The one regret of his last years was that his only opera remained
unperformed.  Otherwise, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, who died in Oakland on
Wednesday at age 95, was a happy man, in spite of a complicated, turbulent
family history.

Composer, pianist, conductor, music educator, he was the brother of the
writer Anais Nin and son of the Cuban composer and pianist Joaquin Nin.
He combined his father's name with the name of his mother, singer Rosa
Culmell.

Nin-Culmell was trained in Paris, where he was a pupil of Dukas, later
taking lessons from Manuel de Falla.  Although he lived most of his life
in the US, including many years with UC-Berkeley, he had written music
of a markedly Spanish flavour, including a series of piano pieces,
Tonadas, that draw on Spanish material.

In 1997, just before Michael Tilson Thomas opened the San Francisco
Symphony season with a short work commissioned from him, I interviewed
Nin-Culmell in his home.

===

With his polo shirt, shorts and high-tech sneakers in his bright Oakland
living room on a Thursday afternoon, Joaquin Nin-Culmell looks ready for
the tennis court.  "No," he protests the suggestion, "my back is killing
me." In fact, he can't even compose as usual, standing up at the "wrong
end" of the piano.  He has to sit down, but he doesn't sit at the piano.
How does he write down the music?  "To tell you the truth," he says
half-seriously, "most of the time I don't bother because it's not worth
writing it down."

He did write down three versions of "La Celestina," the opera scheduled
for Barcelona's Liceo when it reopens (maybe next year) as well as
Madrid's Royal Opera and the house in Seville.

He shows the current version - "laser-printed, doesn't it look great?
- from which he is digesting a fanfare for the Sept.  3 opening of the
San Francisco Symphony.  "The last time they (SFS) played my music was
under Krips," he is musing.  "Monteux played my works and Jorda, but
after Krips, nothing.  Then, out of the blue, Michael (Tilson Thomas)
called, took me out to dinner and told me he'd like to have something
loud, short and brassy for the season-opener, and so there you are,
"Fanfare from La Celestina.'

I look at the opera score, with the big number "3" on it and out of
some strange place I ask: where are the first two versions?  Nin-Culmell
points to the fireplace: "I burned them." Why?  "I don't want some
smart-ass come along in the future and say which version *he* prefers;
this is the one *I* know is right.  I destroyed the other two to avoid
misunderstandings."

"La Celestina," on the text of Fernando de Rojas" 1499 "novel in dialogue"
- the first novel in history - is Nin-Culmell's first opera.  He says,
without a hint of self-pity, "It's likely to be my last; I should have
started earlier.  I'd like to writen another opera, a comedy, but it's
not to be, most likely.'

Nin-Culmell - Catalan, Cuban, U.S.  citizen since 1951 - was born in
Berlin in 1908.  On Sept.  5, two days after the return to the Symphony
of "an old man who has been ignored so long," he will turn 89.  He spent
his first 18 months in Berlin where his father, a famed pianist and
composer, and mother, also a musician, were studying.  His younger sister,
Anais Nin, wasn't born yet.  As the family kept moving around, Nin-Culmell
ended up studying in Paris with Paul Braud (a pupil of Cesar Franck) and
then in Granada with Manuel de Falla.

He taught music at Williams College (on a diplomatic passport, and
serving in the Cuban Army in-between), established and conducted the
Berkshire Community Orchestra, then in 1950, joined the music department
of UC-Berkeley, becoming chairman later.  Under his direction, fundraising
began for the construction of both Morrison and Hertz halls on campus,
and he inaugurated the university's famous Wednesday Noon Concerts.

How did he get the triple commitment for the "La Celestina" premiere
in Spain.  Nin-Culmell laughs, enjoying the strange ways life works.
"Originally, it was Barcelona only, but when the opera house there burned
down, things changed.  Liceo was a private institution, but it needed
government assistance to rebuild.  The government couldn't give them
money as long as they remained private, so it has become part of the
national group of opera houses.  As long as one is producing my opera,
the other two may just as well do it too, so they will.'

Is everything he has written "Spanish'?  No, there was one work that
was an exception, it was "French." And now, suddenly, the token that has
been stuck in the upper reaches of my brain all this time crashes down
with a thud: "Le Reve de Cyrano"!  Of course.

I just moved to the city in 1978 and sat through exciting rehearsals of
that work, still in the Geary studios of the San Francisco Ballet, John
McFall choreographing it, Michael Smuin and Lou Christensen both helping
along, Attila Ficzere dancing the title role, Allison Dean was Roxanne
- and the music...  twisting, neo-Straussian, haunting, outstanding,
memorable.  That Nin-Culmell!  And he remembers too: "Nice article," he
recalls, "liked that big color photo they ran with it."

He really remembers it, no faking.  So the only work I know of this
"Spanish composer" is the very French "Cyrano."

Speaking of photos, I say, could you give me one for this article?  Sure,
he says, and hands me a 1995 photo.  I look and say nothing, but he picks
up on it: "I hate when people use old photos of themselves," he says.
"Imagine 80-year-olds with their picture in the paper taken when they
were 40!" He rolls his eyes.

Back to "La Celestina," Nin-Culmell has some more startling information:
"Both Verdi and Strauss were thinking of writing an opera about it -
it's such a great story, one of the Spanish trinity: Don Quixote, Don
Juan and Celestina!" The eyes sparkle: "I am glad they didn't write it
- I wouldn't like the comparison." Why didn't they?  "Difficult subject:
a procurer, a whore, really.  What kind of a heroine is that?" He speaks
at length about the puzzle of the book, the young lovers staying apart,
the speculation that she was a Sephardic Jew and so not the "right match,"
but Nin-Culmell's interpretation is that Melibea was the daughter a
Catalan merchant ("by the way, I am not a separatist!") and that was the
problem.

"Anyway," his eyes are twinkling again, "I don't let them die, and I
close the opera with a Catalan folk song." Pause.  "That will go over
very big there."

 [Note from 2004: all three planned productions fell through, "La Celestina"
remains unseen and mostly unheard.]

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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