Late last night, in fact, a little after midnight this morning I arrived
back home from my trip to New York having attended the Metropolitan Opera's
matinee performance of Wagner's *Meistersinger*, conducted by James Levine,
w/ Ben Heppner singing Walther; Karita Mattila, Eva; Jill Grove, Magdalene;
Matthew Polenzani, David; Rene Pape, Veit Pogner (Eva's father); Thomas
Allen, Beckmesser; John Relyea, the night watchman; and James Morris, Hans
Sachs.

But perhaps I should back up a bit.  My subject line is not *Die
Meistersinger* and this post is about what I think was an interesting
weekend for many reasons besides my attendance at the opera, even though
my having on impulse bought an opera ticket in the last minute was the
reason for my trip to NY.

On Thursday, The Wagner Society of Washington DC presented a lecture,
open to the general public, on "Human Dramatic Elements and Events in
*Die Meistersinger*" by Phillip W.  Raines, an opera reviewer, teacher,
and member of the society's board of directors, which I attended.

He started his presentation w/ the provocative rhetorical question, what
is it about that opera that "doesn't pound [the listener] in the face"?
Why do good German burghers, who apparently attend opera more than their
American counterparts, sit patiently for four hours or so, just to hear
its last ten minutes...or maybe, if you acknowledge the beauty of the
quintet, the last 45 minutes or so? The last question caught me totally
by surprise as I had just spent the previous two days listening to my
recording conducted by Jochum, w/ Fischer-Dieskau as Sachs and Domingo
as Walter, and while I might not have used the expression "smacked in the
face" I was overwhelmed again by what for me was the opera's magnificence.
I marveled at the organic cohesion of this work (which uncut, as it was
presented on Saturday, lasts much more than four hours!) from the Prelude
through each of the scenes presented seriatim almost in real time (a
possible reason for the opera's length; there are very few scenes, if any
which take place "several hours later" after a preceding one) permitting
the listener to appreciate the interrelationship of plot and music, the
interplay of the opera's musical themes, most of them introduced in some
form early in the work, as the story progresses, the construction of the
crowd scenes and the ensembles written for them (there's at least one in
each of the three acts), and overriding it all, the beauty of the music,
of which the quintet and the prize song are but examples.

I believe that Raines' introductory question was only indirectly the
theme of his presentation and more a vehicle for what I think was his
point that, upon careful listening and analysis, the grandeur of the work
can indeed sweep over the listener.  My own view is that much has to do
with the performance itself and the recording I have is IMO, a sterling
one, although I suspect that Mr.  Raines has heard and seen many a fine one
himself.  But, to appreciate it as a work of music as well as an operatic
spectacle, it helps if, like me, you followed it w/ a libretto in German.
(Too many puns get lost in translation.) Perhaps it helps even more if,
unlike me, you can also follow it with a score.

Raines acknowledged that, over the years the opera has moved up from
his "least favorite" to his favorite Wagner opera.  He broke down the
types of humor comprising the opera as involving puns and other word play,
situational comedy, and the "Schadenfreude" amusement at seeing the shame
of a disliked character who was become an object of mockery.  The word
plays on the names of two Meistersinger, Konrad Nachtigall and Kunz
Vogelgesang were cited as examples of the first kind.  My favorite Wagner
dilettante suggested a more subtle instance in the scene where the angry
Magdalene, takes a way the basket of goodies she had given David when she
learns from him that Walther had been rejected by the Meistersinger.  The
other apprentices tease David, telling him that he must be a skilled wooer;
his girl friend has taken a basket from him.  What is lost on those
unfamiliar with the idiom is that in German, to turn someone down is
described as giving somebody a basket ("sie gibt ihm einen Korb" means
she's turning down his proposal).  An example of situational comedy would
be the riot scene at the end of the second act or Sachs' luring Beckmesser
to his downfall by letting him keep the stolen manuscript he believed to
have been authored by Sachs, knowing that Beckmesser would never be able
to do justice to its text.  The Schadenfreude occurs of course when
Beckmesser, already the worse for a drubbing he has received from David who
had mistakenly believed him to be courting Magdalene, totally disgraces
himself as he mauls the text he had tried to pass off as his own.  Again
my favorite dilettante noted that this last scene, where Beckmesser,
having neither fully understood nor been able to memorize the stolen
lines, delivers them in garbled form distorts them into utter nonsense,
reminded him of the scene in Siegfried who, suddenly acquiring the gift of
understanding people's thoughts even when belied by their speech, perceives
Mime's intention to kill him despite the latter's protestations of kindness
and concern.  Actually he was also reminded of Siegfried in the second act,
where shoemaker Sachs, primarily to annoy Beckmesser, pounds the shoe he is
fashioning in rhythm to a raucous song of his own much like Siegfried
fashioning his sword in the "Forging Song".

The lecture was illustrated w/ tapes from a Bayreuth and an Australian
production and was a good lead-in to my weekend excursion.

Some of my friends reading this may recall that at one point I seriously
considered driving up to New York very early in the morning and returning
the same evening.  Wisely or otherwise, I rejected the idea and booked a
room in a budget hotel (the Belleclaire on Broadway and 77th Street) within
walking distance of Lincoln Center on 63rd Street.  Mindful of traffic
congestion off the turnpike and again into the city's bridge or tunnel
approaches even before the security measures imposed since 9/11, I gave
myself plenty of time, which it turns out was unnecessary.  There were no
backups either at the turnpike's toll booths, or at the Lincoln tunnel
approaches (because it was already afternoon; it's open only to carpools
in the morning).  I registered in the hotel which was informal and friendly
w/ black and white pictures of pre WWII New York all over the place,
Christmas decorations in the small lobby and a menorah on the clerk's desk,
and inquired about the $25/day garage parking that the Web site mentioned.
It was in a Hertz garage, a block away in the wrong direction on this one
way street and when I got there, they were all full.  Adjacent garages
were charging almost twice as much, which would again be doubled as I was
staying more than 24 hours.  I drove back to the hotel and mentioned this
and they were apologetic but I shouldn't worry.  This was a very safe
neighborhood and I would be quite all right parking on the street at no
cost at all.  I drove away again and they were right.  The neighborhood was
so safe that its inhabitants had clutched all the secure parking places for
themselves on both sides of every street.  Cruising around, a little like
another Wagner character, the Flying Dutchman, I finally found a garage on
West End Avenue and 62 Street where I could leave my car for $7.25 for any
12-hour period, i.e., a total of $21.75 plus tip and walked back to the
hotel.

And the early evening walk through Manhattans West Side took me back to
my boyhood.  Some remember childhood places as they were in the spring or
summer, in broad daylight w/ trees in full greenery and flowers in bloom.
My dominant recollections are of late afternoons, late in the year, when
coming home from school in brisk weather, there would be a hot cup of my
mother's cocoa waiting for me.  Uptown Broadway was as I remembered it.
The apartment houses had not been replaced by the post-war modern glass
boxes.  One could see the grey or pink stones comprising their facade.  It
was December and on the sidewalks, every few blocks, vendors were selling
Christmas trees looking so big you wondered how they would be brought into
and set up in the apartments and you could smell the fresh fir scent from
almost half a block away.  And then there were the fruit and vegetable
stores.  We didn't call it "produce" then.  The outside displays of the
freshest looking fruits and vegetables looked like something out of museum
paintings.  I picked up a soft, mushy and sweet persimmon to eat in the
hotel that night and later bought two more to take home.

After I got back to the hotel, I freshened up and took the subway down
to Times Square to see what half-price theater tickets I could get at the
booth a few blocks away.  To my disappointment, there was nothing there
that interested me at either full or half price and I decided to go to the
Vivian Beaumont Theater back at Lincoln Center to get a ticket at whatever
price I could negotiate for QED, the play about Richard Feynman w/ Alan
Alda.  I was disappointed when I got there, to learn that the play was not
on that day; it was playing Saturdays and Sundays only.  Somewhat dejected
and self-pitying at the prospect of spending a lonely Friday night in NY
doing nothing (the Belleclair Hotel, for all its advantages, does not
offer much in the way of swinging night life), I stumbled across the plaza
to Avery Fisher concert hall, where the NY Philharmonic, Ivan Fischer
conducting, was presenting Schumann's Cello concerto played by Lynn Harrell
and, after the intermission, Mahler's Fifth Symphony.  I asked at the box
office if they had tickets available.  The ticket woman replied that they
had tickets at all price ranges and then asked me if I was a senior.
Actually, having graduated a few years previously, I was a senior no
longer, but I suspected that she meant "senior citizen" and I replied that
I was.  In that case, she told me, they had $10 tickets for seats in the
back of the orchestra.  This seemed too good an offer to pass by and I
bought a ticket.  There was just enough time for a quick sandwich and a
coup of coffee in their Espresso Bar and I took my seat in the last row
of the orchestra.

Neither Schumann nor Mahler is on my short list of favorite composers
although I've gotten to appreciate both more in my advancing years.

I first discovered Lynn Harrell, when his was the only available CD of
the Dvorak Cello concerto, which was paired w/ the Elgar Cello concerto.
It was thus through Harrell that I first heard the Elgar concerto which
gave me a deeper appreciation for that composer, whom up to that time I
had associated only w/ "Land of Hope and Glory" and his enigmatic
variations.  I'd heard the Schumann concerto and it did not surprise me
that Brahms, who must have been familiar with it, waited until he heard
Dvorak's cello concerto before making the remark attributed to him that,
if he had known it was possible to write so fine a concerto for that
instrument alone, he would have tried it too.  On Friday evening, I was
struck immediately by the effortless smoothness of Harrell's playing of
the Schumann.  Not usually given to mixing up sensory stimuli, I can
nevertheless only say that it reminded me of light honey.  I enjoyed the
work (without necessarily moving it up on my scale of preferred listening)
as did the rest of the audience, to judge from the applause afterwards.

I know how popular Mahler has become in the last few decades.  I'm
also aware how steeped in Mahler some of my Internet friends are.
For the Fifth, as with his other symphonies, they know all the recorded
performances and can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of readings by
Bernstein or Walter, of Mengelberg or Horenstein, of Boulez or Barbiroli,
of Scherchen or...here fill in your own favorite Mahler conductor whom I
failed to mention.  I can't claim to be sufficiently familiar w/ any of
the symphonies to even form a mental base line from which to measure the
departures, for better or for worse, of the various conductors in their
interpretations.  I first heard his Fifth Symphony played by Scherchen on
a Westminster LP; it was a two record album, the Fifth on three sides and
the fourth devoted to what was then the only movement of the Tenth that
was ready for orchestral performance.  Westminster at that time had a
reputation for accurate fidelity and the Mahler Fifth was an excellent
vehicle for that company to show off its skill.  I'd later heard it played
live w/ Slatkin leading either the St.  Louis or the National Symphony and
liked it very much.  I was less impressed by this performance of two days
ago.  Maybe I was tired after a long day.  Mahler does not shy away from
length.  To make such length convincing, however, especially where such
length consists of a succession of passages whose relationships to each
other are not immediately apparent, there has to be something to give the
work a coherence that it did not have for me.  So, instead of hearing a
symphony, I seemed to be listening to a series of shorter orchestral works
and as such they were fine.  The program notes, which I did not get a
chance to read (but really shouldn't have needed to read) might have helped
me follow the symphony better.  Those notes were interesting in their own
right.  Apparently Gustav had a brother, known variously as Louis, Alois,
and Hans Christian (sic) who "emigrated to Chicago, where he became a baker
and eventually vanished."

Lincoln Center has a vibrance that is totally absent from the Kennedy
Center in Washington.  Part of this may be due to the Kennedy Center's
isolation within the city.  There's a Tower Records and a Barnes and Noble
just across the street from Lincoln Center.  Washington's Tower Records
is a ten to fifteen minute walk through streets where unaccompanied women
might not want to walk at night (either one of the female Supreme Court
justices or Janet Reno had a purse snatched from her in the street outside
the center) and there are no nearby book stores.  Juilliard is right next
door...as is the law school of Fordham University.  Nothing comparable
abuts the Kennedy Center.  Possibly as a consequence, you don't see as many
earnest and interested young people in the Kennedy Center as in Lincoln
center.  And Lincoln center has much more bustle.  More gift stores w/ a
better variety of objects for sale.  A better selection of restaurants and
quick food bars.  And the place is prettier.  It's alive, while Kennedy
Center is antiseptic to the point of sterility.

So, after leaving the Center, I followed Mayor Giuliani's instructions
to "spend a lot of money" while in NY, I dropped into Tower and tried
to clear out their cut-out bin and also try some music that I had heard
recommended on the Internet.  In this way I bought a recording of Robert
Simpson's Ninth Symphony, and violin sonatas by Grazyna Bacewicz.  I also
bought the Morimur ("we are dying"?) CD of the Bach d minor partita for
solo violin interwoven w/ his choral music, a collection of excerpts for
oboe from larger works from 1924 to 1940 played by Marcel Tabuteau w/
Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Berg's *Lulu*.

After returning to the hotel, I decided to try out the art deco Manhattan
Diner on the diagonally opposite corner of the intersection, open 24/7
which had been recommended.  Its menu featured the expected variants of
Greco-Italian food, moussaka and lasagna, as well as more traditional
American fare.  Having had only a sandwich before the concert, I decided
on a dinner meal and was asked whether I wanted soup or salad, either of
which was included in the encouragingly low price of the meal.  I asked
what the soup choices were and was given the usual list of chicken,
vegetable barley, New York chowder...and matzoh ball soup.  Of course I
opted for the last and again drifted back to recollections of halcyon days
of early youth.  (They have diners in Herndon, and in Vienna, Virginia, but
I've never seen them serve matzoh ball soup.)

I returned there the next morning (Saturday) for breakfast.  The place
seemed to have a lot of men w/ their doted upon toddlers, sans women, and
I couldn't resist the speculation, which may be completely inaccurate, that
many, if not all, were divorced dads making the most of their visitation
weekends.

After breakfast and buying a New York Fire Department tee-shirt it was
time to check out of the hotel and go to the opera...and again I was
astounded by its grandeur compared to the Opera House in the Kennedy
Center.  Both are in modern buildings built w/in a few years of each
other.  But while the Kennedy Center's Opera house is simply the largest
auditorium, straddled on either side by the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower
Theater, all under the same roof, the Metropolitan, for all the modern
design of its separate building and interior, preserves the traditional
dual sweeping staircases from the ground level to the concourse.  Mine was
a balcony seat, the second highest level, only the family circle being
higher.  Unlike corresponding facilities in the Kennedy Center, its lobby
was finished w/ the same care as those of lower placed and higher priced
sections, complete w/ bar and food service.  I got me a tasty ham and brie
sandwich on a hard roll during one of the intermissions.  I was a bit
concerned about the view impeding cables holding up some of the low
floating chandeliers in the hall and was agreeably surprised that, just
before the house lights dimmed, these chandeliers were hauled up on the
cables, which then disappeared into ceiling recesses.  The individual
electronic libretto texts, discreetly mounted so as to be viewable only
face on so as not to distract neighbors, worked fine.  While they could
be turned off, I turned mine on and referred to them occasionally.

Levine was greeted to a resounding vocal ovation before the performance
even started and again before each act as well as at the end.  It was a
lovely performance.  Some of you may have heard it on the radio.  Maybe
because his reputation had raised my expectations unreasonably, I was a
bit disappointed in Heppner.  Of course his chunky appearance didn't help.
It wasn't his singing of the highlighted passages like the trial song for
admission to the guild or the sublime prize song so much as elsewhere when
he seemed almost drowned out by the orchestra.  While I enjoyed James
Morris' Sachs, Thomas Allen's Beckmesser, and Matthew Polenzani's David, I
enjoyed Karita Mattila's Eva most of all.  (She received a bouquet at the
end of the performance.) Not only were there curtain calls after each act,
but two additional ones to thundering applause after the house lights had
been turned on.

The elaborate and well made sets were a delight to behold:  the church
interior in the first act, the medieval street in the second, and in the
third act, first the interior of Sachs' house and finally, the outdoor fair
grounds which even featured a sailboat coming up (or down) the Pregnitz to
discharge the pretty girls who danced with the apprentices in the famous
dance sequence.  The pageantry of the various trade guilds culminating in
the arrival of the Meistersinger, followed by the prize competition (what
Phillip Raines had referred to as the last ten minutes of the opera,
although it does last a good bit longer) was almost hypnotic.  This was
the final and crowning effort at choreographed crowd manipulation.  There
was also the riot scene at the end of the second act and the contrapuntal
confusion at the end of the first, matching the outraged Meistersinger
against the amused apprentices during all of which a frustrated Walther
is trying to make himself heard, all of them oblivious to the others.

It was theoretically possible to attend the broadcast intermission programs
in the List Room on the orchestra level.  But that room quickly fills up
and if you're coming down there from the balcony level, you can only follow
the forums and quizzes in an ante room where the programs are piped in on
a TV screen.  However the ambient noise, consisting of late comers and
early leavers as well as the talk on the lines of people waiting to go to
the ladies' or men's room, which are right next door, soon got me to return
upstairs.

It was indeed a weekend well worth the trip and I won't spoil my
recollections of it by dwelling on my walk through the rain to the garage,
normally not that far away, the wait in rain drenched feet for my car along
w/ many other opera goers, the NY traffic to the Lincoln tunnel, and then
the 250-mile drive through the rain in the dark w/ poor visibility and the
lane markers barely perceptible and no food at the rest centers, either
because the lines were too long or as I passed them up for centers further
en route, the concessions had closed for the evening.  The important thing
is that I got home safely by 12:30 Sunday morning.

Walter Meyer