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Home » Christa Ludwig disagrees with Leonard Bernstein about tempo

Christa Ludwig disagrees with Leonard Bernstein about tempo

The New Neo Posted on by

I had no idea why YouTube decided I would like this video called “Vocalist Disagrees With Bernstein’s Tempo.” But they recommended it, and I idly clicked on it and watched it:

“It doesn’t matter; who can hear the words anyway?” asks Bernstein. But according to several commenters on that thread, Bernstein and Ludwig were actually very friendly and had great professional respect for each other.

It turns out that YouTube knows me better than I know myself, because – even though I know very little about opera – I was surprised and pleased to see that the “vocalist” arguing with Bernstein was a singer of whom I’m aware and who is a great favorite of mine, Christa Ludwig. The reason I know about her is that, during the years when I developed a passion for the opera “Hansel and Gretel” (see NOTE below), I discovered that she was the most fabulous Hansel and Gretel Witch of all time. And believe me, I listened to many renditions.

Ludwig somehow manages to be simultaneously scary and funny. She spits out the lyrics with remarkable clarity and force, taking incredible delight in sharply enunciating the sounds of the words (in German, of course), fairly smacking her lips with mock-evil glee. Since the subtext of the Hansel and Gretel story is hunger and even starvation, her delivery adds an added dimension.

It got to the point that I couldn’t bear to listen to any other version of the Witch but Christa’s.

It would help if you were familiar with the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” and it would help a lot if you were familiar with German. But even if you’re not, maybe this will appeal. It’s the scene where the Witch puts a spell on Hansel and Gretel:

You can find the complete opera in the following video. But since I’m highlighting Christa Ludwig’s Witch today, I’ll cue that part up. Here’s the part towards the end where she’s trying to get Gretel to bend over in front of the oven so that the Witch can easily push her into it, but Gretel turns the tables on her. The segment ends with Hansel and Gretel celebrating the Witch’s demise:

Looking it up now, I see that Christa Ludwig died last April at the age of 93; RIP. Her repertoire was vast, but in that entire Wiki article it doesn’t even mention this particular role. But she was superb.

I’ll close with…[quote from “Inside Opera” deleted because the story in it turns out to be untrue – thanks, readers!]

[NOTE: I’ve already written at length about other aspects of the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” which you can find here as well as here (that one featuring the wonderful Prayer Song), and also here.]

Comments

Christa Ludwig disagrees with Leonard Bernstein about tempo — 57 Comments

  1. This is an antique film clip. The woman looks to be in her young adult years. She died last year at the age of 93.

    I’ve never understood the appeal of opera. One bit.

  2. My favorite part of Hänsel und Gretel is the luscious orchestration. Mahler liked it, too.

  3. Larry Storch, actor (F Troop, among others) and stand up comedian had a bit on how the German language could start a fight in an empty room. Lots of what sounded like overpronouncing…but what did I know.

  4. the German language could start a fight in an empty room

    From an aesthetic standpoint, very unattractive. French is handsome, even when you can only pick out every third word. However, nothing sounds handsome delivered by an opera singer. It just sounds…loud.

  7. tcrosse:

    Agreed.

    I was listening to someone talk about the opera who said its huge appeal stems from its unusual combination of melodic folk-type songs and extremely complex, advanced, and almost-overwhelmingly powerful orchestration.

  8. Art Deco:

    You have twice said you don’t like opera. You also say that you have never understood the appeal of opera.

    That’s interesting.

    I have never been drawn to opera, but I think I do know why. It’s a very stylized way of singing and it also usually involves foreign languages and therefore either lack of understanding of lyrics or the need for simultaneous translation. For some people, it’s an acquired taste that they never acquire. Others love it immediately.

    But to say it’s just loud makes me think that there may be something else operating with you, because an opera-specific form of this? I don’t really think that’s the explanation, though, because I seem to recall that you like certain other forms of music.

    I never liked opera, although I like most other types of music. However (and again, I could explain the reasons, but it would take too long), there are two operas I not only like but I love. One is Hansel and Gretel and the other is Porgy and Bess. I have practically committed those two to memory.

    A lot of people only know each of them by a few songs from them. But they are both bona fide operas and very beautiful in that form, in my opinion. But no other opera has ever appealed to me, not that I’ve seen many in full. However, certain arias are appealing, and I certainly see the appeal of opera for other people.

  9. Long ago I realized that if I find nothing of value in what a lot of other people see as of value, it is not they but I who lack the discernment to see the value. And yes, that applies to everything.

  11. How German sounds depends on who’s speaking it and what they’re saying, just like English. My Grandma’s German sounded much nicer than Hitler’s.

  12. Christa Ludwig was the best. My favorite is her Agnus Dei in Bach’s B Minor Mass.

    She is also great as Fricka in Die Walkure. Yes, Wotan, you don’t want to mess with Christa Ludwig when she’s singing Fricka.

  14. Like Neo, I appreciate some operas, and not others, rather than being for or against the genre as a whole. I confess to being partial to Mozart especially.
    H&G is also one I like, and I wish the links were to a production instead of just a recording, which I am listening to now, as I cruise the interwebs tonight.

    Fun fact: at the ripe age of about 8 (maybe 10?) AesopSpouse played Hansel in an amateur production. We have the very cute pictures to prove it.

    Maybe because of that, and our having been conditioned lately to “trust but verify,” he did some research on the alleged background story, which had not shown up in any of my own fairly copious research on the Brothers Grimm a few years back.
    It didn’t take much effort.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Hansel_and_Gretel

    The Truth About Hansel and Gretel (German: Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel) is a book written by German caricaturist Hans Traxler, which was published in 1963.

    The book purports to tell the story of how teacher Georg Ossegg uncovered archeological evidence of the “real” Hansel and Gretel in 1962. According to the book, Ossegg had determined that the fairytale, Hansel and Gretel, was based on the story of a baker named Hans Metzler and his sister Grete. According to the book, Hans and Grete Metzler lived in a village in the Spessart Forest during the Thirty Years War, and killed an old woman named Katharina Schraderin in order to steal her recipe for Nürnberger Lebkuchen (gingerbread) during the 17th century.[1][2][3][4]

    In reality, Ossegg did not exist and the details of the story were fabricated by Traxler. Vanessa Joosen has called the book a “fictive nonfictional text,” which “carries the features of a nonfictional text but consciously misleads the reader.”[5] Despite its fictional nature, the hoax convinced many in Germany at the time,[1][2][5] and continues to have some traction.[6][7][8]

    The programme compiler clearly thought the story was too good to check.

    As The Babylon Bee reminds us daily, it’s hard to tell satire from fact sometimes.
    However, this entry seems to be more in the realm of the Sokal Hoax: feed people a story that sounds plausible, and they are more than willing to believe it.

    Wiki’s footnote [4] is to an article by Jack Zipes, who is THE current master of the subject, and he points out that Traxler’s story is part of the general zeitgeist of rewriting fairy tales for the modern audiences.

    https://books.google.ca/books?id=xEUffhJnylYC&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=%22Hans+Traxler%22+%22Hansel+and+Gretel%22&source=bl&ots=UraDqFpXqn&sig=wW2kEZGFPga67zPzHhGOkoDLepM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KdBjVey_CMGfyAS8oYGAAQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%22Hans%20Traxler%22%20%22Hansel%20and%20Gretel%22&f=false

    (Sorry about the URL, put I prefer putting my links in clear so you can see where you are being led, as there might be witches lurking in the woods.)

    The reference is on page 240 of Zipes’ book “The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, Second Edition.”
    I recommend his translation of the complete Grimms’ collection, and pretty much everything he writes. He is an enthusiastic fan, but is neither a doting simpleton or a supercilious debunker. He delves into the stories, their backgrounds, and their place in literature and society in a rational but sympathetic fashion.

    My recording just started the Evening Prayer, which seems too much of a coincidence – and is one of the best operatic songs ever.

  15. In our elementary school library, grade maybe three, I found a book of fairy tales. Can’t recall the name.
    They weren’t Disneyfied. And, as far as I recall, not simplified for kids. Although how would I know?

    In retrospect, not many years later, I concluded they were not fairy tales as we think of them, but folk tales. And European folk tales were, you should excuse the term, a lot more grim than what we called fairy tales.

    But H&G in its fairy tale form is pretty bad, compared to Little Golden Books.

  18. I got “into” opera about 15 years ago, mainly by hearing La Bohéme in its entirety. Then the Reno amateur opera company staged that opera that very season, and I bought tickets for it. They had brought in two professionals to sing the lead parts, and it was clear there was a vast difference between professional and amateur opera singers.

    I acquired several other CDs of full operas after that — Madama Butterfly, Carmen, and several others, and about wore them out listening to them over and over. I was enchanted, and enjoyed most of them profoundly.

    I even tried listening to Wagner, and decided Mark Twain’s analysis of Wagner was about right: “it’s better than it sounds.”

    I will have to look for Hansel & Gretel and listen to that now!

  19. Ach! So many Philistines! I’m reminded of my daughters whom I persistently remind not to schedule any events during a live Met streaming of an opera. But they seem to have the talent of scheduling trivial things such as weddings, birthday parties, family vacations during one of the streams. No couth!

    Oh, by the way, I enjoy opera.

  20. Not a opera fan though I like classical music.
    On YouTube suggestions, once you see one you get more like them. Have been getting the first movies remastered from here, but as said I like to see them.

  21. My parents and grandparents were opera lovers, so I’ve been hearing them all my life. It’s in the blood.

  22. Opera was an acquired taste for me, too. I had been listening to classical music for many years, including some opera, but didn’t care much for it. Part of the reason was the nature of classically-trained singing, which just sounded odd and extremely unnatural to my ears which were accustomed to more informal popular singing styles. In particular I really didn’t care for the full-on shriek of the soprano in the highly dramatic moments of a typical 19th century opera.

    The acquisition of the taste occurred when I attended a live performance of Madame Butterfly. Suddenly I got it. Opera is still not my favorite art form, and there are still a number of the big favorites that I’ve never heard, Hansel and Gretel being one of them. I have, though, become a big Wagner fan. Several (?) years ago I heard the whole Ring at the pace of one a week or so via one of the Met’s films in a local theater. Oh man…that was one of the highlights of my musical life.

  23. Her gingerbread was to die for. Recipe,like Atlantis,and Amelia,lost but not forgotten..

  24. I am a huge opera buff, since my teenage years and seeing Bergman’s movie of “The Magic Flute.” Got to know other Mozart operas, then Puccini. Verdi took a bit longer but now may be my favorite. Finally Wagner, though still learning. But I always tell newbies that you can’t just go to an opera without prepping. If I am going to one for the first time, I first watch/listen to recordings or videos at least 3 or 4 times. It makes a huge difference.

    Recently saw live the Met’s new “Rigoletto,” and it was overwhelming (in the positive sense). Both the drama and music had me practically in tears. And I’ve seen it live at least four or five times before.

    My path to Wagner was “The Flying Dutchman” (relatively short and accessible) and Act I of Die Walkure.

  25. My parents and grandparents were opera lovers, so I’ve been hearing them all my life. It’s in the blood.

    Just my mother, who had the Met on every weekend, introduced by Milton Cross. She also had us sample what was available at the Eastman Theater. I think my sister could appreciate some of it.

    For many years, we lived within commuting distance of Glimmerglass. I’d act as chauffeur, drop the enthusiasts off at the opera house, and head into Cooperstown for an afternoon parked at a coffee shop with a book.

  26. Reinhardswald is known as the Grimm’s Fairy Tale forest and it is to be cut for a green wind farm. Isn’t progress wonderful.

  27. I haven’t seen the clip, but I can understand why somebody would disagree with Bernstein over tempo. I find a number of his recordings painfully slow at this point. Compare what Solti or Thielemann do with a Beethoven symphony to his renditions of the same.

  29. Leonard Bernstein will always be golden for his Young People’s Concerts.
    ____________________________

    Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic stand among his greatest achievements. These televised programs introduced an entire generation to the joys of classical music.

    Bernstein conducted his first Young People’s Concert on January 18, 1958, just two weeks after becoming Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. Such programs were already a Philharmonic tradition when Bernstein arrived, but he made them a centerpiece of his work, part of what he described as his “educational mission.” Looking back on the concerts years later, he referred to them as being “among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life.” When he took a sabbatical season from the orchestra in 1964-65, he still came back to lead the Young People’s Concerts. He continued to lead these programs until 1972, even though he had stepped down as director of the Philharmonic in 1969.

    Bernstein led a total of fifty-three Young People’s Concerts during those fourteen years, and covered a broad range of subjects.

    https://leonardbernstein.com/about/educator/young-peoples-concerts

  30. Mac:

    Are you familiar with these two analyses of Wagner’s Ring Cycle?

    01. M. Owen Lee, “Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round”

    02. Anna Russell’s (can be seen on YouTube).

    Perhaps I’ll see you sometime in 2025, 2026, or 2027 when the Met has a new production of the RIng Cycle scheduled.

  31. Mac; Les; Jimmy:

    On Humperdinck, Hansel and Gretel, and Wagner:

    Humperdinck was largely under the influence of the composer. In 1880, he met Wagner who invited him to Bayreuth to assist with the premiere of Parsifal. Eventually, Wagner impressed with Humperdinck’s talent, entrusted him with composing a bridge passage between the first two scenes of Parsifal, which was then performed during the premiere. The collaboration with Wagner influenced Humperdinck’s later style, which is also noticeable in Hansel and Gretel. “

    There is one episode in Hansel and Gretel in which Humperdinck’s orchestra seems to transcend Wagner: in the second act, as darkness falls and the children prepare to return home, Hansel tries to reassure Gretel that they will be safe, but she becomes hysterical. Humperdinck translates Gretel’s fear in orchestral terms: the theme associated with “fright” is first introduced in a slow tempo by the English horn, but then it is accelerated as it travels from one instrument to another. The theme is then combined with “barking” noises, the new theme of the Witch, and then with themes suggesting the blinking and flashing of the “fireflies”. In another “Wagnerian” example, the Waltz celebrating the demise of the Witch ultimately combines and interweaves three different themes.

    Also see this:

    In fact, it is a highly sophisticated and beautifully constructed late 19th-century “Fairy Tale Opera” (Märchenoper). The composer had worked closely with Richard Wagner, particularly during the period of Parsifal’s composition, and the Wagnerian influence can be felt throughout Hansel and Gretel.

    Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass has been called (in jest) the Italian master’s greatest opera. In a similar vein, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel could be said to be Wagner’s shortest opera. The entire opera, with just 100 minutes of music, could fit comfortably into the time frame of Die Meistersingers’ third act or Parsifal’s first act. Hansel and Gretel is unabashedly Wagnerian in its musical vocabulary, orchestration and harmonic language. While Wagner found his inspiration in the richesse of mythology and medieval lore, Humperdinck took his from the fairy tale tradition, an equally worthy and universal resource.

    Wagner’s influence at that time was omnipresent and his revolutionary influence on all things artistic led the way for others to follow…

    One attribute clearly differentiates Humperdinck from his mentor: he hitches his Wagnerian apparatus to a concise and fast-moving storyline. For those who like Wagner in smaller doses but find the great length of his music dramas an obstacle, Humperdinck is an ideal solution. Another of Humperdinck’s great accomplishments was to incorporate the elements and simplicity of folk music within an intricate and sophisticated Wagnerian model.

    He was, of course, not the only composer to do so. Smetana, Dvorák and Brahms did the same when it suited their purposes, as did Humperdinck’s contemporary Mahler, whose music was not yet known when Hansel and Gretel premiered. The father’s strophic description of the witch in the forest could come right out of a Mahler song cycle like Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which Mahler was working on when he conducted this new opera. (He was not yet as well-known as a composer. One could hypothesize that Mahler absorbed some lessons from Humperdinck.)…

    That they are children suggest that the Wagnerian model is overblown and out of proportion to their deeds. But, in my opinion, it is precisely the opposite that renders Humperdinck’s opera extraordinary. The rite of passage from childhood to an awakened consciousness is the core of the opera. The children must fend for themselves when in danger. The confidence that they have the resources to find solutions for serious challenges is their reward. The existential challenge experienced by Hansel and Gretel is no less powerful than that presented to Siegmund as he draws the sword from the tree, or to Siegfried when he slays the dragon, or to Brünnhilde when she sacrifices herself and restores the world order. It is entirely appropriate that this “children’s story” be wrapped in Wagnerian riches…

    The 1893 premiere in Weimar was conducted by Richard Strauss. Gustav Mahler conducted the Hamburg premiere in 1894. Arturo Toscanini conducted 13 performances during the 1901/02 season and Herbert von Karajan conducted a benchmark recording of the opera in 1953. I am sure that these great conductors did not perceive it as merely a children’s opera. There is no mystery as to why. As in Wagner, the orchestra plays the role of protagonist: creating the atmosphere of each scene, identifying the characters and their conflicts, providing a sound world revealing events and feelings, both manifest and unconscious.

  32. De gustibus non est disputandum, perhaps, but there is no disputing that Italian is the most beautiful sounding of all human languages. 😉
    … and, while I agree German is a harsh language, my German wife’s German sounds rather pleasant.

    https://youtu.be/NcxvQI88JRY

  34. I asked my father–who at the time was presumed to know all things and as I got older, it proved to be true–why so much opera was in Italian. It’s because of the vowels. Nobody goes to the opera to hear consonants.

    Struck me that some of the old African-American spirituals were heavy on vowels, possibly so they could worship with their voices, not being able to read complicated lyrics. Might be so.

    “Oh, Holy Night” needs somebody good on the vowels.

  35. Richard Aubrey,

    For that same reason I’ve been surprised at how much opera there actually is in German. Lots of guttural consonants. I don’t think it was preferential, it’s just that a lot of patrons and composers were in Germany and Austria.

  36. neo,

    If Porgy and Bess consisted solely of the song, “Summertime” it would be among the greatest of operas. “It Ain’t Necessarily So” is also an incredible song. Some of the Gerswhin brothers best work in those two numbers.

  37. Any of you opera buffs ever see a performance of Scott Joplin’s, “Treemonisha?” From what I’ve read, writing it and getting it made pretty much broke him.

  38. Rufus T. Firefly:

    Consonants and gutterals work really really well for the Witch in Hansel and Gretel.

    I may write a post on language sounds and aesthetics, and German vs other languages.

  39. Regarding Italian and opera, I read a bio of Verdi, and it seems that in the 18th and 19th century music was the life blood of Italy. Every small town had its musicians, local orchestra, patrons, music teachers, and of course the church choir. There was nothing elitist or rarefied about it. Maybe it was similar in Germany, but it didn’t strike me as quite so universal there as in Italy.

  40. @Rufus + Neo:

    “I may write a post on language sounds and aesthetics, and German vs other languages.”

    Should be interesting. While there’s no doubt that if you were going to invent a language to be sung, you might end up with something like Italian (*)… from Bach Cantatas to The Magic Flute / Abduction from the Seraglio, Through-composed Art Songs, Strauss (R)… German is arguably *the* Jack of All Sung Trades.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZZqZTKoFcM

    And there’s even something to be said for gnarliness:

    Der Panther (Rilke)

    Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

    Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
    so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
    Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
    und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.
    Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
    der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
    ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
    in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.
    Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
    sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
    geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille —
    und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

    tr. here http://www.paularcher.net/translations/rainer_maria_rilke/der_panther.html

    Biggest problem with both German *and* French is that both have ability to generate seeming profundity ex nihilo and hypnotise all concerned. Thanks to various Continental cross-pollinations English is increasingly headed down this gurgler, too.

    * I wonder what would happen if one gave a genetic algorithm or some other kind of learning AI a descriptive model of Proto Indo European and asked it to evolve an operatic language.

  41. The Met has a simulcast (?) opera program that goes out somehow to a movie theater on Vashon Island, WA (there must be other theaters)
    . My wife and her sister saw Porgy and Bess last summer and it got them hooked on opera. They had not shown any interest before (the sister is a bit adventurous, took up rock climbing at 50, although her husband is quite good at it, she thought it might be interesting). They have seen a few others since then. So even if the modern version is awful, there is still enough greatness in the work to overcome the curse of woke.

    Porgy and Bess is “problematic” for the woke IIRC. Imagine that.

  42. But on a more serious light, what could top the opera “Hamlet” from Gilligan’s Island. That’s high culture!

    Wife and SIL saw P and B at the Vashon Island, WA movie theater.

  43. Okay, Neo, you got me interested in Hansel & Gretel.

    Les, no, I haven’t read/heard either of those. Thanks for the tip. As for a new production…under present cultural conditions, that may well be a bad thing. The one I saw was the one with The Machine (I think it was called?)–this one huge device that was involved in a lot of stage effects. I liked it a lot. It was not my first attempt–I had previously gotten about halfway through a Ring production on video which I did not like. I can’t remember which one.

    om: the Ring I saw was part of the Met theater showings you’re referring to. They’ve been going on for quite a while. Problem for me is they’re only shown on Saturdays, noonish, and it’s not usually convenient. If they’re even showing them around here anymore.

  44. Rufus, that was a rather funny video, but I was hoping to hear a recording of your wife speaking Bavarian or something.

    Neo, I look forward to any post on German that eventuates.

  45. @ Mac > “Several (?) years ago I heard the whole Ring at the pace of one a week or so via one of the Met’s films in a local theater.”

    I had almost forgotten this incident – back when the youngest AesopSon was still in early grade school.
    Some TV channel was broadcasting a series of filmed stage productions of various operas, including the Ring cycle and “Aida” and others I no longer recall.
    I stayed up late to watch them (sadly, the videotape machine had quit working), and for some reason he stayed up with me, even through the 3 nights of the Wagnerian saga – it was a very good production!
    On another night, at the end of “Aida,” he nodded his head and lisped in his babyish critic’s voice, “That was a pretty good show.”

  47. Mark Twain “The Awful German Language”
    https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html

    I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a “unique”; and wanted to add it to his museum.

    If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
    …
    There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech–not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary–six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam–that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it–AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb–merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out–the writer shovels in “HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN,” or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man’s signature–not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head–so as to reverse the construction–but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
    …
    The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the OTHER HALF at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called “separable verbs.” The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is REISTE AB–which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

    “The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED.”

    However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six–and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

    Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could.
    …
    In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day, which said that “the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest” (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man’s name.

    Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print–I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

    “Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

    “Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.

    “Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

    Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera.”

    Und so weiter.

  48. @ Rufus > “If Porgy and Bess consisted solely of the song, “Summertime” it would be among the greatest of operas. “It Ain’t Necessarily So” is also an incredible song.”

    Indeed.
    I sang both of those from early in my musical adventures, without knowing a thing about the opera, just because they were so good. We finally got to see a Met-to-local-theater showing in early 2020, just before everything shut down.
    Totally captivated by the production and the story, and the other great songs in the show.

  49. }}} It turns out that YouTube knows me better than I know myself, because – even though I know very little about opera – I was surprised and pleased to see that the “vocalist” arguing with Bernstein was a singer of whom I’m aware and who is a great favorite of mine, Christa Ludwig.

    Neo: You were talking earlier about how the internet collects vast amounts of data about us all…?

    😛

    The Transparent Society
    – David Brin
    https://www.wired.com/1996/12/fftransparent/
    THE CAMERAS ARE coming. They’re getting smaller and nothing will stop them. The only question is: who watches whom?

    25+ years old, and still topical.

  51. Some of us are sharpening our knives in anticipation of the big German-thread brawl, I see. 🙂 I hope Twain never tried his hand at Greek!

  52. om @ 11:25pm,

    “Neither a borrow’r, nor a lender be.
    And don’t forget,
    Stay out of debt!”

  53. AesopFan @ 4:47am,

    Check out “Struwwelpeter.” Ghastly images to go along with the ghastly poetry. And, keep in mind, this was the German equivalent of “The Cat in the Hat,” intended for children.

    I read it to my children, in the original German, many times. 😉

  55. John; OBloody:

    Actually, I know why YouTube sent it to me. It wasn’t Christa Ludwig, whom I’d never searched for. That was a coincidence. It was because I had a watched a few in a series about Bernstein rehearsals and people disagreeing with him. This was another in the series.

  56. neo:

    Thanks for the information on Humperdinck. I’ve seen Hansel and Gretel only once and I felt it was ok. Now I’m eager to listen to again, this time with a little more knowledge.

    om; Mac:

    Those Met HD broadcasts are fantastic.There used to be between 10 – 12 a season, but it seems they’ve settled on 10 as being an optimal number. I’m not sure if you knew this, but most theaters have an Encore showing the Wednesday after the live broadcast. The theater I go to usually has a matinee and an evening showing of the Encore presentation.

    As for the Machine, my grievance against it was the cost (though I do like it otherwise). What irks especially is that after it was built someone realized it was too heavy for the stage so there was a scramble to find 6 million dollars to add steel support beams to the stage.

    Also, let me push again Anna Russell’s take on the Ring Cycle (on YouTube) even to those who hate opera or Wagner. You may find it very insightful.

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