Lenny’s larger form. The thought is that she is losing her husband to his profession. That her own career was dwarfed by his more towering one. About a third of the way in, we’re treated to glorious color, the light and dark giving way to and replaced by luscious greens, yellows, blues, gold, aqua, and okra.

Cookie Cutter Boys

Bernstein struggles with concert appearances, and doing recordings when he should be composing. Whoops, there goes the sex life again! At this stage, Bernstein’s dalliances with handsome young males get to be a bit much, even for Felicia’s endless patience. Interviews, discussions about his lack of creativity, one-on-ones with an author wanting to write a book about him or getting Lenny to write one – it’s a losing battle.

Yet, where is the genius behind all this activity? It’s all on the surface, the substance of which gets buried in an avalanche of words, words, and more words that struggle to connect with viewers yet do little to help illustrate the conducting and compositional bent of the genius that was Leonard Bernstein.

Lenny’s compulsive work ethic is there, in spurts and in separate or related scenes, jumbled together and in between his encounters with interviewers and such – sort of a “file association” technique which must have been how the real-life Bernstein operated, in competition with the movie version.

Part of his struggle to be a composer of merit was his overwhelming love for individuals, for being around and with them; his loathing of being left alone, forgotten and tossed to the side. But where was Bernstein’s connection to Judaism and his Jewish heritage, his passion for Israel, his work with the New York Philharmonic, and his support of liberal causes, among them his controversial association with the Black Panther movement? Besides the above activities, what we are missing in Maestro is the context.

There’s a scene of his rehearsing a chorus for Candide’s “Make Our Garden Grow,” a wonderful choice. Felicia looks on admiringly. Lenny, too, is carried away, pouring his whole fiber into the piece, done a cappella. There’s the Prelude to West Side Story, played over a scene of Felicia in the park (in Massachusetts where the couple had their summer residence), with Lenny driving up in his pale blue convertible (and with R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World” heard on the car’s radio) with another lover. Lenny waves to Felicia and embraces his youngest daughter by the poolside. But the perspective is off, the angle is all wrong, a non sequitur.

Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) leading the chorus in “Make Our Garden Grow” from ‘Candide’

Felicia tries to get him to clear up the rumors to his daughter Jamie of his seeing other men. Lenny, for his part, is willing to spill the beans about his sexual proclivities, but Felicia insists he keep it to himself. “Don’t you dare tell her the truth!” she emphasizes. And so, he doesn’t. He is most convincing in his denials. Again, what is the connection to the main storyline? It’s all random dialogue, arbitrary and without sufficient justification. But isn’t life that way? One has to wonder.

In most films, music is used as a means to unify the action, to add clarity or substance to a given work. But here, it beggars confusion amid silent shrugs of the shoulders, leaving audiences clueless as to what association a particular piece of music has to the action onscreen. Even to those familiar with Bernstein’s life and accomplishments, the film seems wanting, the emotions left at sea to cast about for explanations where, to be perfectly honest, none exist. This is all to Maestro’s deficit – and it’s a major one, next to the wandering screenplay (worked on by both Cooper and John Singer) that takes the viewer every which way except the path of coherence.

Lenny and Felicia continue to argue about his bringing the young man Thomas to their summer home to meet the kids. Should Lenny have done that? And why is this important in telling Bernstein’s overall story? Is this what Cooper and Singer labored so valiantly to bring to the screen? Could Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese have done a better job of it, or taken a different path? Both ended up as executive producers on the project, and both had been penciled in to lead it, prior to giving up the reins to Cooper.

Cooper, for his part, has released a major motion picture that morphed into a passion project. Seeing Cooper on the CBS Sunday Morning program with the three surviving Bernstein children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, one grasps the simple fact that he was emotionally attached and committed to capturing Lenny’s intense but troubled relationship with Felicia, along with the conductor’s family dynamic. You can see and feel the rapport he had with the adult siblings, it is that palpable.

Bernstein leading the orchestra and chorus in the conclusion to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2

Given all the above, there’s decidedly too much of the “man” and not nearly enough of the “artist.” For instance, Mass was one of Bernstein’s most accessible “serious” works and is given prominence later on, but audiences are left wondering as to the point of it all. As is the climax to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, subtitled the “Resurrection,” the reenactment of which captures much of its inner fire and spiritual heft, but lacks the framework needed to provide clarity as to why this specific sequence matters for today’s audiences. Yes, it’s a magnificent effort but to what end?

Gustav Mahler, an Austro-Bohemian Jew who converted to Catholicism later in life, lived in difficult times and experienced similar issues (as Bernstein surely had) between his art and his religion, his troubled marriage to the lovely Alma Mahler, and his pursuit of a conducting career contrasted with his composing works of unimaginable emotional breadth and purpose. He could be the model for our modern-day Mahler, that is, our own Leonard Bernstein. Then why not do a film about Mahler? Well, one reason is that Ken Russell had done it before in 1974 (and none too successfully).

The last third of Cooper’s film is taken up with Felicia’s bout with and treatment of cancer, leading to her poignant passing (based on the surviving siblings’ account). This segues briefly into Bernstein’s teaching conducting classes to young aspirants, with his impulsive unruliness moderated somewhat for that final frame. For indeed, the remaining few minutes of Maestro return Leonard Bernstein to the beginning of the end, where he is being interviewed about his life and work.

The older Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) in ‘Maestro’ (2023)

With that characteristic gleam and twinkle in his eyes and that wrinkled, wizened expression we know so well from his many television and concert appearances, a slightly irritated and prematurely older Lenny turns directly to the camera (but not to the audience) and asks, quizzically: “Any questions?”

Oh, yes! About several dozen or more! Only, we will never get the chance to ask them. One must look elsewhere for the answers.

Copyright © 2024 by Josmar F. Lopes

They Lived for Their Art — The First Ladies of Opera: Callas, Tebaldi, and Milanov (Part One)

The late soprano Maria Callas as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata

A good while back, I published a blog entry devoted to “Three Titanic Tenors: Mario Del Monaco, Franco Corelli, and Richard Tucker” (see the following link: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/three-titanic-tenors-del-monaco-corelli-and-tucker/). Three singers who just happened to have been some of my favorite male artists from my past. But after some prudent soul-searching and thoughtful deliberation, I felt the time was ripe – MORE than ripe, I should say – for another one of those surveys of the best and brightest stars from the annals of performances past.

Today, my subjects are the women of opera, those so-called prima donnas – or better yet, the “first ladies” of song. They were the artists most attuned to the skill of belting it out to the rafters. Indeed, they are the First Ladies of Opera. As such, we will feature three of the most prominent and influential women artists, outside of dear old mom (sans the apple pie, of course) of my early musical life; the ones that I and many liked-minded fans of the genre have grown up with, listened to, and admired from afar — time and time again.

In short, a vocal triad of the most cherished soprano voices I know of; an earthly trinity of now heavenly divas. Well, maybe not so heavenly all of the time but established performers nonetheless, ones that were guaranteed to send shivers up and down one’s spine.

And here they are, in print and in sound, ready and willing to regale us with their lustrous tones: the Greek American Maria Callas, the Italian Renata Tebaldi, and the Czech-born Zinka Milanov.

Why these specific singers, you may ask, from among the dozens, if not hundreds of choice exponents? The answer is quite simple: theirs were the most frequently recorded voices of the decade between the years 1949 and 1959 (and a bit beyond) during the heyday of long-playing records, those of the two-and-three-disc variety of complete (or nearly complete) operas.

Captured for all time by the three most familiar classical record labels of the period: EMI Odeon/Angel, Decca/London, and RCA Victor — with a few minor stragglers along the way — this tempestuous female triumvirate left behind a recorded legacy unlike any that has come before or after them.

At this point in my essay, it’s best to let the artists “speak” for themselves, or rather sing if you get my drift.

Maria Callas in a photo shoot

The Divine in All of Us

It is nonetheless fitting that we begin with the youngest of our hallowed group, La Divina (or “The Divine One”) herself: The incomparable Maria Callas. Sad to say, Callas was also the first of this all-star lineup to have passed into operatic legend, and at the earliest of ages.

Readers should make note that December 2, 2023, marked the one hundredth anniversary of Maria Callas’s birth, which we are observing today, albeit belatedly. Despite the normal ups-and-downs of an international career, especially one marked with more than its share of controversy, today the Divine One’s recorded legacy – and the myth that surrounded her as an artist of the front ranks – continues to enjoy celebrity status among connoisseurs of fine vocal music. Perhaps more so now than at any other time.

As an individual and a performer, even as a vocal coach of note (for instance, as she was portrayed in Terrence McNally’s Tony Award-winning play Master Class), one can state with absolute assurance that most such artists, conductors, stage directors, managers, impresarios, even those remotely connected to the operatic art itself, have claimed affinity for and derived untold inspiration from this legendary singer.

Born in Manhattan, on December 2, 1923, Maria Callas, christened Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos, which her Greek-born father shortened to Kalos (and later to just plain Callas, with minor variations in between), spent her formative years in New York’s Big Apple and in Astoria, Queens – that is, up until the age of fourteen.

As a result of her parents’ bickering and subsequent separation, Callas immigrated back to Greece in 1937, along with her mother and older sister. The mother, being your typical Old-World matriarch, insisted that both daughters receive a musical formation as well as a “normal” one. That Maria took full advantage of this golden opportunity to shine marked her as a sensitive individual able to discern what talent had laid dormant within her at the time.

The presence in the Greek Isles of Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who became Callas’s first teacher, was a consequence of the upheaval brought on by the Second World War. With that, the official start date of the young singer’s vocal studies took place in 1939; a venture that, in the words of several annotators, became “formative” to her development as a viable artist, one with an extraordinary insight into her roles that comprised a rare ability to shift between both standard and bel canto repertory with equal flexibility.

Elvira de Hidalgo (left) with her former pupil, Maria Callas

Still, it might have been better for all concerned had Callas and family remained in the U.S. Doubtless, the reality of life in war-torn Europe and the consequent Aegean Sea area grew ever more hazardous for inhabitants and foreigners alike. With her having faced famine, financial difficulties, humiliation, and material deprivation, young Maria nevertheless overcame these challenges by sheer force of will if not determination – what choice did teenaged girls, and their fellow Grecians, have?

Keeping the above situation in mind, Callas’s earliest operatic experiences would take place at the Greek National Opera in Athens, between 1939 and 1945, with early appearances in a variety of roles (La Gioconda and Leonore in Fidelio among them) that encompassed a vast range of styles and challenges. Critics at the time lauded the singer for possessing a “crystalline voice” and a “rare sense of theatricality.” Unfortunately, few if any recordings or film footage exist from that formative period, which limits anyone’s interest in further researching her operatic activities during wartime.

Luckily for admirers, today’s listeners are indeed fortunate to have subsequent evidence at their disposal, mostly from her catalog of EMI/Angel studio recordings, along with rare video extracts, photographs, and/or privately held (or “pirated”) performances, many with below average sound quality. Still, the best of these highly suspect releases revealed a readily formed artist, one of astonishing range and temperament, with as complete a mastery of the dramatic arts that, in most cases, far transcended the limitations of the era.

Unfortunately, throughout the years and certainly after her untimely passing, the part that most readers and reviewers have been forced to confront regarding the Callas legacy – and that interviewers and documentary film producers have touched upon for decades on end – are the salacious rumors and offstage activities associated with celebrity scandals.

These are not the sort of memories, mind you, that your average audiophile would like to take away from. Nevertheless, it’s what fans long associated with La Callas have come to accept and put up with on a regular basis.

Love On the Rocks

Almost certainly her marriage to the much older Italian industrialist Giovanni Meneghini (which earned Callas her middle name as advertised on billboards and record labels from her La Scala, Milan period) and subsequent liaison with Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, which later blossomed into a purported “rivalry” of sorts with JFK’s widow Jacqueline Kennedy (exaggerated, to a degree, by those ever-present paparazzi), shifted the focus away from the singer’s theatrical and recorded accomplishments. These incidents may remind readers of what Lady Diana Spencer once had to go through.          

Callas with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (ca. 1960s)

Another such narrative relates to Callas’s fraught relationship with the Metropolitan Opera. Ira Siff, that peripatetic radio commentator and multi-talented writer, singer, and vocal instructor, has gone into excruciating detail, in the December 2023 issue of Opera and Opera News, about the correspondence and communication, both in writing and via interpersonal means, between Madame Callas and then-Met Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing’s efforts to bring the artist to the New York stage.

According to Mr. Siff, Bing first heard about Callas in or about the year 1949. Their back-and-forth interaction, as documented in the article “ ‘Love, Maria’: Ira Siff on Callas’s Relationship with the Met,” seemed not to have been as acrimonious as originally thought. A miracle in itself, when you consider his and her reputations at the time.

As a matter of fact, Bing displayed a sort of grudging respect if not outright admiration for Maria and was indeed willing to have her appear with the company given her exorbitant monetary demands. Bing was thwarted in his efforts, however, not only by her insistence on more challenging projects – with, by the way, as little rehearsal time as possible – but those of her meddling husband, Signor Meneghini (mainly of a financial nature).

One such assignment, that of the villainous Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth (a first for the Met) unfortunately fell through the cracks and would ultimately be taken over by debuting Austrian soprano Leonie Rysanek, to her eventual good fortune.

Despite the Met’s loss, the gain was with record collectors and serious vocal addicts, who could hear something of what they had missed in several live extracts (from 1952) of the aria “Vieni, t’affretta.” In these remarkable examples, Callas displayed a thorough command of the Verdian and bel canto idiom, with trills and prodigious leaps and bounds up-and-down the scale; the kind of hard-to-define vocalism that clearly describes Lady Macbeth’s malevolent character as much as it eschews show-stopping excitement for theatrical effect.

If ever there was an artist who fully captured Verdi’s directive that the singer of this part employ “an ugly voice, a suffocated sound,” with the last note of the Sleepwalking Scene to be taken “as a thread of voice,” then Callas was the perfect candidate to have carried out these instructions to the letter. Few singers of this part, then and now, have shown as much capacity to deliver that disembodied, otherworldly aspect that Verdi called for as had Callas, one that marked Lady Macbeth as a distinctive addition to this and every other soprano’s repertoire.

Coincidentally, it was around this time, between the early to mid-1950s, that Callas famously shed nearly 80 pounds of weight which, if one can believe the pundits, may or may not have altered the general sound and scale of her phenomenal vocal apparatus. The weight loss certainly lent much-needed glamour to her stage deportment as well as boosted her confidence level.

Photos taken at the time give the impression that Callas was being groomed to challenge Audrey Hepburn for the cover of LOOK Magazine. For better or for worse, it made Maria one of the world’s most sought-after photographic subjects – one ripe for the gossip columns.

Maria Callas as a Parisian fashion plate

In addition to her newfound celebrity status, the singer’s association with such contemporary stage and film veterans as the Italians Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Nicola Benois, and Pier Paolo Pasolini gave renewed impetus to the notion of Callas as the “jet-set” prima donna of choice.

Regardless of the notoriety, none of these distractions should detract serious listeners from engaging with Callas through her countless recordings, in particular her recitals from the French repertoire ( a personal favorite of mine), a language she was completely at home in, along with Italian, English, and, of course, her native Greek.

A minor sampling of items from her vast recorded legacy surely must include a live 1955 stage performance from La Scala of Violetta Valery in Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by Visconti, with colleagues Giuseppe Di Stefano, Ettore Bastianini, and conductor Carlo Maria Giulini.

Honorable mention should go to her ferociously delivered “Divinités du Styx!” from Christoph Willibald von Gluck’s baroque opera Alceste, the same composer’s equally hypnotic “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice,” from Orphée et Eurydice, the seductive “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Camille Saint-Saëns Samson and Delilah, and, of course, her traversal of the title part in a complete Bizet’s Carmen, phrased in impeccably accomplished French and enacted with the fire and gusto of a lioness defending her turf.  

Most of the above recordings were made in the early to mid-1960s. From then on, Callas’s voice steadily diminished in amplitude and fullness. Those new to the singer might have experienced the sense of three different voices trapped in a single body: a piercing top tone, followed by a hollower middle section, and ending with a powerful low register.

Some say that too many years of singing the “wrong repertoire” (whatever that meant) were to blame; that too much and too sudden a weight loss contributed to her vocal decline; or that overly and/or artificially “coloring” her voice only accelerated her premature retirement from the stage. The issue remains debatable, even to this day.

Another of her most admired roles, that of the flamboyant diva Floria Tosca, can be viewed with intense interest via the Second Act staging from a taped 1964 performance at London’s Covent Garden costarring another of Callas’ frequent stage and recording partners, the baritone Tito Gobbi as Baron Scarpia. This is the famed production where two artists of equal dramatic and vocal stature challenge each other to heights few others have attained.

Maria Callas as Tosca and Tito Gobbi as Scarpia in Tosca (Photo © John Massey Stewart)

During their brief confrontation and battle for the life of Tosca’s lover, Callas throws herself at the villain in a vain attempt to get her way. Too quick for her, the wily Scarpia grasps at Tosca by the wrists while spreading her arms out in a crucifixion-like stance. “That was Maria!” was Gobbi’s written assessment of this seemingly unrehearsed yet totally spontaneous inspiration. Simply marvelous!  

Vocally, Callas’ interpretation of the aria, “Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,” (“I live for art, I live for love”), is anticlimactic in its way to the foregoing, no matter that the singer’s vocal line turns squally and uneven at the piece’s climax. Still, looking at it from the character’s perspective and from what the composer Giacomo Puccini expected of any artist, Maria gave a much-needed touch of vulnerability and pathos to the moment that, in lesser hands, can seem obvious or insincere.   

Life After Death

Personally, I like to believe that after Callas’ failed marriage to the avaricious Meneghini; her on-again, off-again affair with the womanizing Onassis; her close friendships and (let’s face it) professional liaisons with some of Italy’s finest directors (resulting in an unfortunate debut in Pasolini’s desultory filming of Medea), in addition to her final mid-seventies concerts with frequent stage and recording partner Di Stefano, may have caused her to experience a fundamental loss of self-confidence.    

If such things were possible back then, one might have envisioned a major career change for Callas by the planting of her feet on the Broadway stage: What a thoroughly demented Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire she might have made, or for that matter what a potent Mama Rose in Gypsy! Can you imagine what she might have done with Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd? The possibilities seemed endless and were to die for, but alas were never meant to be.

That Callas has remained popular, despite the many obstacles and turnarounds in her career, stands as a tribute to her durability as both a singer and an artist of the people, and not just for the cognoscenti. A conservative, unofficial estimate of her fandom would surely number in the millions – of that, we have little doubt. In her followers’ minds, she remains divine.

Maria Callas passed away of a heart attack, in Paris, on September 16, 1977. At the time of her passing, Callas was alone and unattended. She was only 53.

Last known photograph of Maria Callas in Paris, ca. 1977

RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS:

Maria Callas:

• Aida (Barbieri, Tucker, Gobbi, Zaccaria, Modesti – Serafin) EMI/Angel
• The Barber of Seville (Alva, Gobbi, Ollendorf, Zaccaria – Galliera) EMI/Angel
• Carmen (Gedda, Guiot, Massard – Prêtre) EMI/Angel
• Lucia di Lammermoor (Di Stefano, Gobbi, Arié – Serafin) EMI/Angel
• Medea (Scotto, Pirazzini, Picchi, Modesti – Serafin) Mercury/Foyer
• Norma (Ludwig, Sutherland, Corelli, Zaccaria – Serafin) EMI/Angel
• I Puritani (Di Stefano, Panerai, Zaccaria – Serafin) EMI/Angel
• La Sonnambula (Monti, Zaccaria – Votto) EMI/Angel
• Tosca (Di Stefano, Gobbi, Luise – De Sabata) EMI/Angel
• La Traviata – The “Lisbon Traviata” (Kraus, Sereni – Ghione) EMI/Angel

(To be continued….)

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

Bronx Boy — A Novel (Part Nine): Midtown

Midtown Manhattan — View of the Murray Hill Section

Manhattan. Forty-Second Street. The Big Manzana. The Big Red Apple. Sonny never thought it would be possible to live in Midtown, where every “young and upwardly mobile” New Yorker had dreamed of residing.

       To be precise, the Delacruz family moved to 222 East 36 Street, right in the heart of the Murray Hill section of the city. Ritzy, high-rise apartments, where the filthy rich folks stayed, where the millionaires owned luxury condominiums and coops. It was near to everything that Sonny had loved: Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Times Square movie theaters, the Broadway theater district. Madison Avenue and the advertising industry. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Central Park, the New York Public Library. Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the United Nations General Assembly Building… The Big Red Apple shone brightly before him.

       Sonny’s mind reeled at his good fortune; at being surrounded by such incredible sites, all those brick and mortar monuments to big-city life. They were what he had always wanted, what he had dreamed about, what he had thought about during his waking hours.

       But Papi wasn’t as impressed by their good fortune as Sonny had been. For the last sixteen years, Papi had worked as a lowly doorman in that same 222 East 36 Street complex, a combination business and residential area. The Delacruz family lived there rent free, in a newly refurbished “apartment” situated in the bowels of that same building.

       Take the elevator to the ground floor (below ground, one should add). Head to the right and past the back of the boiler room; take a sharp left and walk down a dimly lit hallway to their apartment. To its right was a doorway that led directly, and to the right of, a largely empty holding area. This largely empty area was used, primarily, as a repository for old newspapers, magazines and metal trash cans. The janitorial staff would haul in the metal trash cans (clang, clang, clang) from the ten floors of the complex, down the service elevator and through the same winding passageway. The janitors pushed their handcars – with the clanging trash cans, of course – to the back of the holding area. Early in the morning (long before 6:00 AM Eastern Standard Time), the men would haul the trash out of the storage area and onto the sidewalk for the New York City Sanitation crews to pick up and empty out. Once the crews were done with them, the janitors would return the trash cans to their respective floors, a mindlessly drab daily routine that required brute strength and strong arms and backs.

       In the early days, Papi had served as the building’s night porter. This was before it became a union shop. Believe it or not, Papi was the guy charged with sweeping the staircases and mopping up the floors – nightly and on the weekends. Oh, man! The horrors he must have seen. Those monstrous rats at night, as big as small dogs; the swarms of cockroaches, hundreds upon hundreds of them, filing out of the sewers near the street openings. Even bats. Wow! Sonny took this last revelation with thick grains of monosodium glutamate, Papi’s favorite flavor enhancer.

       “Bats? You’ve seen bats, in New York City? No freaking way!”

       Besides the wild animal kingdom, Papi had witnessed muggings and robberies on a fairly regular basis. For what it was worth, Papi had managed to prevent a number of such illicit attempts to deprive helpless citizens of their personal belongings. Because he was quick to react, with lightning fast reflexes and a fearless, confrontational, devil-may-care attitude, the people he assisted were always grateful for his interference.

       “If it hadn’t been for you, I would have lost a hundred dollars,” one desperate lady had told him. She gave Papi twenty bucks for his efforts. Papi thanked her, but wanted to give the money back.

       “Dis your money, lady. Joo can kip it.” When she insisted and thrust the twenty dollar bill into his hands, Papi tried to return it.

       “Keep it, you deserve it.” And she rushed off down the street, leaving a startled Papi holding the bill in his hand.

Why did they move there, to Midtown Manhattan? What were they running away from? Better to ask how this all came about. It wasn’t because Papi had hit the jackpot. Far from it. He bet heavily on the numbers, all right, as any self-respecting macho Latino would do, and he played the New York Lottery too. One time Papi won over three hundred dollars, a sign of impending good fortune. But to say he was financially “well off” was stretching the truth — probably about as far as the truth could be stretched, under the circumstances. He wasn’t a George Jefferson-type character either, that comical, well-to-do black American who struck it rich with a string of successful laundry shops. No “Dee-luxe apartment in the sky” for the Delacruz family. None at all. Papi was a hardworking working stiff. Worked his damn butt off, he did. From sun-up to sundown. And that was no exaggeration.

Doorman at night — Midtown Manhattan, 34th Street in the Murray Hill Section

       He had lucked into his doorman job by walking into the building on a whim. Just like that. Can you imagine? He sure had guts. But there was more to it. Papi had heard, from friends who worked nearby, that a guy had been fired for drinking on the job. Papi drank, too, but never while on duty. He quit liquor altogether once he had his first heart attack. The first of several such attacks. But that was years from now.

       One day, Papi decided to stop over at 222 East 36 Street and, for the heck of it, asked to speak to the superintendent. The doorman on duty went inside a little booth, rang a wall phone, and told the individual in charge to come up to the lobby. Papi waited patiently for the super who, when he finally stepped out of the service elevator, turned out to be a tall wire-thin black gentleman who looked about fifty or so. He greeted Papi warily and escorted him to the service elevator and down to the basement.

       Stepping off the service elevator, the super, whose name was Harry Warren, showed Papi his office. The two of them sat and proceeded to chat for a bit, making small talk. Harry liked Papi from the start, thought he was a “straight-shooter.” Lucky for him, Papi wasn’t the type to pack a gun. But Papi did speak his mind.

       “We need a night porter,” Harry let on, “someone to keep an eye on the place while the rich folks are asleep. That means you got to come in ‘round ten or eleven at night and stay till, oh, maybe five or six the next morning. That sound alright to you?”

       “Is fine,” Papi nodded. “I like.” 

       The two shook hands and that was that. No more talk, no more interviews. Just action, swift and thorough. The starting salary was ninety-five dollars a week, with two weeks’ paid vacation after the first year, working Tuesday to Saturday, with Sundays and Mondays off. Two regular holidays: Christmas and New Year’s. The rest of the time it was work, work, and more work. That would be Papi’s routine for the next sixteen-and-a-half years. After a full year as the night porter, Papi applied for and got the lead doorman’s job. When he heard that the old doorman, Robert, had retired, Papi jumped at the chance of working the day shift. It would free him up from having to leave the apartment in the dead of night, and from coming home at the crack of dawn. He could sleep better, too. Like a normal human being. Yeah, normal. Whatever that meant.

       Mr. Rosenfeld, the landlord, kept a spiffy penthouse apartment in the same building. He spoke to Papi personally about the job. Jacob Rosenfeld was an old Jewish landlord from way back. A born and bred New Yorker, Rosenfeld’s family had emigrated from Russia during the early twentieth-century pogroms. At first, they lived in Brooklyn, near the Crown Heights section. Rosenfeld’s father, a butcher by trade, had an older brother who was into the real estate business. The brother gave Rosenfeld a shot at making something of himself. Mr. Rosenfeld took the offer and wound up a very rich man, richer than Papi’s family ever would be.

       Rosenfeld used his money to purchase 222 East 36 Street, then set up a dummy corporation and raked in the rent from his tenants. His idea was that a combination residential and commercial building would suit his purposes nicely: rich old-timers like himself could live the good life in a spacious, multi-room abode, with maid and doorman service at their daily beck and call; if one or more of the tenants aspired to business interests, Jacob Rosenfeld would entice them to turn their spacious, multi-room apartments into commercial establishments. This paid off handsomely for Mr. Rosenfeld, who collected double the rent from every potential business endeavor he could swing on his own.

       “What do say, Delacruz?” Rosenfeld asked Papi. “You interested in the job?”

       “Yes, Mr. Rosenfeld,” Papi replied. “I very interested. I do the day job, no problem.”

       “Good! Sign here, and we have a deal.”

       Papi was quick to sign the work contract. He liked Rosenfeld, thought he was a gentleman of his word. No putting on airs, no puffing out his chest, no beating around the bush; just a regular working stiff, if nicer dressed than your average Jewish landlord. After all, this was Manhattan. Crown Heights was one thing, but the heart of the Big Apple Midtown was something entirely different.

       Jacob Rosenfeld showed Papi the ropes. To say the least, Rosenfeld knew a lot more about the property’s inner workings than either superintendent Harry Warren or the veteran doormen, one of whom was an old fossil named Fred Whitaker. Papi made it his business to get to know the tenants by their names, both the renters and the business owners. In turn, the tenants took to Papi’s easygoing, servile demeanor to heart. And he was unfailingly courteous to them, no matter how harshly he was treated — and some of the residents were extremely harsh. Some of them tried but failed to get under Papi’s skin. Soon, they too fell under his cheery spell, if not exactly in love, with the way Papi maneuvered them into his good graces. Papi always reacted kindly toward them. He was deferential when he needed to be, servile when it was in his best interests, but firm when the situation called for it.

       Little did any of them realize that Papi had been putting on an act. Of course, Papi was satisfied to be working at a permanent, full-time day job, with benefits, paid sick leave, vacation, and time off (all this took place AFTER Papi had engineered a maneuver to put the building’s working stiffs under the auspices of Local 32B of the International Building Service Employees Union). Papi would brag aloud to his family and friends, and to Sonny especially, about how he got to know Mr. Arthur Hackham, the president of the union, when Hackham was but a lowly, streetwise ombudsman. It was Papi, he crowed, who helped Mr. Hackham place the building under a union contract. Mr. Rosenfeld, a wise-old conservative businessman at heart, wasn’t bowled over by the deal, but understood that he needed to conform to the modern way of doing business in order to stay solvent.

       Papi was pleased with the outcome. For him, it meant more time to spend with family, what with twice the vacation time allotted to each employee (now four weeks in all, instead of two). He also received a decent pay raise (to $125 a week, plus tips, and Christmas bonuses), and time-and-a half for overtime — double that on Sundays! The downside consisted of his having to work his old Tuesday to Saturday day shift. Papi still had to work those holidays, but at a higher hourly rate. Not bad for a simple New York City doorman. And those Christmas bonuses meant that Papi could afford to buy new and more elaborate gifts for Mami and the boys. That was what Sonny had in mind. But it remained an unrealized dream. “Could” became the key word.  

Christmas in New York (Midtown Manhattan) circa the 1970s

       Keeping track of all those bonuses was Harry’s favorite task — that is, when he wasn’t imbibing a snootful or two of Jack Daniels, especially around the holidays. Any holiday, to be precise. One time, Papi raked in almost a thousand dollars, a fortune that helped pay for his trips to Puerto Rico. “To visit the relatives,” he would insist. That was his excuse. Papi’s real motive, however, was to pick up where he had left off the year before: by going out to San Juan’s dance halls and charanga his way onto the floor; with who knows what floozy-minded, big-butted bimbo brain, according to Mami.

       But that was Papi. Always looking for a quick getaway (as if the family hadn’t known). It was best not to dwell on this sensitive subject, Sonny had to remind himself. After all, Papi had always paid the bills and the rent. He didn’t owe any money to anybody, well, none that we knew of. No gambling debts either, amazingly enough. No overdue electric bills and no telephone bills. Well, to be accurate, no telephone, period. Not until the family moved to Midtown. But the phone was free; it came with Papi’s newfound position as the assistant superintendent. That was one of the main reasons for the move. Not only to flee the myriad horrors of public housing projects and the stifling, nonproductive atmosphere, but to start a new life in thriving midtown Manhattan. In that, Papi was insistent. Overly so! He was turning over a new leaf, as he liked to phrase it.

       “I’m a man who keeps his word,” Papi boasted proudly, mostly to himself. “I take care of my family, I do.” And so he did. He also did not like to promise anything to anyone. But when Papi got around to making a promise, you could bet your life he would come through with it.

       Except when he didn’t.             

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

‘It Was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times’: A Met Opera Wrap-Up (Of Sorts)

The Inimitable Bob Dylan in the 1960s

Look Back in Anguish

There’s an old Bob Dylan song that, to my mind, captures the essence of what opera, and specifically what New York’s Metropolitan Opera, have been raging about of late: “For the times they are a-changin’.”

How right Dylan was! Too many mishaps, too many missteps, far too many missed opportunities and false starts. And how many supposedly “bold” projections were undertaken that could have ended in near-financial disaster?

To put it plainly, readers were informed of major cutbacks in personnel – presumably to the folding of the company’s decades long monthly Opera News. Yes, it quite literally folded, right into the pages of the British publication Opera – and BADLY, we might add! Who does one complain to about that? Bonnie Prince Charlie? Oh, excuse me, your Highness: King Charles III? Tell me?

From a formerly People-sized, tell-all survey of Met Opera productions, artists, and radio transmissions to a Baedeker-style guidebook with reduced dimensions and typeset. The monthly Opera is, well, veddy British in layout, approach, taste, and – let’s face it – outlook and sentiments. Restraint as we know it, in this competitive scenario, is hardly the word. Better yet, when the Brits have something to say, they spell it out. Loudly and clearly.

The introductory December 2023 issue, for example, spends quality time on the cover subject: the late, great diva par excellence, the inimitable Maria Callas. Not that she’s unworthy of lavish treatment. Quite the opposite! I was wondering when somebody, somewhere would get around to devoting an entire issue to this too-marvelous-for-words artist. One whose life and art, like that of Puccini’s fictional diva Floria Tosca (a role the Greek American native made virtually her own), has been so transformative for singers, both young and old, male and female.

Ah, what a marvelous play Callas’ life and times would have made! Oh, wait! Didn’t Terrence McNally, the noted American author and playwright, write one titled Master Class, a 1995 fictional stage work concerning La Divina’s vocal and acting classes at the Juilliard School of Music? I remembered that Tyne Daly, from the Cagney & Lacey police series, did a marvelously camp, over-the-top recreation of Madame Callas, the terror of budding starlets, a “monster in residence.” That was the diva’s “dark side.”

Legendary diva – soprano Maria Callas, on the cover of OPERA

Ms. Daly wasn’t the only actor to have taken up the challenge of portraying the tyrannical singer-cum-vocal coach: enter the likes of Zoe Caldwell, Dixie Carter, Patti LuPone, Faye Dunaway, and Audra McDonald (Audra McDonald? No, she played second soprano Sharon Graham). There was also the late Rio-born television and cinema personality Marília Pêra, who did such a wonderful job in a range of biographical stage portraits, including those of Carmen Miranda and Coco Chanel.

The time and effort that Opera magazine spent on this one artist alone were, to my mind, decidedly worthwhile. And the inserted synopses of upcoming live radio transmissions of Met Opera broadcasts were most welcome indeed. Still, the focus remained on Europe and with Great Britain, if truth be told, where we learn that fellow opera buffs abroad are having their own issues (mostly of a financial nature) with presenting and performing opera, one of the world’s oldest and most expensive art forms.    

But let’s face facts, shall we, and bring the focus back to our shores. Mostly, to more disheartening news. Not just to the wretchedness of the singing which, in my operagoing experience, has been going downhill for some time and borders on the woefully inadequate (and far below the standards of yore), but to the matter of our own city’s radio station, The Classical Station WCPE.

To wit, the startling announcement that certain operas with “questionable” and/or “inappropriate” subject matter, due to their alleged “adult themes and harsh language” (oh me, oh my!), would not be broadcast this season.

What’s that you say? Inappropriate? Harsh language? Since when has opera been inappropriate? And how would they know WHAT subject matters have “adult themes and harsh language,” especially since most operas are sung in a foreign tongue?

I wondered aloud about this aspect. In fact, while waiting for the radio transmission of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes this past May 27, 2023 (one of the few standard works that’s given in Ye Olde Queen’s English), I was startled, yes, startled to hear the opening strains of Wagner’s Siegfried. Did the Met Opera suddenly change gears in late season, or was I imagining things?

No, it was true. The radio station had substituted an old studio recording of Siegfried in place of the scheduled Peter Grimes broadcast. Now why would they do that? Had the lead singer taken ill? Heck, I was eager to hear young British tenor Allan Clayton’s take on the crusty Mr. Grimes, another of those troubled individuals charged with violent behavior against young boys. Clayton had sung the lead role of Hamlet in Brett Dean’s modernesque adaptation of the Shakespeare play. But that was on June 4, 2022.

Did Nicholas Carter, the scheduled maestro for Peter Grimes, bow out for health or other reasons? There was no on-air announcement about it. Did the entire cast come down with the flu, or worse? Was there a COVID-19 outbreak in the audience? No advance warning, no explanation, no word from anyone, anywhere. It left me perplexed and most listeners high and dry.

I had been looking forward to hearing Peter Grimes, which hadn’t been done at the Met in over a decade, if not more. During the recent lockdown, fans of Met Opera on Demand were privy to free access to many of the company’s Live in HD transmissions, especially of director John Doyle’s Peter Grimes and the classic John Dexter production of Britten’s Billy Budd, which I simply adored (see my review: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2021/07/18/stream-for-your-supper-after-dinner-treats-with-met-opera-on-demand-part-six-those-rarest-of-operatic-birds-take-2/).

As Prince Hamlet would say, “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt.” And oh, that this Met Opera season would, too, turn out better than the last one. The new series of broadcasts are set to start on December 9 with the first hearing of Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, to be sung in Spanish (also a first for the company) and as a radio premiere.

It would have made sense for the Met to have performed the work in Brazilian Portuguese, seeing as the story is about a former diva (ah, now there’s the Callas angle we’ve been looking for) who returns to her native soil of Brazil (in the Amazon region) in order to meet up with her former lover, a butterfly expert. On the way, the little steamship Florencia embarked on almost goes under, due to a powerful rainstorm. It seems that nature (and by implication, financial hardship) has a way of upsetting one’s best-laid plans. 

Florencia en el Amazonas is a bit of a throwback to a dreamier kind of work, the music bursting with numerous references to post-Romantic composers Puccini, Korngold, Richard Strauss, Ravel, Satie, and Debussy. There’s even a hint or two of Polish modernist Karol Szymanowski in the lush scoring. With all that going for it, the New York Times gave the opera and Mary Zimmerman’s production a tepid review. To each his own!   

Mexican-American soprano Ailyn Perez in ‘Florencia en el Amazonas’

I find it fascinating that, just as the curtain at Florencia’s premiere was about to go up, a voice in the audience shouted the phrase, “¡Viva la opera en español!” Meaning: “Long live opera in Spanish!” A fitting tribute, I thought, for the occasion.

Singing in the vernacular used to be (note the phrase, “used to be”) the accepted norm at the turn of the last century and beyond. It’s an historical fact that most versions of the standard and non-standard repertoire, among them Puccini’s output, many by Verdi, others by Wagner and Strauss (both Johann and Richard), Rossini and Donizetti as well, were invariably given in translation, that is, in the language of the people in their various countries.

What’s happened in the interim? For one thing, the internationalization of singers, conductors, stage designers, directors, producers, artisans, craftspeople, and others associated with the art form. It’s one thing to learn an opera in its original language, oftentimes different from one’s OWN tongue; but quite another to re-learn a work in yet ANOTHER language (i.e., English). For another, the absence of homegrown talent and the importing of more foreign-born aspirants, especially from the Balkans and other Slavic nations (although some critics would claim the opposite is true, in that we export native-English speakers abroad to our loss).

There’s the pervasiveness of supertitles, surtitles, and subtitles, which no doubt has facilitated one’s understanding of the text (a godsend to the uninitiated). But again – in our humble opinion – it’s now become this ever-present “necessary evil”; something that conspires to divert our attention from the stage area where attention should be paid. A “dumbing down,” if you must know, of how NOT to listen to opera.

Some would argue that it’s a minor inconvenience, while others are more critical of the setup. “Do your homework,” goes the outcry. “Read the libretto, learn the text, listen to the music, hear the singers, follow the action in the score,” etc., and so forth. That’s easy enough to say. Try doing those on a regular basis and in our “time is money” economy. Any way you look at it, it’s a challenge to one’s patience.

Of course, you would think, with the easier accessibility of the internet via WiFi, laptops, iPhones, iPads, YouTube, podcasts, SiriusXM, online streaming, and other means, that people’s hesitancy about going to or listening to the opera would have been overcome by now.

Hah! You haven’t been paying attention.  

Start Spreading the News

The problem with the Met Opera’s broadcast Florencia en el Amazonas – that’s to say, of its being given in the original Spanish or any other tongue – lies not with language per se but rather with the work’s ethos and how it fits into today’s issues. In fact, a different type of storm was about to envelop the Met, but in another form entirely. It would be a storm of controversy.

According to the New York Times, along with Opera magazine itself through their NEWSDESK column, North Carolina radio station WCPE’s general manager Deborah S. Proctor eventually “backed down” from an earlier decision not to air certain contemporary works.

The radio station’s ire was turned on such so-called “inappropriate” fare as the Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally (our old friend) collaboration Dead Man Walking whose themes encompass capital punishment and lethal injection; Terence Blanchard’s Champion, about closeted gay boxing champ Emile Griffith; Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel and the 2002 film; Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones from journalist Charles M. Blow’s memoir of his being sexually abused as a child; Anthony and Thulani Davis’ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, covering similar ground as Spike Lee’s 1992 epic Malcolm X about the assassinated civil rights leader; and John Adams’ El Niño, an oratorio-like retelling of the Nativity and the Holy Family.

Deemed as acceptable were such standards as Bizet’s Carmen, about a flirtatious gypsy who hooks up with a mentally disturbed mama’s boy, then a macho bullfighter, and who gets murdered in the end by the mama’s boy; and Puccini’s last opera Turandot, about an obsessed, man-hating princess who has the nasty habit of beheading her suitors if they fail to answer three riddles; there’s also onstage torture and a beloved character’s suicide to tide one over.

Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Turandot? Acceptable, really? How would they know that? One is in French and the other in Italian. You’d have to read the libretto (in English translation, of course), and thoroughly understand the action as outlined in the music and as conveyed by the performance.

So glad that calmer heads have prevailed! And we are especially grateful to and thrilled by one of the more insightful responses to the above outrages.

Enter our own Greensboro native: musician, folk singer, fiddle player, former opera singer (but one who’s remained a permanent fan thereof), the talented Ms. Rhiannon Giddens, whose gorgeous timbre and solid grounding in the operatic art have brought smiles of comfort and tears of joy to listeners of her Met Opera podcast Aria Code.

North Carolina native, singer, songwriter, musician, activist and raconteur Rhiannon Giddens

This is what Ms. Giddens had to say about the above-mentioned controversy, gleaned from the online OPERAWIRE website as well as her Instagram post:

“As a North Carolina native with more than a few connections to the wonderful world of opera, I was appalled to hear of your perplexing decision to not broadcast certain of the @metopera’s season this year. The Met broadcasts are the only way many people get to hear the productions, which are situated in New York and priced way out of many people’s budgets. Radio is supposed to be egalitarian and an equalizer, not used as a weapon, as you are doing.

“In your letter to listeners, you say that these six operas: ‘are written in a non-classical music style (and) have adult themes and language.’ I’m sorry Ms. Proctor – are you now saying that you are the arbiter for what is a ‘classical’ style? Are you saying that your training has left you fit to tell your listeners that Dead Man Walking, literally the most celebrated and performed American opera of the last quarter century, is not written in a ‘classical’ style?

“You also say: ‘We want parents to know that they can leave our station playing for their children because our broadcasts are without mature themes or foul language,’ she said. ‘We must maintain the trust of listeners.’

“So what you’re also saying is that the suicide, murder, rape, orientalism, battlefield violence, smuggling, seduction, and alcoholism, among many other things, that are rife in the operas that you have chosen to broadcast, like Romeo and Juliet, Carmen, La Bohème and La Forza del Destino, is ok just because they are done in another language? Carmen itself was lambasted in Paris society at its premiere by folks like yourself for its immoral and vulgar language, music and story – yet you have not struck it from your list. Un Ballo in Maschera was censored again and again [Author’s Note: The story concerns an attempted assassination of the Swedish king], yet there it is, happily present. I guess all of these operas are just fun ditties for you to whistle with total disregard to the content.

“Thanks for being so transparent, I guess! And thanks for protecting our children from the story of a young 15 year old girl, seduced and abandoned by a [naval lieutenant], who then commits suicide after giving birth to their son… No, whoops, that’s Madama Butterfly, and you’re cool with that one too. Signed, Rhiannon Giddens.”

Needless to say, Ms. Giddens raised a number of issues, the primary one being that a four hundred year old art form has as much right to exist as the artists attempting to keep it alive. What nearly happened to some of opera’s most famous protagonists could very easily have happened to opera itself. That this did not occur was due primarily to lovers of the form.

But self-destruction is not in the cards, not yet at least! Even if a bold Valkyrie maiden named Brünnhilde had chosen self-immolation as her way to go – still, opera need not go up in flames.

Now I know what happened to that non-existent Peter Grimes broadcast! It makes sense, or rather it doesn’t. Regardless, I have to believe that one listener’s loss (mine, to be exact) can be opera’s gain. And with defenders of the realm such as Rhiannon Giddens fighting for its independence, the battle can still be won: “For the times, they are a-changin’!”   

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes

‘I Will Face My Fear’ — The Mind-Killing Little Deaths of ‘Dune’ (Part Ten): Muad’Dib Earns His Place and More

The Water of Life sequence with Paul (center), Chani (left) and Mother Jessica (right)

The Challenge to Leadership

In a brief scene, Feyd appears with his uncle, the treacherous Baron Harkonnen, whose fat floating form hovers near his brash nephew. In the same instant, a seemingly haughty Princess Irulan gives Feyd the cold shoulder (or interplanetary “brush off”). That’s quite a different reception from the one he got at their first meeting four years earlier. Time waits for no man! It’s still the Baron’s intention, however, to groom his pretty boy nephew for the emperor’s throne.

Transition to the moment where Paul becomes the unifier of the disparate Fremen forces in their respective sietches, to include their current leader Stilgar who’s been a bit in the background of late. The entire purpose and thrust of the action are for Otheym and the other tribesmen to finally acknowledge that their old way of doing things — in this instance, of trial by combat between Stilgar and Paul to determine who will reign as “head dude” — is over and done with.

In the process, a “miracle” is performed by Paul whereby the Water of Life literally pours out of his body (an optical illusion, really) which turns the tide, so to speak, in the Atreides’ favor. It is the form by which leadership can be attained that is being challenged here, not the combatants themselves. For this purpose, a fight to the finish, or trial by combat to the death of one of the participants, turns out not to be a very practical or effective method of achieving the aims indicated.

It’s one that needs to be developed by both Paul and Stilgar, if they are to come out of this situation alive and ready to do battle: not with themselves, of course, but with their real enemies, the hated Harkonnens. More crucially, the aim is to assume the rightful leadership roles of their respective forces. This culminates in the most time-consuming shot of the series, one that needed to be pieced together bit by tiny bit, according to director Harrison and his crew, i.e., the many disparate elements that point the Fremen in the right direction as far as their future existence is concerned.

From their chants of “Maud’Dib, Muad’Dib,” to “Mahdi, Mahdi” (a blanket reference to the actual Mahdi of history who confronted British General “Chinese” Gordon in the battle for Khartoum), Paul is now the de facto head of all his tribespeople. Whether this was a planned maneuver or not, whether the Bene Gesserit had any inkling of his powers, or what was going on in the background, remains to be seen.

In the subsequent section, Otheym is summoned to fulfill Paul’s plan to gather up the available spice, including the giant sandworms themselves, in one strategic place. His scheme is to threaten to flood the underwater caves — and with them, drown the sandworms, thus destroying the spice trade once and for all. This will be his sword of Damocles, the means by which Paul Atreides, now the Mahdi, will be able to win the battle for Arrakis’s freedom from oppression — ironically, by employing the same harsh methods the Baron, his nefarious nephews, and Emperor Shaddam IV himself, have been using on the Fremen and other home worlds.

Now comes the crucial scene (one that director Harrison had serious thoughts of cutting), whereby a bruised and battle-tested Paul reveals to his mother Jessica the truth of who he really is: to wit, the grandson of the dreaded Baron Harkonnen! And that Lady Jessica herself is also, in fact, the Baron’s daughter! (Remember those hand gestures massaging his right temple?)  

Mother Superior Jessica shares Paul’s (now Muad’Dib) vision for the future

The problem, regrettably, is that Paul’s time has come too soon. Initially, the Bene Gesserit’s long term strategy of inbreeding called for him to appear later — several generations later, to be exact. Be that as it may, Paul’s imbibing of the Water of Life altered the situation, as well as transformed Jessica’s son into a veritable messiah. But in his case, Paul becomes a vindictive monster instead, hell bent on wreaking vengeance at all costs for the many lives that have been and will continue to be lost.

In a momentary change in focus, little Alia, Paul’s younger sister, senses the warring Sardaukar factions, to include those aerial ornithopters, which puts their plans into motion, the beginning if not the end not only for the emperor’s forces but for the Harkonnen fighters as well.

We, the viewing audience, are the uncomfortable witnesses to the brutality inherent in the scene of two massive Sardaukar guards confronting tiny baby Leto, left alone and stranded after the slaying of his nursemaid. One guard bears a noticeable resemblance to Rabban the Beast, the Baron’s brutal killer of a nephew.

In the very next instant, Chani awakens abruptly to see Paul sitting up on the edge of their bed. He informs her that their little son… is dead.

The Battle Begins

Paul, Gurney Halleck, and Otheym are gathered high up on a plateau, overlooking the Arrakeen palace. They are ready to make their move. “Time to let them know I am here,” Paul remarks. His plan is to send a captured Sardaukar officer back to his masters. It is revealed that the frightened, reluctant Sardaukar officer will be charged with delivering the terms of surrender to Emperor Shaddam IV.

“You’re mad!” shouts the terrified officer, knowing full well that anyone delivering such an ultimatum will be met with execution (Author’s note: For a comparison, see John Woo’s epic Red Cliff: Part One, where a messenger from the opposing forces hands Minister Cao-Cao a blank scroll, the meaning of which is clear: no surrender. Cao-Cao immediately has the poor messenger beheaded). But Paul is not deterred. He understands his role and knows what must be done. His time has come and he has no choice but to act on it.

Back at the palace, the Emperor is furious at this challenge to his authority — interesting that Shaddam IV should be put in the same position as Paul was placed with Otheym, vis-à-vis his challenge to Stilgar’s authority as titular head of the Fremen sietches. While the wily Baron tries to turn the situation to his advantage (and away from himself), the Emperor has little Alia brought before them as a hostage.

For her part, Alia turns brazenly toward the bloated Baron and insults him to his face.

“What is this? Some kind of midget?” the Baron asks sarcastically. The Emperor strolls over to Alia and introduces her as Muad’Dib’s sister.

Alia steps up to the plate, while Feyd and the Baron (at left) look on contemptuously

Without warning, the palace shields are raised in anticipation of an attack. Thumpers are heard, while Paul urges Gurney Halleck to set their plan into motion. The final battle is about to begin.

Meantime, the sweaty-faced Baron, sensing he’s about to be cornered for his past misdeeds, feigns ignorance of Alia’s relationship to Muad’Dib. “He’s lying, of course,” Alia blurts out. She is obviously relishing the moment. But the Emperor wants to move on. He orders Alia to convince her brother to surrender. Alia remains adamant, her “impudence” and disregard for the Emperor’s authority obvious to one and all (especially, to the assembled Bene Gesserit).

“I’m beyond your power,” Alia gloats openly, as she points to the Reverend Mother. “Kill her! Kill her now, the Abomination!” the Reverend Mother shouts in desperation. She realizes, full well, who this child is: an usurper with powers outside even their tight control.

Stepping up to assume her place in the conversation, Princess Irulan knows instinctively that Alia is Atreides born, the sister of Paul, the Duke’s son. “HE is Muad’Dib!” Irulan reveals.

The Baron is incredulous.

Back to Paul, who orders Gurney to throw the switch. KABOOM!

We are back again at the Arrakeen palace where Reverend Mother cowers before the little child as a gigantic explosion signals Paul’s approach. The coming storm will bring the revolt to its height. A huge dust cloud develops and engulfs the palace, thus bringing down its defenses. In a flash, dozens of ornithopters fly over and into formation — evidently, the Fremen have done their job well in sealing off any hope for the Emperor’s escape.

At that moment, the Emperor orders that Alia’s body be given to the storm, but Alia stands firm. Swooping down and grabbing hold of the child, the Baron, overconfident as was his wont, tries to whisk her away. But Alia is too fast for the fat man’s own good. She stabs and scrapes the Baron’s pudgy hand with a poisoned dart from her ring. Clever girl! This one would make a formidable enough foe for any would-be assassin.

Her parting words to him are telling, to say the least: “Goodbye, grandfather!” she intones to the hefty Harkonnen’s face. The Baron instantly chokes to death from the fast-acting poison, his massive frame floating slowly away.

And just as well, too, for the full force of the Fremen’s power has finally been unleashed. Giant sandworms, “thopters” galore, artillery, and aerial bombardments overpower what is left of the scrambling Sardaukar and Imperial forces. The Emperor is helpless, unable to act in view of the mighty onslaught he is forced to witness. That hasn’t stopped the Bene Gesserit or anyone else from beating a hasty retreat.

Finally, we see Paul, Gurney and Stilgar riding a gigantic sandworm to lead the final assault. It’s kill or be killed as the slaughter reaches its height. Ironically, the Sardaukar guard who took poor little Leto’s life walks straight into Stilgar’s rifle. He’s shot through the belly, a fitting end for an unworthy opponent.

Transition to Paul staring at an aerial dogfight of thopters versus Imperial fighter jets — a veritable World War I midair collision. Back and forth they fly, while on the ground Gurney leads a house by house assault on the combatants. It’s every man, woman and child for themselves. Finally, the native forces break through to the palace as the hand-to-hand combat reaches its climax.

As Paul envisioned, the dead and dying are all around. Smoke and flames billow skyward, as if the souls of the dearly departed have been sent upward to the heavens. The main square is filled with lifeless bodies. In the next sequence, a frightened Rabban the Beast, cowering and overly cautious (now, where has HE been hiding throughout all this time?), scurries along the side walls like a cornered rodent, hoping to make his escape. All is quiet.

Rabban looks around, a dagger still in his right hand. For a split second, we get the feeling that this vicious brute might make it out after all. He even allows himself a half-smile, a little smirk at his supposed “good fortune.”

Rabban the Beast meets his inglorious end in the Sci-Fi Channel’s ‘Dune’

But his hopes are short-lived. The entire populace steps out from the shadows, their eyes gleaming with the eerie blue glow of the spice; their looks thirsting for vengeance. Rabban breaks out in a cold sweat. He turns his head upward, only to see Stilgar pointing a huge weapon in his direction. For a split second, Rabban is relieved, thinking to himself, “I’d rather be shot to death than tortured.” Not likely, for Stilgar withdraws the weapon and saunters off, leaving the bested Rabban to his fate.

Realizing all is lost, the brutish killer drops his weapon and lets out a final yell. Which, as expected, signals to the crowd that now’s the time for retribution. Onward they charge, stabbing and pulverizing the Harkonnen nephew to death. At the end, a young boy breaks away from the slaughter. He’s holding onto something. What could it be? Clutching the object closely, the boy runs up the steps to the top of the parapet.

From there, the boy lifts Rabban’s severed head for the people to see, a gruesome reminder that (paraphrasing what Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth allegedly cried out at Ford’s Theater), “Thus death comes to tyrants!” The crowd cheers wildly at the horrid sight, lifting their bloody arms in victory.

“The saga of Dune is far from over…”

(To be continued…) 

Copyright © 2023 by Josmar F. Lopes