SOL Tuesday: Do I Hate Opera?

             A friend invited me to go to  Lincoln Center last night where a filmed version of the opera Boris Godunov was going to be projected on a giant screen to a crowd sitting on the outside plaza.

            I have never cared for operatic singing. You know that stereotype of the man who’s dragged to the opera by his wife, where he complains about the screeching and yelling? I’m that guy. But Moussorgsky wrote the music for this opera, and it was outdoors on a warm night. Why not?

            It was a very pleasant evening, and I’m not sorry I went. But I’m still not a fan of opera. First, they were singing in Russian, with subtitles—and the subtitles were white. I could make out most of the words in the first scene, but the second, rather long scene featured a monk in a white robe. The subtitles were impossible to read. Impossible. And that scene was rather crucial, as a young man the monk was apparently telling an important story to, in a subsequent scene was attempting to escape Russia (why?) and was fairly hostile to the itinerant monks he was traveling with (why?).

            Next, much of the story seemed reduced to slogans: Boris resists being named tsar, then he accepts. But he feels guilty (for what? was that a subtitle I missed?). Maybe he killed a previous heir to the throne, maybe he didn’t. The young man trying to escape Russia is claiming to be that heir, but nothing comes of that plotline. The chorus represents the people, who at the beginning beg Boris to accept being the tsar, but at the end, they want him gone (why?), even though he provides food during a famine. Accused of killing the heir, Boris has a heart attack and dies. The end.

            It felt rather Macbeth-ish—though I learned later that the the opera is based on a play by Pushkin, which was based in turn on Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. And there were echoes of current affairs, an autocratic ruler reminding us of Putin, the chorus hinting at revolution that doesn't happen for another 300  years. But I did want to know more about the real-life Boris. He turns out to have been a Tatar, part of the Golden Horde, which was the European wing of the Mongol Empire in the Middle Ages. (Also an early 1950s movie I saw as a child.) Ivan the Terrible was one of them, and one of his sons was the heir Boris was accused of killing. Boris was a good ruler, but the nobility conspired against him, and then he died. And the next tsar, about 10 years later, in 1613, inaugurated the Romanov dynasty.

            Except for a couple of peripheral women characters, all the singing was done by men, so that was bearable. I haven’t become a fan of opera, but the outdoor event in the summer was enjoyable.

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SOL Tuesday: More Book Downsizing

I’ve finally finished with the European history bookcase and got rid of more than half the books I had. Many were old paperbacks I read for college history classes; heavily marked up, I could only put them in the recycle bin. One book, however, was praised by two history professors I know—they still use it in teaching—so I’m keeping it. It’s titled “The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experiences of a Single German Town 1930-1935,” and while there are certainly differences between the U.S. now and Germany in 1930, there are unsettling similarities, so perhaps re-reading now could be instructive.

            Many of the books on the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia went to a friend who wrote about Bosnia during the wars, and two books on Czechoslovakia soon after the Velvet Revolution went to another friend who was teaching on a Fulbright in what became Slovakia in 1992, while she was teaching there.

            Then I tackled several piles of books that have been haunting me for three or four years now, on the piano bench, on the guest room bed, on a file cabinet. Most of them are now in two carts, and when the weather is less hot and humid, I’ll walk them down to the thrift shop. What a relief that will be.

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

 

SOL Tuesday: Painfully Downsizing Books

     Until recently, all my bookcases had two rows of books on every shelf. Three years ago, one of those shelves collapsed, in the middle of the night, scaring the heck out of me. In daylight, I knew I had to pare down. Half the books in that bookcase (American history) had to go. It took a few weeks, but I did it. During Covid, I thought I’d better tackle the Fiction bookcase before its shelves started collapsing, and that task was done.

     Last week, it was time to take on the European/world history bookcase. First, I removed all the books and piled them in categories (Europe, Russia and Russian Revolution, Middle East, Africa, etc.). Then I had to go through each category: what to keep, what to give away, which books so decrepit or so marked up I have to toss them (that’s painful). 

     Today I sorted through the Holocaust section. I read “Schindler’s List” as soon as it came out, and for the first time I was conscious that there were people who survived the Nazis’ effort to kill every Jew they could find. All I had known up until that moment, at age 40, was that six million Jews were murdered, and if my grandparents hadn’t come to the United States at the beginning of the century, Iwould have been among them (whoever I would have been in that case, a more metaphysical issue). Who wanted to know any more? But survivors? This I needed to know more about. I’d read Keneally’s book in November 1982, and over the next six months I found and read 29 more — survivors’ accounts, histories, biographies, even fiction, and more. Ten of those books I still have, and have since acquired even more, most of which I’ve not read. The books to keep are mostly chosen, but there’s one dilemma I’m facing. I have two histories — Lucy Dawidowicz’s “The War Against The Jews 1933-1945” (a small paperback) and Martin Gilbert’s “The Holocaust: A history of the Jews of Europe duirng the Second World War” (a large hardcover). Maybe for now I’ll keep both and see whether there’s room for them on the shelves. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.