At The Theater
And other places, including a highway, a newspaper and a restaurant
Last night I saw Mozart’s opera “Così fan tutte” (which basically means “they - women - are all like that,”). The staging and the music were lively, witty, and entertaining. I guess that guy Mozart knew a thing or two.
I saw it at the Estates Theater, about a 20 minute walk from my apartment here. It’s Prague’s oldest principal theater. At intermission, I noted a small brass plaque that informed me that Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” had its world premiere here in 1791. Imagine what that must have been like, when there was no electricity, and only candles and lanterns for lighting.
Like most of these older venues, the theater is incredibly vertical. The auditorium downstairs is surprisingly small, but then there are four or five levels of seating above it, most of them in the cozy private boxes with their own doors. My imagination told me all sorts of scandalous things could take place in those semi-private settings. Particularly when just lit by candle.
During the one long intermission, I roamed around, climbing stairs, half expecting someone to stop me. Each level had its own gathering area, a kind of living room or lounge, save for the very tippy-top one. Theater-goers were having drinks, food and conversation in three of them.
This was my second opera in less than two weeks! Last week, I saw the German opera “Der Ferne Klang”. It is a 20th century opera by Franz Schreker. I also enjoyed it more than I expected, although I enjoyed the Mozart one more. His Così fan tutte had more noticeable harmony, sometimes almost like in a pop song, and parts of some songs - or should I say “coloraturas” - were extremely fast-paced, going up and down the register, thrillingly so. The staging and acting was bawdier too, and more physical.
But “Der Ferne Klang” did have a racy second scene, set in a Venetian brothel. About a dozen almost naked women and a few men paraded around, clad only in masks, thongs, and high heels. It resembled the scenes in Stanley Kubrik’s film “Eyes Wide Shut”. So that got my attention.
Some of you might be asking why am I seeing so many operas, given that it’s clear I don’t know the genre that well.
It comes from my vow to see in my year here performances in all of Prague’s main theaters, loosely defined. I feel this helps ground and connect me to the city. Time is getting short, so I speeded up my pace. With these operas, I have now visited four of the city’s five principal theaters.
The five theaters are the National Theater, opened in 1881, where K and I saw a Czech play; the Estates Theater, opened in 1783, where I saw “Così fan tutte”. The State Opera house, opened in 1888, where I saw Der Ferne Klang; The New Stage, opened in 1983, where K and I and EC saw a “Magic Lantern” show; and the Rudolfinum, opened in 1885, where the Czech philharmonic plays.
Architecture and design and city planning are illustrated and wrapped up in these imposing venues. But so also is history itself, or at least political history.
The State Opera House, for example, was formerly known as the German Opera House because the German community of what was then Bohemia in the Austrian-Hungarian empire built it for German operas. Germans numbered in the million then, and were traditionally part of the elite. They were expelled after World War II when most of them unfortunately took the side of the Nazis.
The National Theater, on the other hand, was built out of the aspirations of the Czech nationalists for their own country, and was financed in part through small donations. Its motto on a principal archway still defiantly says, “A nation unto itself”.
Then there is the New Stage, opened in 1983. The communist-led government built it as part of an urban renewal project. It sits directly beside the National Theater in a large plaza from which old buildings I probably would have loved have been cleared out. The New Stage itself is startlingly modern, clad in metal tiles, and with the auditorium itself on the third floor. Its architect, Karel Prager, is well known. I would like to read more of how he made his bed with the communists.
That leaves only the Rudolfinum, a gorgeous pile of stone sitting all by itself on the Vltava river that opened in 1885, and where the Czech philharmonic plays. Its design and construction are wrapped up in tensions between nationalist Czechs, and the then German speaking elite. And in the 1920s and 30s, it served as a home to the parliament of the new state of Czechoslovakia. I’m happy to say my friend Bob and I have tickets to see a concert there in May.
At the moment I’m really excited by the idea of seeing “Così fan tutte” again. I wonder if I can talk K into going with me to another viewing of it.
I gather that opera is much more popular here than in the states. Just in April, there is being staged at one of the four main theaters “Carmen”, “Petite Messe Solennelle”, “Rigoletto”, “The Jacobin”, “Aida”, “Der Ferne Klang”, “Rusalka”, “Madame Butterfly”, “Il barbiere di Siviglia”, “Die Zauberflöte” (the Magic Flute), “Rusalka”, “Le Nozze di Figaro”, and “Cos fan Tutte”. That’s a lot of opera.
I have enjoyed the ones I have seen in the last two weeks so much that I’m vowing to see more. Perhaps K will accompany me to Mozart’s “the Magic Flute”, which may fit our schedule.
On Highways And the Allocation of Other Spaces
Here’s my latest column for Governing magazine. It concerns a highway right up the street from me here in Prague, which as it happens goes right by the State Opera House I talk about above. It features two photographs I took myself.
You may notice in this column that I say what I want to say more succinctly. For that, I thank Alan, my editor at Governing. My tighter writing is also a habit I hold onto from when Governing had an actual physical magazine. My words were destined for square inches on paper, which had no stretch to them.
Now the Governing columns are only online, but there is still a legacy of tighter writing. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message.” I’m not sure I ever understood that. But I do understand that the medium shapes the message.
Over the last 30 years, I may have written more than 1,000 standard-length columns for newspapers and magazines. It’s a format that, in its own way, is as tight as a sonnet, or at least feels that way. A standard column is 800-900 words long. You make a point, give a few related thoughts, and that’s it. When writing one, I am constantly aware of my space limitations. You can’t say everything. And what you do say, you have to say succinctly.
The Internet is changing this. Even really gifted and experienced writers — Matt Taibbi comes to mind — let themselves go. And it’s not just in newsletters. Online writing is simply more relaxed than in the old physical world. The medium shapes the message.
There are pluses as well as minuses to the more relaxed writing. The plus is that fewer things are left unsaid. One has the room to put qualifiers in, and on-the-other hands. The minus is more verbiage, more meanderings, less getting to the point. Sometimes, there is no point.
In any event, check the column out, both for what I say about highways in Prague and America, and how I say it.
What I’m Reading
The Times of My Life and My Life with The Times (Random House 1999), by Max Frankel
Like a homing beacon, everything I read somehow ends up drawing me back to Eastern or Central Europe, where I am now.
Recently, the Brooklyn Public Library threw the digital copy of Max Frankel’s memoir in front of me. I reluctantly clicked download. I love memoirs, but I felt I should be prioritizing books about Eastern Europe.
I needn’t have worried. Turns out Frankel, the former executive editor of The New York Times, is yet another Jew who with his family barely escaped the clutches of Adolph Hitler as World War II began. Frankel was 10. His family brings to mind the complicated nationality labeling now going on in the Ukraine. Frankel’s family spoke German and lived in Germany, but were citizens of Poland, where at least one parent had been born. They were rendered stateless as the dictators of Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union carved up Poland and traded and stole it from each other. How his mother fjorded this treacherous bureaucracy is a tale Frankel narrates very well. I was reminded of Madeleine Albright’s tale, of how her family managed to leave Czechoslovakia.
Later, as executive editor, Frankel supervised the coverage of the fall of communism and the Berlin wall in 1989, and so that was another link to the Czech lands where I am now.
As a former newspaperman (that feels good to say), I still love reading stories about the industry and profession. With Frankel’s memoir, you can read how a first-class newspaper actually works. The Times still probably mostly works that way, even though it no longer relies on the billion-dollar printing facility Frankel spent so much effort getting approved.
Some other highlights of the book for me were reading about Frankel as an adolescent in Washington Heights in 1940s Manhattan, where he battled Italians, Blacks, and Irish armed with serious weapons, simply to get to school. Today’s racial and ethnic tensions are tame in comparison. His fear of injury and pain helped propel him to successfully apply to one of the city’s specialized high schools, from where his journey upward began. The only specialized high school he knew about was for the arts, so he taught himself to be an expert drawer and painter, and got in.
Then there were the battles in the late 1960s between the Times’ New York office and its Washington bureau, which in their ferocity and sanctimony I was reminded of the current ongoing struggles between Red and Blue America. Turns out politics is not the only arena where players disguise their self interest, often unknowingly, in a wrapping of self righteousness.
Tummy Time
This week I’ve eaten four meals - three lunches and one dinner - at the restaurant downstairs, Na Křižovatce, which I still have trouble saying and spelling. I am finding I do not tire of Czech food, even though I can’t say it has the range of say Italian or French.
Here’s a picture of my wild boar “guláš” with Czech-style dumplings and a fruit relish. It was a special, and cost more, a whopping 129 crowns, or $6.50.
