The Last Week of May 2009

Apologies for being sporadic of late. I'm a bug magnet and was visited by another flu virus last week. We had such a good time fraternizing that I wonder if I'll ever catch up with all the emails and comments (and the unfinished articles I need to submit at AssociatedContent and other sites). Time flies when you're having flu!

Tip of Harbor Island from Harbor Dr bridge

Anyhow, I did manage to go out and walk around the last few days... enjoying the best of what the locals here call 'May gray' (morning fog that doesn't get burned off until late in the day). It's great weather to be outside if you aren't so fond of the sun. Above is a view of the manmade Harbor Island and the San Diego Bay from the Harbor Drive bridge just north of Spanish Landing (where Cabrillo came ashore and claimed the area for Spain in 1542). The park there, with the narrow waterfront pedestrian path lined with benches and coral trees, is one of my favorite quiet haunts.

Of course, this sort of weather also means a lot of homeless migrants on the downtown streets. You can pass 5 or more in a short city block! I get on well with most of them, but it is still pretty uncomfortable not having any change to give... And perhaps you shouldn't give them coins anyhow. Most of these guys have been panhandling on these streets for many years now. This year their rank has really enjoyed a growth spurt (the economic collapse of late last year and earlier this year really put a lot of people on the streets... young and old!).

Most of them are good about not being 'in your face' about their panhandling. And there are a few that even seem apologetic about it. I ran into one when I ventured up to Balboa Park who actually told me that he'd rather be given a job than small changes. I wish that's true to most of the others, too....


Balboa Park is surely the favorite place of many local San Diegans. All the gardens, museums, hiking trails, the zoo, theaters, and other public spaces. The Spanish colonial revival structures of various degrees of authenticity (only a few original structures from the 1915 California-Panama Exposition are still standing... and many of those are just facade (with much newer building annexed onto them)) are easy on the eye and provide many serenely secluded spots to hide and people-watch from.

 

And here is a video/slide-show clip of my favorite views there and in Banker's Hill, the uptown community just east of the park. I guess I owe a lot of appreciation to Kate Sessions, the horticulturist who planted most of the trees and flowering plants you see around San Diego today (the local flora consisted of coastal sage shrubs and chaparrals and some smallish fire-resistant trees... and, of course, the Torrey pines).

Memorial Day 2009

A few shots from Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma, the southward jutting peninsula that separates the San Diego Bay from the Pacific Ocean.



The news at the end of last week, of course, was full of the competing speeches of President Obama and Dick Cheney, who still insists on advocating waterboarding terrorism suspects (not convicts, mind you, suspects!) and that that is not torture. That egoistical sadist ought to put his money where his mouth is and have himself waterboarded to get the taste of what he is wishing on others (who have not been proven guilty of anything). Especially, seeing how a bit of real experience can really make some talkative naysayers do a 180 turn in a flash when it comes to whether waterboarding is torture or not (the libertarian Christopher Hitchen had done it, the conservative radio head Erich Mancow Muller had done it, isn't it about time Cheney does it?).


How many of the vets entombed at cemeteries like Ft. Rosecrans had had to endure torture in the line of duty because the people they were fighting against can hide behind the excuse of retaliation against our own use of it? How many of them died in combat believing that the US has the moral high ground when it comes to torture? And that we do know the difference between justice and vengeance (and care more about getting the right perpetrators of crime rather than just getting a neck to hang the charge on regardless of whether it is the right neck or not)?

And for Cheney, who has never served a day in the military, to go around doubting the honor and loyalty of someone like General Colin Powell, the non-diva-like guy who served 3 distinguished tours in Vietnam and, with one big spot when he worked for Bush 43 and Cheney, has always done his best for the men and women in uniform, is a travesty. And that there are people who would take Cheney's utterly unreliable words (how many lies has he told while looking straight into the camera already?) over Powell's is sheer madness. Beware of people who loudly demand loyalty at street corners like a bunch of scribes and pharisees... They are the ones who don't get it that it isn't enough to ask someone 'are you loyal?' without clarifying 'loyal to WHAT? Country or You? I have no doubt about where General Powell's loyalty lies. I have plenty about Dick Cheney's... Too often have he and his stooges prioritized their own political agendas over the best interest of the country and the troops!

Stylistic Samplers for Opera Newbies

For those who are new to opera and are curious about how differently the operas from different periods and countries sound, here are links to a few sample clips from the different sub-genres of opera. As you'll see, this is such a huge musical-theater genre that it really has something for everyone.
Renaissance Opera: (1400-1600) The earliest operas are from the late Renaissance period... with minimal instrumentation accompanying the voice. It is as much 'singing' as it is 'sung declamation': speech lifted to a higher emotional content in melody. Until Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) came along, operas from this period usually dealt with mythical figures and stories (Poppea in the opera is, of course, based on the 2nd wife of Nero, Rome's favorite bad boy emperor).
- Di misera regina from Monteverdi's il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ullyses to His Homeland)
- Pur ti miro from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea

Baroque Opera: The Baroque period (1600-1760) saw the transformation of singing-theater into theater of singing extravaganza and spectacular stage spectacles. On the musical front, this was the age of the castrati, virtuoso vocal acrobats who, willingly or not, had traded their virility for the preservation of their boy soprano vocal range. The story of the operas from this period reverted back to the fantastic rather than the realistic, with magical fireworks, dragons, and griffins, and enchantress and exceedingly amorous leading ladies facing off prodigious knights. Baroque operas tend to be really long and overfilled with spectacular arias that show off the star singers' assets (opera was a socializing event back then and the audience were up and about eating and catching up with friends in the open amphitheater rather than condemned to silence and confined to fixed seat like we are nowadays). 

The Baroque singers really could sing anything from the most heart-breaking of melancholic ballads to feverishly furious rage arias that would rival any of today's heavy metal rock idols. The practice of castrating young men to preserve their singing voice is now (thankfully) illegal, so nowadays opera from this period feature either female mezzo-sopranos or male counter-tenors in the main male roles that the castrati used to sing (their voice range was too high for the tenor. Mezzo-soprani are preferred in heroic ex-castrato male roles because they have a more imposing lower range than most counter-tenors do).
- When I am Laid in Earth from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
- Lascia ch'io pianga from Händel's Rinaldo
- Qual guerriero in campo amato from Broschi's Idaspe

And here is 'Con ali di constanza' from Händel's Ariodante

Classical Opera (1760-1820): Even spectacular music gets old on you after a while if the collection of it doesn't keep you involved in the main story, so Christoph Willibald Gluck came along to reform opera - turning away from showy music to one that is there to serve the function of telling a compelling story instead. The music of operas from the Classical period is more restraint and less tolerant of the showy improvisation (ornamentation) that was the bloom of the previous period. With Mozart, this period also sees the proliferation of beautiful and drama-oriented ensemble numbers (duets, trios, etc) and orchestration, as the opera story became more relatable to real life (at least the comic operas were, if not the seria ones).

Also in this period the tenor and baritone emerged as the male leads in the opera (castration was beginning to be discouraged then), though many leading male roles were still sung by castrati.
 - Orphée - Eurydice duet from Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice
- Ach, ich fühl from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
- Der Hölle Rache from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
- Soave sia il vento from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte
- Se al volto mai ti senti from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
- Act IV finale from Mozart's Le nozze di FigaroBel Canto opera: (Italian opera from 1810-1835) What Mozart left off, the bel canto composers (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti) developed into a brief period of vocal wonder at the opera. Bel canto operas were composed by voice-loving composers to the voice-worshiping audience... it pushed to the limit what singers could do with their vocal cords and lung capacity. Long and spun out melodic line both subtly and supply navigated, with fiery virtuoso ending cadenza that reminds of the glory of the Baroque period (but it has to also fit with the story now, and not just done for show).

Castration of singers was banned in the early 1800's, but the audience of those days were still very used to hearing the male soprano voice from the heroic male lead role, so the composers assigned some prominent male roles to the coloratura contraltos/soprano sfogatos instead (these were the equivalent of today's coloratura mezzo-sopranos). Male roles composed for the female voice are what we call 'trouser roles'. Toward the end of the bel canto period, the focus shifted toward making high tenors the romantic lead in the opera.
- Una voce poco fa from Rossini's il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)
- Oh patria/ di tanti palpiti from Rossini's Tancredi
- Spargi d'amaro pianto from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
- Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues)
 
French Grand Opera (1820's - 1880's): The 1800's was also known as the Romantic period in classical music for good reasons. Gone is the formal restraint of the Baroque and the Classical eras. We are now in for a colorful exploration of emotion and melodrama. Add to that a French flair for the exaggerated (and the fetish for the ballet), and you end up with a really long evening at the opera house (at least 3 hrs a piece... sometimes closer to 5 hrs). So, the music has got to be good enough to keep you in your seat. Also, the orchestra has emerged as a singing force all its own and not just background music accompanying the voice.
- Ah, leve toi soleil from Gounod's Romeo et Juliet
- D'amour, l'ardente flamme from Berlioz's la damnation de Faust
- O ma lyre immortelle from Gounod's Sapho
- Seguedilla from Bizet's Carmen
And here is the Bell Song from Delibes' Lakmé

German Opera (1800's-1920): French grand opera without the ballets (well, mostly without the ballets) and with the Teutonic sense of forboding rather than the French flamboyance... German opera, starting with Richard Wagner, uses the orchestra a lot in their story telling. Listen for 'Leitmotiv', or recurring themes when you listen. These theme represent certain characters or certain motivations or ideas, and the composer liked to wove them in specific sequences to get specific points across, sometimes developing them as the story moves along. Also, there no longer is any 'recitative' or clear cut 'songs'. The music is through-composed, flowing from start to finish to focus on maintaining the drama of the story rather than to allow soloists to show off.
- Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
- Hab'mir's gelobt from Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier
- Gluck, das mir verblieb from Korngold's die tote Stadt 
Verismo Italian opera (1875-1920): This was a really brief musical period where people flocked to the theater not to escape from everyday life but to get an overdose of it in an ultra condensed hour and a bit of musical blood and gore.
- Voi lo sapete from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana
- Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo's il pagliacci

Italian opera (1860-): This is something of a bridge from the death of bel canto opera to the searing theatrical operas of Puccini. It's love, lust, and death... in music so beautifully emotive that you keep coming back just to see the soprano dies over and over again...
- Va, pensiero sulli dorate from Verdi's Nabucco
- Celeste Aida from Verdi's Aida
- Brindisi from Verdi's La traviata
- O soave fanciulla from Puccini's La boheme
- Quando m'en vo (Musetta's waltz) from Puccini's La boheme

Slavic Opera: This.. is romantic musical theater for the melancholic among us...
- Moon song from Dvorak's Rusalka
- Excerpt from Janacek's Jenufa
- Yeletsky's aria from Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spade
- Letter scene from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

Operetta: The lighter side of musical theater. Finally! This sub-genre of comic satire with sublimely spunky music is for those who would like to be able to walk out of the auditorium at the end of an opera performance without blood spatters on their coat.
- Olympia's doll song from Offenbach's les contes d'Hoffmann
- Barcarolle from Offenbach's les contes d'Hoffmann
- Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol from Zeller's Der Vogelhändler



And this is from Offenbach's La belle Helene.

Modern opera: (1920 - ) Ever since Richard Strauss showed the world how effectively an opera story can be conveyed with minimal tonality, many of the modern composers have been afflicted with the distaste for melody. Granted, there are some who still allow songs into their work, but most have opted for atonality and abstract sounds and patterns. It's interesting stuff if you can understand it. If not... ughhh.
- Excerpt from Berg's Lulu
- Excerpt from Fortner's Bluthochzeit (Blood Wedding)
- Excerpt from Britten's Billy Budd
- Excerpt from Glass' Satyagraha
- Excerpt from Picker's Emmeline


Though, there are always exceptions like this melodic tune, Surabaja, Johnny, from Weill's Happy Ends.

So, hopefully after having sampled a few clips from these different sub-genres of opera you would now have a better idea of the sort of opera you would or would not enjoy. I should caution against having too fixed an opinion on what opera to avoid, though. Our musical taste can change over time. Some works do grow on you after a while... so, keep trying the operas you don't now like. You never know, maybe some will become one of your favorites many years from now.

Other opera-related essays you might find of interest: A Few Words To Opera Newbies, Commandments for the Operafans, 10 Beginners-Friendly Opera, Bel Canto Is NOT About Sounding Beautiful!, Do Today's Opera Singers Measure Up to Past Legends? -

Interviews: Juliette Galstian (mezzo-soprano), Christiane Karg (soprano), Elizabeth Tryon (soprano),

The first full week of May 2009

I spent a lot of time on various buses last week riding around town collecting photos and info on various tourist attractions. We San Diegans really have the best MTS bus drivers around! They all know the area and the various bus routes so well that they can unfailingly point me to the right connections to get to where I want to go the fastest. And no matter how bad the traffic gets or how crowded the bus is, they are exceedingly courteous and patient... even when a few riders aren't returning the favor.

One bus driver who was running route 30 from University Town Centre to Downtown via La Jolla and Mission Bay last week not only told me what the nearest stop to Children's Pool (I wanted to see the seals) would be, but also took the time to tell me exactly how to get there after I stepped off his bus. Another lovely lady driver leaned out of her bus one morning to ask me where I was trying to get to when she spotted me looking perplexedly at the routes map posted at a bus stop in downtown. It is really cool to see folks who take pride in what they do and do their job really well!


Aside from hanging around the famous Children's Pool (where the seals are), I also got to see a lot of the gorgeously eroded La Jolla Cove, walked along much of the San Diego - La Jolla Underwater Park and even found the famous Sunny Jim cave (albeit from the sea... I hitched a ride with a local boat, thanks very much. Those 144 steps don't look all that friendly to three-legged me). There are 7 sea caves in the area and this is the only one that is accessible from land (though, apparently there is a $4 fee for using the steps from the Cave Store). If you want to see more photos from these trips, I put them together into 3 slide show clips at Youtube:
- Torrey Pines State Reserve
- San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park walk
- Torrey Pines Gliderport



Saturday night saw a different sort of adventure, though. My old golfing buddy, Clark Renner (who now teaches at Rancho Carlsbad Country Club), agreed to go with me to the opening night of Puccini's Madama Butterfly at the San Diego Civic Theater in downtown. A spectacular performance featuring perhaps the first pick for the title role on anyone's wish list, Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio-San (Mme Butterfly).

She didn't look much like a 15 yrs old Japanese ingenue, but the way she inhabited the role had us all sold on the concept from start to finish. And, man, it is so good to get to hear such a powerful and dramatically adept voice still in such a good shape after so many years in this demanding repertoire. None of that overly wide or prominent vibrato that is a given in a Verdi or Puccini (or Wagner) soprano nowadays. When the curtain came down the audience erupted into a roaring cheer that was loud enough to wake the dead.

On another note, I thought it was pretty darn obnoxious how loudly the audience booed Carlo Ventris' Pinkerton when he came out for his bow. I think it was in jest (as in 'booing the cad Pinkerton' rather than booing the performance of him), but still... That isn't how it is done at opera houses. I hope someone at the SDO explained to Ventris that the boo was to be taken as a cheer and not as a disapproval (as it would be interpreted elsewhere in the sane world). :oP Honestly... San Diego opera audience is really a certifiably strange crowd!

Anyhow... I'm willing to bet that most are scrambling to try to get a ticket to see another performance now. This show really deserve to sell out its remaining performances of the run (May 12, 15, 17, 20). Ya' gotta give it to the San Diego Opera for continuing to put on high quality performances even in this tough an economy!

Why I repented from Christianity and other religions

Apparently the only thing worse than being a non-Christian is being an ex-Christian... at least in the eye of many fundamentalist Christians. So... being an easily irritated bum (especially with the approach of the summer heat and sun), I'll just explain myself in this posting so that I won't have to keep repeating myself the next time the same old set of questions pop up about my lack of religion. Here goes:

I'm actually either an atheist or an agnostic... depending entirely on how 'god' is defined. I can perhaps believe in god if it is defined as nature itself or the most basic fundamental laws of physics that make nature works the way it does. With that sort of definition, I can perhaps be called a theist, but I wouldn't be worshiping nature since I don't see the point to it. I and everything around me are parts of nature. I find myself in awe of the wonders of it all the time, but I'd rather admire it for what it demonstrably is rather than for what I'd like to ideologically project it to be.

As for 'god' as described in the religious texts, I don't believe in such a figure. In fact, to me, if a person god does exist, I'm more inclined to believe that it would be more appreciative of people who seek to understand it on its own terms rather than ones who would willingly accept other humans' version of the story that can't be verified with anything more than 'I said it, my church said it, the book that my church believes in said it, therefore it is the only truth there is and if you question it then you are insulting god' sort of rationale. Frankly, I don't find it very intellectually stimulating to try to have a conversation with people who can't differentiate their own ideas from that of a god.

I repented from the Christian faith back in 1999 when I was studying pre-medicine/chemistry in college and had a great professor who didn't mind admitting to not knowing everything. His very scientific mindset that uncertainty and doubt are nothing to be ashamed of and that they are qualities that enable even an already fantastically learned scientist to have the humility to strive to keep learning more was eye-opening for me.

After a while, I got around to re-examining my then belief in the Christian dogma and came to the conclusion that the only 'evidence' I had of what I believed about Christianity was the bible itself - since the bible was supposed to be directly dictated and/or inspired by an infallible god. Everything I knew of Christianity had its origin in the Bible. So I thought to myself that in the man-made field of science, it only takes 1 inconsistency or factual contradiction with experimental result/observation to derail even the most established of scientific theories. One inaccurate prediction and even the most established of scientific theories must be either discarded or modified to once again match up with reality. So it follows that the standard of a god who created everything in nature would surely not be any less than that of mere humans (to expect anything less would be rather insulting to such a deity, would it not? And should a deity exist who can't even live up to man's lowly standard, why should anyone bother to worship such a thing?). With that frame of mind, I opened the first page of the Bible and started reading the book of Genesis without the 'I believe it must be true regardless' lens to filter its contents.... and lost all faith before I got to the second page.


It was (irrationally, I'm sure) a wrench... but after some mourning (I'm really not sure what I was mourning for, really... the loss of innocence or the realization of my patent stupidity are the leading contenders) I decided that to attribute such a shoddy holey thing as the bible to be the inspiration of god is really a blasphemy I could do without. And if I discounted the bible, then I had to basically discount Christianity as a whole since it is based entirely on the bible and this notion that the bible is the infallible word of god. Anyhow... that kicked started a spree of religious and philosophical reading in the library (I've read the Torah and the Koran.... but couldn't quite finish the whole of the Bhagavad Gita). It was Thomas Paine's 'The Age of Reason' that resonated the most with me, though unlike him and other Deists I don't feel attached enough to the 'god' concept, no matter how hands-off it is, to join that sect.

Since then, I've occasionally looked back on my religious fanatic years with both shame and gratitude. It was one of those life lessons that just had to be learned first hand.... and it was a very educational lesson that makes me a lot less prone to arrogance now than before. All the same, I wish it hadn't taken that many years for me to realize just how ludicrously improbable the religious premise I was so invested in was and how dehumanizing the devotion to the very flawed idea can be. As a wise man once said, it really takes a religion to make good and sane people do really twistedly evil stuff (not that I ever did anything 'evil', but had I felt 'called on' to do something really bad in the name of religion, it was likely that I might comply. And just the thought that I was capable of having that mind set then chills my bones today).

There are many things about the monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, that bother me, some more than the others:

1. The inability to make the distinction between believing in a god as one understands it and believing in what another man (or man-made book and church) says god said. As I had previously wrote, a god capable of creating the universe and everything in it does not need a middle man to communicate with you. Especially when the middle man is just another human being (or books written by one).

2. The requirement for blind/un-questioning faith and the celebration of unearned slice of paradise just for believing. Salvation by grace? What is so graceful about removing accountability from the conscience of man? Haven't we outgrown the free love 60's and graduated to the responsible world of the grown ups who know that the worthy things in life are worth working for yet? If there is a god, it gave us a brain capable of critical reasoning for a reason and the best way of honoring such a gift is to use it to guard against being suckered by another man's tales when they don't jive with evidence and/or reason.

3. The notion that only non-believers cherry pick which verses to quote from the scripture.... and believers don't. That is patently false no matter how you look at it. The people who would quote from Leviticus to condemn homosexuals should also check to see if they are wearing clothings that are made of more than one type of fabric... And then immediately stone themselves. Just to be consistent.

4. The concept of 'original sin' and guilt by association perpetuated regardless of action for all eternity. One just has to be born to be guilty of the sin of Adam and Eve? And just how onerous is this 'original sin' anyhow? If you are to take Genesis seriously, then Adam and Eve did not gain the ability to distinguish right from wrong until they had eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge. That means that they couldn't have known that disobeying god's order was 'bad' or a 'sin'. A god would surely be well aware of all the pertinent conditions, of course. That makes the whole thing a malicious set-up by an all-knowing god to entrap not only Adam and Eve, who lacked the ability to reason, but also their unborn (and utterly innocent) offspring for all generations. Preposterous! If anyone actually has any respect for even a possibility of a deity, then he wouldn't even dream of ascribing such heinous a conduct to that god at all.

5. The concept of 'eternal damnation/punishment' for those who don't share one's faith. It isn't a merciful or a just god who would sanction such a thing but a childishly vengeful one. There is no prospect for rehabilitation when the punishment is to last forever.

6. The thought that god can pardon all sins even when they weren't committed against god. If Jack shot Joe, then only Joe can grant Jack's forgiveness for that sin and not some bystander god who let Jack shoot Joe in the first place. When you sin against someone, you don't get to absolve yourself by conveniently praying to your god. You've got to face the person you sinned against and try to earn his forgiveness. That is a lot more decent than trying to duck your responsibility and use your religion as an excuse for a blank slate.

7. The unearned confidence of one's possession of the only true religion/concept-of-god/faith in spite of own ignorance of many if not majority of other religious dogma/god-concepts/faiths out there. How can you know you have 'the truth' if you don't even know what other competing 'truths' say? Simple. You don't, and are just mistaking the 'first' for the best.' And you really care more about being 'right' than about knowing the truth to begin with, else you would seek out what the other religions/philosophies say.

On another note, I don't regard having eternal life as a desirable. It seems to me that the perfect way of devaluing something is to have too much of it. Life is precious to me because I know that one day I will lose it. And the concept of having to live eternally in bliss really strikes me more as a punishment rather than a reward. Not only does one have to take life for granted for all eternity now, one must also take good and blissful things for granted, too. Think about it a bit, when all you get are good things, they are no longer good and blissful to you. They simply become 'normal' things.... You wouldn't appreciate the little good things others do for you because that would be just what you'd expect from them.

"What would you do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?"
- Mikhail A Bulgakov, Master and Margarita (as translated by Burgin & O'Connor)

And so... I am done with religions. Don't get me wrong, I don't care if you are religious... unless you are trying to use it to pooh-pooh or to bully others who don't share your faith. To me, religion and science are really two different approaches man devised to solve the same problem; what is this wonderful universe we live in and how we fit into it. The religious approach seeks more to alleviate the insecurity we all get when we realize just how vulnerable and inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things. The scientific approach has accepted this vulnerability as fact and seeks instead to learn as much as possible about what the universe really is and how it works.

There need not be conflict between the two... but certain monotheistic religions seem keen on precipitating one. I note that no scientist has ever pushed for any science to be taught during the Sunday bible class or at the Mosque, but certain groups of Christians and Muslims are very keen on trying to make school teachers teach their religion's creation myth in science class. Religious people should keep that in mind before claiming that their religion is under attack from science. You can't claim self-defense when you are the ones playing offense!


More thoughts on religions, Late Night Rant, Critical Thinking, Mormon Encounters,