Views from Hotel Window in Agios Nikolaos

Afternoon:

Moonrise:

Sweet as.

Olive Picking

Two days ago, we went olive picking in Kolibari. I was kind of dreading it but in the end I found that I had a lovely time. I have really been enjoying the Cretan people, by the way. They are quick to smile and are so friendly. Crete is really one of my favorite places in the world now. I like the people a lot, the scenery is fabulous and the long stretch of history here is loaded with intellectual interest.

SOME OF THE BOYS AR WORK:


GUESS WHO:


This is Helen. She is a friend of Stavros and Roula who put us up in Kolibari. She is really fun. I just adore her and hope she will stop by when I return. TRH would adore her:


This is a PARK face:

Aforementioned Busdriver

Comment needed? Nah.

Phalarsana and Polyrrhenia

These sites made for a lot of exercise on a fairly cold day. The warm sun of Kommos is but a memory. It is December, so this is no suprise. The first two pictures are from Phalarsana which is on the west coast. I was able to snap the camera at just the right moment to catch one my students in the air there. The third picture is from Polyrrhenia which is inland on the NW coast. It was some hike to get up there! I and four students got a little lost on the way down, but it all turned out ok in the end.

Did I make a mistake?

BEFORE:


OK. Movemeber came to an end. [Movemeber is November rebranded by I think the ministry of health or some such public organ in NZ. For the month of Movemember there is an emphasis on general fitness (Move. Get it?) and in particular men's health (or such is my impression). Anyway, men grow moustaches in November in honor of the month.] Anyway, as I was saying, Movemeber came to an end and I shaved off my moustache. The boys on the trip were like, "gah! why did you do that?" While the girls were like, "thank god." And now they are eyeing the moustaches that remain on masculine cheeks and chins and silently and not so silently willing them to go away. So what do the internets think about this? Did I make a mistake? Have a lost my manly mojo? Or have a embraced a certain maturity and refinement in bringing forth unto a grateful world my smooth and civilized visage? Are these things mutually exclusive? So many questions are raised by this. Will they ever stop?

AFTER:

Happy Birthday Barbara

Today is my talented, smart and entirely admirable sister's birthday. Happy birthday Barbara! That is all.

Kommos

Herakleion at Night and Knossos

Aigina

Critical Facial Hair Update (at Kommos!)

After swimming! In my underwear!

Growing Older

As I am here in Crete and elsewhere in Greece, I am really noticing something. Something like twenty five years ago (and just where does the time go?), when I was last in southern Europe for any length of time and on my own, suffice it to say that I turned the heads of the men. Now, I get a few looks and that’s great but nothing like the intensity of glances that meant that I was but an answering nod away from situations fraught with all kinds of erotic possibilities, if I so wished and, believe you me, I so did. And I had like no Italian! But the language of love needed no translation.

I feel blessed that I have few regrets about possibilities not explored and opportunities of this kind not exploited to the full. My sense of adventure and feelings of invincibility made me really game for these adventures. (I was still a few years from losing that sense of invulnerability—and that day was coming sooner than I imagined at the time.)

And so, in the end as I note this change in my relation to southern Mediterranean men (and the changes that age has undeniably wrought on my body and indeed on my personality), I on the one hand think about the times I have had, my past. But I also think about how I am now more an observer and contemplator of the transient relations that younger men have with each other. (I also quite contentedly and with a happy sense of purpose work on these issues in my scholarship.) I think that this means that I have a different role to play and different way to be in this world. I am not left out. I am included differently. That is not to say that something more transient would not be welcome or may not happen at some point in the future. It may. And if it does, great. But I am content to let opportunity knock. I mean, if our handsome bus-driver were to come up stairs right now, knock, and importune me, or, better, were his somewhat older brother to do these things (he is tad young but pretty woofy in his hirsute magnificence). I would surely not tell him no. One wants to be companionable after all. But the point is that getting it, finding it is not a primary focus of mine any more and it actually has not been for a long time. Somewhere in the years around the turn of the century, I moved on and now I am on different side of the river. I am still at the river but I have different place to be and a different way to be (with TRH as constant through all these changes).

Euro-Trash, in a good way, perhaps…well, o.k., it worked

Ok. This is Europe. Got to remember that. Opera goers (many of whom look so conservative!) like their opera edgy. And so we had a quite edgy outing of two works that are way out on the fringes of the repertory: Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il Prigionero and Manuel De Falla’s La Vida Breve. On the whole, I was pleased I went and while neither opera totally wowed me, the committed performances and stagings made for an engrossing evening.

First the stagings. Christopher Alden did both. The stage therefore was drenched with bright light often and we saw his trademark clock on the wall in Prig (and it was keeping perfect time). In Prig, we were in a sterile white room that opened with the eponymous prisoner hooded a la Abu Graib. The white walls working with the blue and red mop buckets drove the point home. This piece about a prisoner who thinks he is to be freed but in fact is to be tortured further is timely and the references could hardly be forced when they would be occurring to many members of the audience already. Turning the supposed grant of freedom into a delusion that the prisoner has, Alden took some liberties with the plot. But such liberties were not damaging to the bummer impression this opera means to make.

In Vida, the staging was limited to the workshop in which the Salud works (see plot summary in a post from a couple of days ago). Cleverly, Carmela and her wedding to Paco sort of magically appear as they are needed according to the plot and it works if you are ready to surrender to the unreality and go with it (I was ready to do so). He solved the problem of Salud keeling over dead by having her cut herself up and show up to the wedding bleeding. That was disturbing. But, you know, Paco pumps and dumps her and she is unbalanced anyway. That is disturbing too. Alden is right to go for the disturbing in the plot and to make us uncomfortable. I think what he came up with works. He also integrated the two singers into the plot, as a transvestite garment seamstress and lounge-lizard wedding singer respectively. That was smart. Carmela was one cool cookie of rich spoiled girl and contrasted so tellingly with the insecure and manic Salud. Not knowing the opera well, I was briefly afraid that the transvestite seamstress was Salud and that Alden had done something really EDGY [Salud does not sing that much at the beginning]. While it would have been an interesting approach to the opera, I am glad he did not do this.

The operas themselves are both interesting. Prig is 12-tone but it is lyrical at times. But, still, there are a lot of angular lines in the singing and a lot of shrieking so it will never be a fav. But I must admit that the orchestration was always interesting and I bet I would enjoy his purely orchestral music. Vida had some very fine Spanish music (as was to be expected) and it included one of the best dances you will ever hear in any opera, period: the jota from act 2 (which Alden refused to allow any choreography for--- a decision I can respect in the context of the rest of his staging of this opera). It also has a really nice love duet in act 1.

William Lacey’s conducting was superb. The singing was nothing to write home about. It was all adequate and fine. The lead in Prig at the end of the opera took off all his clothes and we got to see his backside. That woke some people up. He was kind of hunky. I needed no awakening but I did sit up straighter.

Critical Facial Hair Update

These internets have taken narcissism to a whole new level.

Opera Attendance in Athens!

A double bill at the Greek National Opera. This Wednesday!

Dallapicola's Il Prigionero and de Falla's La Vida Breve. De Falla's picture is above.

I cannot find any info on Dallapicola's work but here is the overheated plot of La Vida Breve:

ACT I
The courtyard of the gypsy tenements in the Albaicìn, Granada
As voices from a smithy lament the fate of those destined to be anvils rather than hammers, their mood is reflected by Salud's grandmother, but when Salud is in despair because she believes her lover Paco is not coming, her grandmother tries to cheer her, pointing out that although Paco is rich and high-born, he has eyes for none but Salud. Salud explains that even when Paco is late, she nearly dies of grief. She is so distraught that she begs her grandmother to see if he is coming, reflecting that death is better than a life of poverty, sorrow or being alone.

Paco arrives, swearing that he is not late and that he will always love Salud and never leave her, but in the background of their ecstatic reunion, Uncle Salvador confirms to the grandmother the rumor that Paco is about to be married to a girl of his own class. The grandmother restrains him from his plan to kill Paco, as there is trouble enough already.

ACT II
Scene 1. A narrow street in Granada
The wedding of Paco and Carmela is being celebrated with song and dancing in the house where she lives with her brother Manuela. Salud watches through the window, grieving to see Paco with another woman, restraining herself with difficulty from calling out to him. She believes that death would be preferable to her suffering, but resolves to confront Paco. She is joined by her grandmother and Uncle Salvador, who curse Paco and all his family, but try in vain to stop her from going into the house.

Scene 2. The courtyard in Carmela's and Manuel's house
As the festivities continue, Paco worries about the way he has abandoned Salud. When Salud comes in with Uncle Salvador, the guests are struck by their strange appearance, but Uncle Salvador defiantly says that they can dance and sing. Salud, however, says she has not come to sing, but to see Paco and demand that he kill her. He tries to pretend that he does not know her and insists she be thrown out, but she continues to accuse him of deceiving her and then falls dead at his feet.

[THANKS TO: http://www.opera-opera.com.au/plotf.htm#fallvida]

Well! She should have never allowed that upper-class tomcat the liberties she did! Carmen would have shut that party down and kicked Paco's ass. But this senorita is not made of such stern stuff. Claro que si! It is just the reverse of Donizetti's Maria Padilla, where the eponymous heroine expires of--- happiness. I know you were thinking that.

I wonder what will happen with the Dallapicola. Say a prayer that it is not some dodecaphonic monster that will have to be endured!

The production is by one of the Alden brothers. I have seen much of their work in Long Beach and San Francisco and I have always enjoyed their stagings. That aspect of the production will be very good, I am sure.

Two from Sounion and One from Thorikos

The highly scenic temple dedicated to Poseidon:





Thorikos' Theater:

National Socialist Brauron

Interesting no? These pots are from the geometric period and the charming symbol from the century previous to our own present one naturally found its way onto these pots as a likely assemblage of lines creating an entirely anticipatable collocation of angles. That is probably true. And here is a text book case of how present-day culture/history makes us see things and emphasize things that had we another cultural/historical background we would most likely not. Given my assertion about handshakes in a previous post (and in appended comments), the irony of these words is both not lost on me AND delicious.

Facial Hair Update

November Sunlight at the Karameikos (Athens)

Facial Hair Update

A welcome or unwelcome development this hair outbreak? Both reactions are anticipated. A controversial lead-in into the xmas season to be sure. Clean-shaven around the tree surely.