Falstaff Fantastic

I’ve always been ambivalent towards opera. On one hand, I love the voices-those powerful theater-filling instruments that make one ashamed to even try singing in the shower. Their power and majesty are thrilling, inspiring, and humbling—all at the same time.

On the other hand, they tell stories-with characters, and with dialogue. That dialogue–and the accompanying events–often do not achieve the same level of awe-inspiring performance as the singing. A singer might swell his voice to reach the stars–while asking for a sandwich.

I thought of this recently as I sat in San Jose’s beautiful California Theater and watched the opening night performance of Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff. Readers who know Shakespeare at all, know Falstaff as an overweight, loud-mouthed drunkard in Henry IV, a would-be seducer of women, and a bad influence on young Prince Hal, trying to keep him drinking and partying until Hal rises above, rejecting Falstaff to become the heroic Henry V.

The prince does not appear in Verdi’s version—which is based more on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor— but Falstaff is there, with all of his bad habits intact—as befitting a comedy. He drinks, he brags, he welshes on his bar tab, he plots to seduce women, he berates his workers, but most of all—as played by Scott Bearden—he sings, with a thundering, powerful voice, the equal of anyone else on stage. Would that his comedic acting equaled his voice.

The true comediennes in this performance were the ladies. More capable of injecting feeling into their wonderful voices, and supporting it with animated faces, Jennifer Forni as Alice Ford, Lisa Chavez as Meg Page, and Nicole Birkland as Dame Quickly establish immediately that Falstaff is no match for them. Their indignation at Falstaff’s plan to seduce them, their glee as they plot their revenge, and their total joy as the revenge comes to pass, are all portrayed with liveliness of voice and face and gesture that keeps the audience in rapt attention. Of course their words and actions do not measure up to their awe-inspiring voices—but that’s opera.

The symbiotic relationship between voice and action and meaning, however, does shine through with the young lovers in the play. Nannetta Ford, played by Cecilia Violetta Lopez, and Fenton, played by James Callon, have the passionate language of romance to match their euphoric, elegant voices, and the results are amazing. Love sizzles in the beauty of their singing, the animation of their faces. And in Ms. Lopez’s larger role, as the Fairy Witch who dominates the final torture of Falstaff, she is the epitome of lively charm.

All in all, attending opening night of Falstaff at the San Jose Opera was a wonderful experience. Tuxedos and elegant gowns everywhere, a glamorous 1927 old-style theater—glittering from a recent 80 million dollar restoration, and a cast with voices magnificent made for an unforgettable evening.

Bruce Roberts is a writer and retired junior high teacher from Hayward, California. He may be reached at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net

ON HEARING A MAURICE RAVEL QUARTET

by Irving A Greenfield

From Stresatravel.blogspot.com

The music touched me,

and I touched the music.

A theme, played by the violist,

dug out of the notes with strings and a bow,

thrown to the moment and caught something

something I did not want to remember.

The cantorial chant of the High Holy Days,

now a memory realized;

A plea for mercy, even to me, an unbeliever.

LIBERSTOAD

The mood hurls him into the past;

he’s a small boy curled up on thread-bare couch,

maybe it was green?

Half awake, half asleep,

Listening to the Saturday afternoon performance of Tristan and Isolde.

As he listens now,

seated on high-back chair next to the window with a harbor view.

He listens and reaches back into the past; the music his arms and hands.

Something magical, beyond his ability to understand how that memory,

that image so long gone came back to occupy a place in his brain,

A place he never knew he had,

especially for that insignificant moment when he was a boy

listening as he listens now to Tristan and Isolde

as eternal sleep claims him.

THE MEMORY AND THE MUSIC

The reality and the memory

bridged by the music

an outdoor concert on a sweltering summer’s night

with the salt scent of the ocean heavy in the air

a burst of music

“The William Tell Overture”

“the pounding hoof beats and a ‘high-oh Silver!’”

And a small boy is sprawled out on the floor

in front of the Majestic Radio

his gray-haired father sits close by

pretending not to listen to the daring-do

of the Masked-man and his Indian friend, Tonto

but listening all the same

The memory of it made sweeter by the music,

by the gallop of so many years

WATCHING MY FATHER SHAVE

Though I’m a willing audience, he doesn’t give a blow by blow.

His mouth is clenched. The lesson is up to my eyes.

Never seen such hairy hands, such huge knuckles.

The razor shrinks inside his fist, its blade peeking out

like a captured sparrow.

What hope has it against the whiskers on that jutting jaw,

the cheeks that fill the bathroom mirror.

He lathers his face with gobs of bright white foam.

Then, with blade close as a kiss, he scrapes along

that relief map of a face,

his fingers like trackers guiding the razor

over bone, under lip, across the red leather of his cheeks.

Miraculously, he doesn’t cut himself.

I swear that razor wouldn’t dare.

Next step, he slaps his skin into submission

with a hot wet hand towel, braces each subdued pore

with smelly stuff from a tube.

He then takes a step back, admires his morning masterwork.

He pats me on the head and leaves the room without a word.

Shaving begins with fascination and ends with an unerring lesson.

And, in between, years I have to grow, and no one saying much.

WHO AM I EXACTLY

Mistakes are made –

I can easily be taken

for my younger brother

but I am not him.

Don’t listen to faint voices

bouncing off the walls

of your conclusions.

First remove the skin.

have me flattened, lifeless,

flesh to flesh, sweat to sweat.

Sometimes identity is exactly that.

But soon it won’t matter.

Other people will have moved into this space.

Misidentification will be replaced

by people who know each other.

Or even emptiness – although

nothing is truly empty- molecules of air

will bump against each other –

bounce this way and that.

Human shape gets some people every time.

Coming together

flutters its visions nonsensically.

What flows sweetly through the head

sounds dumb in the mouth.

Some of my

“No I’m not him” may even remain.

I’m in a new place by then,

not diffidence or solipsism

but because where I’m going

has a future, beyond where my latest step

has taken me.

And there’s my thoughts,

playing to a gallery of one.

Yes, it’s me and not my brother.

Footsteps crackle on all the leafy evidence.

MOON BOY

Art class was a failure.

My moon was half the page

and sat on the roof of the house.

The people outside

were small and fleshless.

The moon’s heft almost drove them

off the edge of the page.

I couldn’t draw what the teacher asked.

There was no separation between my head

and what my hand could do.

I knew the moon was a midget in the sky

and people and buildings towered over me.

But facts never did sit well

with my imagination.

The teacher leaned over my shoulder

but made no remark.

But the girl behind me was rated aloud.

“Very good work, Sandra.”

The teacher had never been where I live.

She hadn’t seen it at night

when I was in bed,

eyes wide and staring out the window,

and the moon was crushing me.

Sandra’s old man beat her mother

and she hadn’t witnessed that either.

Teacher was just pleased that Sandra

had everything in proportion.

MOTHER TREE

When pregnant,

she felt heavy,

like a tree trunk

and its spreading roots.

Her upper branches

bore the baby.

It fluttered out there

with the leaves and the lightning

but she couldn’t budge

from her own hard grounding.

Baby blossomed so far away

she could barely see.

It grew into fruit, ripened,

maybe fell,

but more likely was picked.

But what did scarred bark

know of that?

Or thick strands

of tired wood

nuzzling the dirt?

When pregnant,

she joined a forest

of like trees.

Life after that

was either songbirds

or woodpeckers,

seasons or axmen.

And, of course,

the wind,

the redundant shaking.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Sanskrit and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze” with work upcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, New Orphic Review and Nerve Cowboy.

Running in Place

Running in place on the treadmill

in my basement I note a mouse

creeping up the concrete wall.

Black, short-tailed, thick as my fist,

it clings to the vertical

like a gravestone lichen. I stare

at this mobile punctuation

until I’m running the bases

in a sandlot game. I run so hard

I knock down the first baseman,

second baseman, shortstop, third

baseman and catcher, yet scoop up

the bases themselves and tuck them

in a muscular compact bundle

like a football under my arm.

The mouse applauds with tiny paws

without losing its grip on the wall.

The basement groans and splits open

to admit the sunlight and bathe me

in post-Easter glory. The ballpark

crowd roars and wriggles in its seats.

The treadmill whines as I reach

unnatural speed. Belt and pulleys

strain to accommodate such force.

Metal snaps and I tumble

into the dust between home plate

and first base, and the catcher

tags me out, out, out. Yet still

I’m clutching the bases, including

home plate, so I’ve won anyway,

won without a team to back me.

The mouse has reached the top of the wall.

It disappears into a crevice.

The ballpark crowd has departed

in disappointment, the home team

defeated and the April light

bruised deep blue. I run awhile

longer, but tire so easily

I know all this effort’s in vain.

Drugstore Logic Applied

As I drive in the rainy dark

to the drugstore, the houses

of my neighbors flash as TV

charms them in shifting colors.

Impoverished by fading eyesight,

cooped behind troubled glasses,

I feel rather than see the road

tuck under itself in the thaw.

Snowbanks tall as defensive guards

still flaunt. But they’re knuckling slowly,

crystal by crystal, failing to hold

their form against the keening of rain

and the flop of calendar pages.

I arrive in a huff. The lights

of the chain store fortify products

in which I otherwise have no faith.

As I purchase overpriced drugs

a crowd of pubescents buying

candy and chips hogs the checkout.

Back on the road, lurching through rain,

I wonder if the hidden landforms

survive the torpor of the dark,

or if they fold themselves away

for times when I really need them.

First Outing of a Troubled Year

Eating recycled plastic

at your picnic makes me feel

manlier than the men who munch

organic produce and smile.

The day pouts and blusters.

The lake cringes as the ice cracks

to reveal the first open water

we’ve seen in five months. You pour

wine into my two cupped hands.

I gargle it down and sneer

at men whose dainty fingers,

manicured by smirking experts,

fondle stemware without risk.

Their wine, made from ordinary grapes,

leaves their senses tingling,

while the swill you’ve served inflames

passions that follow the bell curves

of earthquakes. No more, please. The light

in the treetops shivers with fear.

Soon the lake will sprout bass boats

puttering close to shore. Later,

speedboats dragging skiers will comb

the water, scoring fatal wakes.

The cottages will flower. Music

will hush the birdsong, and kids

will taunt each other to drown.

We’ll avoid the lake all summer

and return in the fall when silence

drapes the heaving trees. Your picnic

has saddened me. Maybe it’s the wine,

or maybe chewing the plastic

has loosened all my fillings; [stnza break]

but the passion that could have shaken

the world has faded, leaving a dead

fish stink and crackle of ice

that render me too manly to bear.

Amnesiac Again

Abandoned rather than lost,

memory has abstracted itself

like a pasture buried in snow.

This bedroom with a cairn of clothes

on the floor, an expensive watch

glowering with diamonds and dials

on the nightstand, a woman snoring

in a heap of cats, puzzles me

with its lack of useful clues.

I stuff myself inside the clothes

and creep down a long green hallway

to a stainless steel kitchen

only the rich could afford.

Copper-bottomed pots dangle

as if condemned. A gas range

big enough to roast a hippo

smolders in grim self-confidence.

A woman in uniform asks me

what I want for breakfast. A name,

a place, a green thought to take

outdoors to think in green shade.

The woman breaks eggs in a pan

and sets it hissing on the range.

Something in me broke like those eggs

sometime last night as stars aligned

in obsolete configurations

I’ve never learned to identify.

How clear the boundary between

knowing my name, knowing my place,

and erasure of all but outlines.

I stand in the snowy pasture

and moo and bleat and grumble

while the cook flips the eggs because [stanza break]

she already knows I like them

easy over. This gothic moment

prolongs to enable me

to avoid the reverberation

that would shiver this house to its soul

if I thundered too abruptly.

Canoeing Up the Penobscot

Canoeing up the Penobscot

with a lanky mob of Indians,

I split the current stroke by stroke,

straining every sorry muscle.

The Indians do no better.

Their faces warp as they wrestle

the snowmelt pouring downstream

from the complex of lakes to the north.

I have no money to pay them,

but they feared I’d drown myself

if I ascended the stream alone.

The cloud-casual afternoon hisses

with effort. Spring rain promises,

but withholds until we’re ready

to camp on a cringing stretch of shore.

A highway nearby snores with trucks.

A railroad trills with steel on steel.

Why didn’t I ship my canoe

to the lakes and ride the friction

back to Old Town in studied ease?

The Indians don’t ask. We chatter

and share a dinner of boiling fat.

They like being Indians. I like

being with Indians while the dark

smolders with self-contained rage.

As we lie in our tents the rain

sizzles through the eloquent trees

and defines everything it touches.

At dawn we breakfast on more fat

and mount our canoes. The current

retorts, and midstream I lose myself.

The Indians wave and chuckle

as my canoe reverses and speeds me

downhill with my paddle flailing.

Down, down, past Chester, Lincoln,

Howland, Olamon, Old Town, Bradley, [stanza break]

Orono, Veazie, Bangor,

and then Winterport and Bucksport

and with a heave and sigh into

the bay, Islesboro dead ahead.

I beach my canoe, flop on the sand,

and marvel that I’ve traveled

almost seventy miles this morning.

The Indians must be laughing

as the bay and bare sky are laughing—

the spruce rim of the island

dour as the skirts of ruffed grouse

settling at last on their nests.

Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently The Suburbs of Atlantis (AA Press, 2013). 

Trust’s Melting Point

He talks as if from on-top an iceberg

that’s disappearing from under his feet.

His words are clipped,

a tap-dance of ice following his lips.

I’m supposed to trust,

to string his words into a necklace

good for every occasion,

but they melt away,

syllable by syllable,

leaving only stains on my dress.

-Valentina Cano

Flame

From snowbrains.com

I will set this house on fire.

I can feel it,

the anger lapping,

running up and down the hallways,

the rustling of flames.

Smoke, dark feathers of it,

filling the pillowcases,

the empty cups and bowls,

as walls begin to blacken.

Day by day,

the house surrenders to flammability

until even its dreams are scalding and red.

-Valentina Cano

Organ

This moment is rubber,

twisting slowly into shape.

The glare of it reminds me

of the tear that passes for a canal at home

with its trash-bag doilies.

The water still enough to be pus.

This morning,

with its smell of scraping matches

and unwashed hair

is molding itself into an organ.

A replacement

for the one I didn’t know I’d lost.

-Valentina Cano

Postcards from Anorexia-Land

Stepping on and off a scale

I lost what I was thinking.

It disappeared like the tissue and fat

that used to curl up like snails

around my hipbones.

Like the clumps of ashen hair I pick up,

spider webs clinging to bathroom tiles.

I have gone away,

handing skin and teeth and bone

to numbers and buttons and zippers.

I have lost.

Myself to myself.

-Valentina Cano

Betrayal

From ElizabethKreutz.com

The bicycle slips from under her,

as sleek and agile as she’ll never be.

It lands on the grass

with an exhale of gnats,

handlebar turned to the sky.

She kicks the spinning wheels,

the grinning chains,

jabs a stick into the links and snaps it.

The sound of it like a slap.

She leaves the bicycle there,

stabbed and staring,

and walks home.

-Valentina Cano

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, A Narrow Fellow, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Rem Magazine, Structo, The 22 Magazine, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Niteblade, Tuck Magazine, Ontologica, Congruent Spaces Magazine, Pipe Dream, Decades Review, Anatomy, Lowestof Chronicle, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lady Ink Magazine, Spark Anthology, Awaken Consciousness Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus,White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I’m Wrong About the World. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com