Desultory Diary, Episode 24: Where are the Snows of Yesteryear?

Ou est la neige d'antan? Where are the snows of yesteryear? François Villon posed this question over five hundred years ago. Today we use different metaphors to convey the passage of time, e.g., "water under the bridge," "time waits for no man," or some version of the Latin, "tempus fugit," time flies.

We recently listened to a 1984 performance of Aida, which turned out to be for me an almost three-hour long memento mori; beautiful, but a memento mori nevertheless. (This is but one of the many operas we've listened to recently, streamed every day from the Metropolitan Opera as a public service during the current corona virus lockdown. I'm beginning to think in cracked Italian).

This performance was very poignant for me, not only because it was one of the last performances of Leontyne Price before she retired from the stage in 1985, but because I had attended it, as a much younger man, thirty-six years ago. Ou est la neige d'antan? 

The cast was first-rate. The conductor, James Levine, in his early forties at the time of the broadcast, was able to stand at the podium; we remember him more recently after his hair thinned and turned gray, and after he could barely walk. One could hardly imagine at the time that thirty years later his career would be over, having been fired form the Met and from the Boston Symphony Orchestra for  having been a sexual predator in his youth. Another Latin proverb, in addition to tempus fugit comes to mind here: sic transit gloria mundi. Nevertheless, he conducted Aida masterfully.

James McCracken, who passed away a mere four years later at the age of 61, sang beautifully and acted well. He ignored Verdi's notation of moriendo, that is, dying away, at the final B flat of Celeste Aida; most tenors do that, since going from quite loud to quite soft on a high note is notoriously difficult. (The only one I ever heard doing this successfully was the splendid Franco Corelli).

Leontyne Price was phenomenal. How beautifully expressive was her smokey voice at mid-range; how much more beautiful still were her high notes, especially her pianissimos at the end of the famous third-act area, O patria mia. Her singing and interpretation, to put it mildly, brought down the house; the applause and shouts lasted longer than for any other performance I have witnessed; and, over the years, I’ve witnessed a lot. It was nostalgic to think that my left palm, red from clapping, was present, throbbing in the balcony, during her well-deserved ovation. Her final performance of Aida, her forty-second, came a few months later, in January of 1985.

Simon Estes was imposing as Aida’s father, Amonosro. I especially enjoyed hearing Fiorenza Cossotto in the challenging role of Amneris, since I had admired her so much in the even more challenging role of Adelgisa in Bellini’s Norma, which I had seen at the Met in 1972.

Aida is the quintessential grand opera; I remember seeing a production, also with Leontyne Price, in which the Met went all-out. There was even a live elephant in the triumphant march scene! The stage for the last act at that performance was elaborately divided into two horizontal sections, the upper one being the altar, the lower one the tomb in which the lovers meet their fate. Amneris grieved from above. It was quite impressive. The 1985 production struck me as being a fine example of how to stage an opera in the middle of a Depression. (Not to mention a plague!)

Ou est la neige d’antan ? Tempus fugit. Now another adage comes to mind. This time a German one: Schön ist die Jugend, sie kommt nicht mehr. (Youth is beautiful; it never returns).

I must admit, the drama of Aida leaves me cold. I am, however, very much aware that the music is among the best music that one of the best composers ever composed. Opera, especially Italian opera, loves to depict triangulated love affairs, enabling the principal singers to emote before everything ends badly. The rivalry of a pharaoh’s daughter and a king’s daughter over the same man is more than a bit contrived, more fitting, perhaps, for a soap opera than for a masterwork. (When a Brazilian man I was working with long ago told me of the Brazilian national opera, Il Guerany, I guessed the plot before he told me: an Indian princess falls in love with a conquistador, what else?) Also, the final wonderful duet bothers me. Here are two people, sealed alive in a tomb, singing, "How beautiful and pure it is to die!"

Aida is a masterwork, nevertheless. I had attended so many performances that I knew all the music by heart.

I was dazzled by the performance, and even more deeply moved by the realization that time has irrevocably changed me into an old man, and will soon irrevocably change me into something worse.

2.

I come from a family that had no interest in music.The first memory I have of the effect music has on me was when I was about 8 or 9—I’m not sure. I came across—don’t ask me how—a recording of the William Tell Overture conducted by Toscanini. It was on two or three 45 rpm records. I distinctly remember that the entire records, grooves and all, were blood-red. I played it and when it came to that beautiful minor key melody at the beginning of the overture, I burst into tears. I didn’t know what hit me.

Later, as a teen, I borrowed from the library a recording of Mozart’s Magic Flute and played it every day. I was hooked.

I borrowed recordings of other operas as well, but had never attended a performance. This changed around 1964. I was attending undergraduate classes at Rutgers in Newark, and worked at the university library part-time.  A librarian, an avid opera fan, much older than us, agreed to take a gaggle of us students to the Met. He purchased a ticket for a score desk on the balcony. A score desk, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a dimly-lit monk-like desk whereupon one sets the score of the opera to be performed and reads it during the performance; the view of the stage is completely obstructed. If I recall correctly, five of us sat at the desk, while Rigoletto tangled with the Duke. It was not a memorable first night at the opera.

In 1965-1966, I spent my junior year in Freiburg, Germany. One of my fellow students asked me if I would like to attend a performance of Macbeth at the Stadttheater. I agreed. We thought we were going to see a Shakespeare play—it turned out to be Verdi’s opera! I don’t remember much from the performance.

At Freiburg, I attended a couple of performances of Weber’s der Freischütz as well,  and was fascinated. I remember the performances well. I recall, as if it were yesterday, the horns having trouble keeping together in the hunting chorus. I also remember the overture very well, especially the part of it that critics have called the birth of German Romantic Opera—a mysterious tremulo that gets loud and then fades away, very Schubert-like.

I remember a good deal more, but will leave it at that.

During semester break, I attended a performance of Falstaff at Vienna. Leonard Bernstein conducted; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang the title role. I had a Stehplatz, a standing room ticket.What most impressed me was seeing Bernstein’s head pop up and then disappear from view as he exuberantly jumped up and down in the pit, whenever the spirit moved him--which I might add, occurred frequently.

When I got back to the U.S. in the fall of 1966, I needed operatic fixes on a regular basis. A co-worker at the library informed me that her brother was an avid opera fan. I asked whether he could pick up a ticket for me; instead, she told me how to purchase standing room tickets.

During the 1967-1968 season, I saw many operas. At that time, I was a graduate student in German Literature at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. I frequently traveled to New York to stay at my mother's on weekends. I would purchase standing room tickets for weekends—one performance on Friday, sometimes two on Saturday. I heard all the famous singers of that era: Birgit Nilsson, Monserat Caballé, Jon Vickers, Franco Corelli, Jesseye Norman, Fernando Corena, Monserrat Caballé, Jon Vickers, Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland etc. etc. singing in major operas, most of which are still popular today—though I haven’t heard a performance of La Giaconda since 1967.

After I moved to Baltimore in 1980, attendance at the Met became much less frequent. (Did I attend operas in Baltimore and Washington? Yes, but irregularly).

Listening to opera broadcasts, which the Met has done on a daily basis since the coronavirus pandemic began, has brought back a lot of memories. I had forgotten what an opera fanatic I had been. I had a lot of recordings I listened to regularly, but that eventually stopped as well, A few years ago, I moved them all to the attic.

Fascination with opera became a thing of the past; I no longer kept up with Met performances. Happily married with a young son, I settled down to work hard. Middle age had begun.

Middle age is now long gone. How quickly time has passed! I suddenly realized that  all the opera stars I knew years ago are either  retired or dead. Although I attend broadcasts in cinemas now and then, I am somewhat unfamiliar with the singers who are in the limelight now.

I remember some of those old performances as if they took place yesterday. The young man I was then is gone forever. Next day—or so it seems—that young man is about to turn 75. How much time do I have left? I recall a little-known Bach cantata, “Ich habe einen Fuss im Grabe”—“I have one foot in the grave". In my case, it’s at least 1 ½ of my lower appendages dans la fosse.

It’s a sobering thought: the Met will go on without me, life will go on without me; soon, perhaps very soon, I will cease to exist.

One minute you’re listening to an ineffable passage from Mozart, the next minute you “see” the skeletal memento mori figure in the Southwark Cathedral, London.

Where has all the time gone? Ou est la neige d’antan?

4.

According to Camus, a longer life is always better. “One just has to be able to consent to this. There will never be any substitute for twenty years of life and experience.”—Albert Camus

The New Yorker recently (May 4, 2020) contained a profile piece of an unquestionably brilliant man, Frank Ramsey, who died at the age of 26. For Camus, it would have better if he had been a postman who lived to be 100—or even to 46. Although life might be objectively meaningless, subjectively it is not; once we accept life as it is and our position in it, life becomes much less problematic, even enjoyable. 

It is a mistake, according to Camus, to consider Ramsey’s brief life as superior to that of a longer-lived postman’s. It is quantity, the number of years of experience, that matters. Ramsey never had a cell phone; Ramsey never was able to stream a play by Shakespeare; Ramsey never knew what it meant to have a relationship with someone for, say, fifty years, or more. Ramsey was never able to experience, perhaps even to partly transcend, the diminishment of old age.

If we accept Camus’s stance, males are in trouble—everybody is, but males especially. We might call this the absent X syndrome, or the burden of the Y. Females have two X chromosomes, males have one X and one Y. The X chromosome is large and contains much information; the Y chromosome is much smaller: it directs the fetus to become a male, but contains little else. Most of it is junk. When something goes wrong with a gene on one X chromosome, females have a second X chromosome that takes over, often resulting in no morbidity. If something averse happens on an X chromosome and you only have one, as males do, you're out of luck. It is thought that the extra X chromosome supports ongoing cellular health and helps to explain why females live longer.

Confronted by my own mortality by the realization that my favorite opera stars, whom I’ve seen perform many times, are either dead or retired, I decided to contrast their fates by gender. If I were a retired male opera star in my 60s or70s, I asked myself, where would I be now? I chose 8 males and 8 females, all singers I heard many times. Where are they now?

Male Opera Stars                                  Age at death     Alive             
           

Franco Corelli                                        82

George London                                      64

James McCracken                                  61

Fernando Corena                                    67

Cesare Siepi                                           87

Jon Vickers                                            88

Sándor Konya                                        78

George Shirley                                                                 86                                                                                                                                   

Female Opera Stars                                    

Marilyn Horne                                                                 86                                                                                      

Fiorenza Cossotto                                                            85                                                                                     

Renata Tebaldi                                    82

Joan Sutherland                                   83

Leontyne Price                                                                  93                                                                                                                                                                                               

Birgit Nilsson                                      87

Monserat Caballé                                85         

What leaps out from this small study is that three of the women are still alive, while only one man is; all the women reached 80 at the very least, while several of the males died in their sixties. If we assume that they were all dead at present—a very incorrect assumption regarding the four who are still breathing, we can average the ages of death. For the male group, the average age of death is about 75 years, while that of the female is about 84 years. (Since three quarters of those still alive are female, the final averages will be skewed even farther to the female group).

This is a small sample, but the results are consistent with the fact that females live longer.

The horror of this personal memento mori brought on by the fact that my younger "opera days" were gone forever and the fact that most of the stars I admired so much then are now dead, was even more intensified by the realization that I am male, thus likely, at age 75, to die sooner rather than later.

And what about gender differences regarding the quality of life? 

Fates, we know your pleasures./That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time/and drawing out of days that men stand upon.

                                                Brutus, Julius Caesar, 4.1. 99--101

Males unquestionably excel in at least five categories: suicide, sickness, violence, perversion and death. Regarding suicide: completed suicides occur in males with roughly twice the frequency; regarding sickness: an example of male excellence in this category is the fact that nearly twice the number of males succumb to Covid-19; regarding violence: this category is so male-dominated that there is no need to provide a statistic; regarding perversion: there are no Juanita Dahmers; and death: early death is, not exclusively, but basically, a male thing.

The male ego is still alive and kicking (kicking others, as other males kick them). Many men still strive to be alpha males. They are still acting like chimpanzees in an increasingly bonobo society. (Chimpanzee society is male-dominated and hierarchical, and violent, while bonobo society is female-dominated, peaceful, and based on relationships). Very interesting facts: chimpanzee life for males is much more stressful;  males in bonobo society live longer!--and, apparently, are more content.

Moral for heldentenors: put down your spear and concentrate on relationships. If you’re male, it’s the masculine thing to do; if you’re female, it’s the female thing to do—for it is the human thing to do.

Second moral: Occasional memento mori are good for the soul! We cannot be happy and wise until we accept life as it is, which includes death.

Final moral: males are more fragile and should take better care of themselves. Most men love women—why not learn from them? We’d all be happier.