A Peek at Fidelio

 

 

The Dresser was unexpectedly invited by a friend to the October 23, 2024, dress rehearsal of Washington National Opera’s new production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio. It’s frowned upon to review a production that is seen in rehearsal and so the Dresser will mainly discuss what has been released to the public and what is historic.

 

Beethoven had a lot of problems with this opera, which premiered in Vienna on November 20, 1805. He revised it three times. Originally called Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe (Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love), the opera was cut from three acts to two. It contains some music that was written for an opera Beethoven never completed. Numerous librettists worked on this opera starting with Joseph Sonnleithner who adapted the story from the French by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. It was shortened by Stephan von Breuning and edited by Georg Friedrich Treitschke.

 

The story, set in two acts, and running two hours and 45 minutes with one 25-minute intermission, involves a woman who disguises herself as a young man to gain access to her imprisoned husband Florestan.

 

Florestan exposed crimes committed by his political rival Pizarro. In a prison that he governs, Pizarro then secretly incarcerates Florestan. Florestan’s wife Leonore, disguised in male attire, gets hired as Fidelio  by Rocco, a man who works for Pizarro. Both Rocco and his daughter Marzelline take an immediate liking to Fidelio. Courted without interest by Jaquino, Marzelline gravitates quickly to Fidelio and the idea that Fidelio will marry her. Rocco agrees and counsels Fidelio that he must earn a good salary.

 

Meanwhile, Fidelio asks to support Rocco with his work in the dungeons that he oversees.  Pizarro appears and Rocco warns him that the Prime Minister Don Fernando will pay the prison a surprise visit. Pizarro asks Rocco to kill Florestan who for two years has been starved under Pizarro’s orders to Rocco. Rocco says no. Pizarro answers he will kill Florestan, but Rocco must dig a grave in the floor of the dungeon to bury Florestan.

 

The outcome is Rocco allows Fidelio to help dig the grave. Don Fernando arrives in the nick of time to stop Pizarro from murdering Florestan who is being bravely protected by Fidelio now revealed as Leonore.

 

The dress rehearsal proved interesting as several people huddled over their own (well-lit) copies of the score, furtively taking notes. The photographer, a thin, agile man kept moving swiftly through the roped off seats near the stage and often crossing the rope to achieve a larger perspective for his shots. The invited audience was sparse and not enough critical mass to warm up the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. A three-page handout, with a list of cast and creative team as well as synopsis of the story, warned audience that:

1.        Singers might not sing in full voice.

2.        Audience must stay seated until a break is announced, and house lights shine.

3.        Audience must not talk during a stop for corrections or repeat.

4.        Audience must not use cell phones or recording devices of any kind.

 

WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello is this production’s director. This production opens with projections that look like newspaper headlines. The role of the Prime Minister (Don Fernando) originally scored for a baritone is sung by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves wearing a white pants suit. 

 

About the opera, Steiny wonders why Beethoven made Leonore/Fidelio a soprano and not a mezzo? While it is true that many summaries of the libretto describe Fidelio as a boy, the story indicates a young man well over puberty who attracts a marriage-eligible young woman with another suitor and a young man capable of brave acts. In fact, Beethoven had no mezzos at all cast for his opera.

 

Steiny thinks the ensemble singing is masterful and beautiful, but Steiny wonders why Fidelio has music  that never expresses any of the darkness of its subject matter.

 

Steiny suggests you make what you want of this information.

 

Fidelio, in German with projected English surtitles, is at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Opera House October 25 to November 4, 2024.

 

 

Between the Temples—A Case of Happy Chaos

How many mothers does a man need? The Dresser asks this question after meditating over Nathan Silver’s film Between the Temples.

 

In this comedy cum drama, a cantor loses his ability—or certainly, his will—to sing after his wife dies. He is such a mess of grief; he moves back into his mother’s basement. His artist mom Meira (Catherine Aaron) has a wife named Judith (Dolly De Leon) whom Cantor Ben (Jason Schwartzman) also calls Mom, and these two women are prominent contributors to the synagogue where he is employed. This means that Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) will not fire him. Ben attempts to perform and when he cannot, he flees on foot to a highway where he lies down in the road and expects a massive truck to run over him. However, the horrified truck driver stops and then takes him to a local bar. There, the bartender keeps filling him up with a chocolate drink called a mudslinger. Think of the bar tender as a pun because Ben has regressed to an age that precedes his bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ceremony for a boy which involves reading the Torah.

 

At the bar, he encounters Carla Kessler O’Connor, his grade school music teacher (Carol Kane). While he struggles to escape her, she becomes the only one who can bring him back to his full manhood. Voila, he finds his third or fourth mother, if we count his deceased wife who left him a legacy of dirty talk through her phone messages to him.

 

Carla decides that she wants a bat mitzvah, the equivalent coming of age ceremony for Jewish girls, to make up for the lack imposed by her parents. For she was a red diaper baby, a child brought up without religion by Jewish communists. Indeed, Carol Kane in her baby-fied Goldie Hahn-like voice made the Dresser believe Carla’s need to rectify this childhood deprivation. Ben says no he can’t teach her, but she says, yes, you can and so does Rabbi Bruce.

 

Meanwhile, everyone pitches in to matchmake. His moms introduce him to a woman who, at first, they suggest is a shrink. She is a doctor but a cosmetic surgeon. Unbeknownst, to Ben, Mom Judith then signs him up for a JDate and so an eager woman named Leah in a very short skirt blocks the entrance to his temple. Rabbi Bruce sends his beautiful daughter Gabby who, though suffering from a recent heartbreak, musters the energy to summon the voice of his late spouse and put into action a sexual act suggested by the wife’s dirty talk. Happily, the director spares us from an immersive scene.

 

However, it is only the belly rub to encourage deep breathing by Carla that moves the cantor. After that, he invites himself to her house to show her his bar mitzvah video which happens to be the same Torah portion she is studying for her bat mitzvah. Pretty soon he becomes an uninvited overnight guest (with no access to Carla’s boudoir) sleeping in the pajamas of Carla’s adult son Nate. Nate and his family show up that next morning and encounter Ben. Nate, a psychiatrist, is aghast at seeing Ben attired in Nate’s intimate wear and demands a meeting with his mother to talk things over.

 

It's this one-scene-that-leads-to-the-next from crisis to crisis that keeps the film in a state of happy chaos. It’s much like what a new mother experiences in having a baby. In this case, Ben is the helpless baby. You might say in retrospect that what happens in this film was very funny, but first you must get through the grief and confusion to experience that belly laugh. It’s a mind game, as suggested by the film’s title.

The End of a Nazi Monster on June Zero

A disturbing juxtaposition of youth and death underpins June Zero, a film based on the 1962 execution of Adolph Eichmann in Israel. Eichmann was a major Nazi organizer of the Holocaust and therefore considered one of the worst mass murderers of World War II. Mossad agents abducted him from Argentina and brought him to trial in Israel. This film by Jake Paltrow (brother of actor Gwyneth Paltrow) is a story where young people fill adult  roles.

 

On July 24, 2024, the Dresser saw a screening of this hard-to-find American-Israeli film, which was released internationally July 1, 2022, but has only been available in United States theaters since June 28, 2024. The one-hour-forty-five-minute movie, shot entirely on 16mm film, is a drama in Hebrew and Spanish. Paltrow’s use of the low-budget 16mm film associates the movie with those made for documentary purposes. Given that the availability of  the inexpensive 16mm film in the 1960’s allowed amateurs to make movies,  the Dresser sees the director’s choice to use that medium in synch with the emphasis on telling this story from immature points of view.

 

The overall story of June Zero is bookended by the stories of two teenage boys. The film opens with David (Noam Ovadia), a thirteen-year-old Libyan immigrant. While he and his family are Jews, they speak Arabic and there is no hint that he is being prepared for the manhood ceremony of bar mitzvah. David tends to steal things and inappropriately interrupt his schoolroom and teacher. He gets suspended from school, so his father decides David should get a job. He takes him to a man with a reputation for killing Arabs who has a company making ovens. Metaphorically interesting, David’s father, just before they enter the oven factory, exchanges his shoes for David’s sandals. Thus, David is now walking in  men’s shoes. David, despite his youth and his arrogance, excels and becomes part of a secret project to construct a crematorium that will dispose of Eichmann’s body once he is hanged. (The Israelis did not want Eichmann in death to have a martyr’s shrine. His cremated remains were, in fact,  dumped beyond the Mediterranean territorial waters of Israel. The title of the film June Zero also reflects Israel’s insistence that the date of Eichmann’s demise would not be known and therefore never celebrated.)

 

The other story of a teenage boy is told by Micha Aaronson (Tom Hagi) who survives the Auschwitz concentration camp and provides evidence against Eichmann. In the film, he is now a man retelling the story of being whipped 81 times as a teenager in the Warsaw ghetto for not burning the bibles he was forced to collect. The location of this retelling is the postwar Warsaw Ghetto. A woman who apparently cares for Micha advises him to refuse to keep telling that story because he shouldn’t be a victim forever. However, Micha is stuck in his past as a horribly abused teenager. He needs to keep retelling the story for himself, so that he knows he has been heard and believed. What he has not come to terms with since that beating is the meaning of justice. He asks his friend, “What does justice mean?”

 

The center piece of the June Zero story belongs to the Moroccan-born guard Haim Gouri (Yoav Levi) who is charged with keeping Eichmann alive until his execution. It is Gouri who visits the fearsome oven factory owner Shlomi Zebco (Tzahi Grad) to assign him the secret task of making the crematorium which will reduce Eichmann to dust. Hounded by journalists, Gouri suffers an automobile accident after the factory visit which, while it doesn’t keep him from watching over Eichmann, causes him paranoid hallucinations like those a new mother would experience with an infant . At one point, Gouri, intent on keeping  Eichmann alive for the justice of the hangman’s noose, thinks for a horrifying moment that Eichmann has died in his sleep. For Gouri, Eichmann has become his immature child. In this way, the central story has the specter of a youth with a shadow of death hanging over him.

 

Remarkably, Paltrow and his co-writer Tom Shoval, have made Eichmann a faceless figure in the film. We see his feet first and then we see the back of his head when a barber comes. This is much to Gouri’s consternation, because he fears that this man with scissors will kill his charge. In the film credits, the actor who plays Eichmann gets no recognition.

 

The standout actor in this film is Noam Ovadia who plays David. Our last image of him as a youth is when he is sacked by Shlomi Zebco who says his factory is no place for a boy. David fires back, “I love the factory and I’m better than all your workers.”  Zebco tells him, “You’re just a kid. Get out.” The film ends with an adult David trying to convince an Israeli historian that he was involved with the cremation of Eichmann. He cannot produce any evidence, and she holds fast that she cannot accommodate his request to be included in that history. Here Paltrow and Shoval tie up a loose end—the involvement of a boy in building Eichmann’s crematorium may be nothing more than a myth.

 

Zavala-Zavala, the opera that cuts to the heart

Zavala-Zavala

 

Imagine you are fleeing violence in your country. In the middle of your first night in the country where you seek safe haven, agents in uniforms snatch your child and won’t give him back. Then you are arrested and put into an orange jumpsuit. You face deportation for incorrectly entering the country at the wrong place, a crime normally considered a misdemeanor.

 

In real life, Navidad Zavala-Zavala, a Honduran grandmother who had been raising her seven-year-old grandson, faced this situation. In 2017, hers was the first family separation case in El Paso, Texas, testing Trump’s Zero Tolerance directives.

 

The initial spark for Zavala-Zavala: an opera in V cuts came in 2017 from Brian Arreola, father of two young children. He was moved deeply by what was happening at the United States southern border. Working with librettist Anna Deeny Morales, he completed Zavala-Zavala, his first opera,  in 2022. The work was developed and premiered by the IN Series at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The production was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where Arreola is Professor of Voice and Opera Workshop.

 

On June 23, 2024, the Dresser saw Zavala-Zavala, an hour-long chamber opera, in its second production as presented by Gala Hispanic Theatre under the direction of  Corinne Hayes.

 

Arreola’s collaboration with poet and librettist Anna Deeny Morales was an inspired arrangement. Her talent as a poet shines through Navidad’s heartrending story which is told in V cuts—or five wrenching scenes—in both Spanish and English.

 

She tells the boy
of how the gods made

mist and light,
the jaguar night,

palms and waves,

the continent bends,

hills of trees,

jungles, leaves,

animals, insects,

and all that is free . . .

and then . . .
and then . . .

 

Deeny Morales, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies, is an accomplished artist with substantial networks. Her operas have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgetown Americas Institute, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Zavala-Zavala was supported by the Ford Foundation. Her opera Las Místicas de México about the more than 110,000 disappeared in Mexico was a collaboration with the IN Series artistic director Timothy Nelson (among others).

 

Arreola’s music is accessible and tuneful. The ten-piece, on-stage orchestra, under the baton of the composer, provided a satisfying net of sound that both supported and accented the richly nuanced voices of the outstanding singers. Baritone Efraín Solís featured in the role of Sergio Garcia, the lawyer representing Navidad Zavala-Zavala, also sang the parts of narrator and judge. His role switching was as seamless as his acting was confident. Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Mondragón (as Navidad Zavala-Zavala) sang with authority and confidence that one would hope for in a woman who has made such an arduous journey and who needs to assure a young child that her love and her embrace will protect him. Perhaps the hardest role to deliver was that of prosecuting attorney Sara Morales as sung by soprano Judy Yannini. The challenge was to reduce the stridency of her job against the upper range of her voice. Sara’s duet with Sergio asking her to think about her children as the Thanksgiving holiday approached helped moderate the fierce person the job required her to be. Boy soprano Abraham Latner as the Niño (grandson of Navidad) capped off the stellar performances as he sang heartbreakingly (in Spanish) about the hummingbird that he asks to carry his message of love to his family, that they should not forget him.

 

 

The original production at the Kennedy Center featured an 18-piece orchestra. The Gala Hispanic Theatre production had six fewer strings, no flute, and no percussionist, and included piano, harp, oboe, bass clarinet, bassoon, and French horn. The sound seemed robust and full to this reviewer, without covering the voices.

 

The Gala Hispanic Theatre production had three performances. The last was filmed and was attended by members of the Zavala-Zavala family. Navidad’s grandson was reunited with his mother, but Navidad remains deported. The creators hope to circulate the new film footage to educate citizens of the United States about the cruelty of separating children from their families.

 

 

Photos by Camilo Montoya

The Warrior's Return—Ulysses Versus American Vietnam Vets

 

 

 

 

 

The Return of Ulysses—Song of My Father, a Drama through Music by Claudio Monteverdi combines the mythological story of Ulysses coming home from the Trojan War to his faithful wife Penelope with the contemporary and nonspecific tale of damaged American men coming home from Vietnam to unappreciative civilians. Running May 11 through 27, 2024 this creatively updated opera is produced by InSeries under the artistic direction of  Timothy Nelson. On May 12, 2024, the Dresser experienced this  two-and-half-hour production at Washington, DC’s Source Theater.

 

To achieve the contemporary ambiance of the Vietnam War, song elements (mostly recognized as text) from such songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs were woven through Monteverdi’s Baroque music. Dancers sometimes appearing as four-legged scrabbling “sculptures” (a term used by choreographer Jitti Chompee) with balloon heads provided an abstract and nightmarish landscape to the main character who was both Ulysses and a homeless vet sleeping in the street. Poetry of the contemporary writer Ocean Vuong (offspring of a Vietnamese mother and American soldier), is featured in this production, including  his poem “Telemachus” in the voice of the grownup son of  Ulysses who meets his father for the first time:

 

Telemachus [excerpt]

   By Ocean Vuong

 

Like any good son, I pull my father out

of the water, drag him by his hair

 

through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail

the waves rush in to erase. Because the city

beyond the shore is no longer

where we left it. Because the bombed

 

cathedral is now a cathedral

of trees. I kneel beside him to see how far

I might sink. Do you know who I am,

Ba? But the answer never comes. The answer

is the bullet hole in his back, brimming

with seawater. He is so still I think

 

he could be anyone’s father, found

the way a green bottle might appear at

a boy's feet containing a year

he has never touched…

 

 

While the Dresser greatly admires the writings of Ocean Vuong and sees the relevance of including his work, the question remains as to whether his work could be heard and appreciated in the context of this production.

 

 

What the Dresser liked best about this production was Monteverdi’s music played by INnovãtiõ Baroque Orchestra (they use period instruments like harpsichord, viola da gamba, and theorbo) under the baton of Timothy Nelson, the performances of the singers especially the bass baritone Kevin Short, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Mondragon (as Penelope), tenor Oliver Mercer, male soprano Elijah McCormack (as Telemaco), tenor Derek Chester (as Ulysses), and the oddly costumed ballooned headed dancers and their antics. Singers,  except the named characters, play multiple roles from Penelope’s suitors to the off-stage voices of the colorfully costumed gods portrayed by the dancers. Sometimes the singers sang off-stage behind the crowded orchestra pit, causing a level of unnecessary confusion.

 

The program was divided into two parts. Part I was too long and hard to follow. Part II was shorter and stayed focused on the mythological story of Ulysses’ return. The video projections on multiple screens added nothing to the Dresser’s understanding of the storyline. Staging was minimal and included what looked like a vintage dinette set of table and chairs from the 1950’s.

 

May 31 through June 2, 2024, this production moves to Baltimore Theatre Project.

 

 

Photos by Bayou Elom

 

 

Opera Lafayette’s Merriment of the Comedic Muse

Some opera productions, like the total eclipse of the sun seen recently in the United States, happen so quickly that the operagoer must be primed in advance and have the absolute foresight to buy tickets. Les Fêtes de Thalie by composer Jean-Joseph Mouret and librettist Joseph de La Font in a spectacular modern premier by Opera Lafayette as conducted by Christophe Rousset and directed by Catherine Turocy thoroughly captivated the Dresser when she experienced the opening night performance May 3, 2024, at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The production continues in DC on May 4^th and then moves to New York’s El Museo del Barrio for a final performance May 7.

 

 

Everything about this opera ballet pleased the Dresser. The Baroque music was at times vigorous, saucy, and sweet to the ear. The singers are extraordinary talents both for their abilities to perform the demands of Mouret’s compositions, to create characters that enchant the audience, and to play multiple roles. The eight dancers were remarkable for their muscular strength, grace, and often surprising flourishes that included foot stamping. Kudos to the creative team that balanced these remarkable talents to achieve a satisfying whole.

 

The costumes by Marie Anne Chiment flowered into bloom like an exotic garden, particularly eye-catching were those worn by the foot stamping Kalanidhi dancers. The punkish attire, including a rainbow of hair color and black, laced-up storm trooper boots, worn by Thalie, Muse of Comedy, provided loud counterpoint to the flowing purple gown worn regally by Melpomène, the Muse of Tragedy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story opens and closes on an argument between sassy Thalie (soprano Paulina Francisco) and melodramatic diva Melpomène (dramatic soprano Angel Azzara) concerning what an audience will like better: tragedy or comedy. Apollo (bass-baritone Jonathan Woody) is asked to settle the dispute and resolves that the two Graces take turns starting with a comedy.

 

The first offering entitled “La Fille” (The Girl) involves a sea captain (baritone Jean Bernard Cerin) who wants to marry the young woman Léonore (Paulina Francisco). But Léonore wants to be free to sing and dance. The sea captain hopes her mother (tenor Patrick Kilbride) will help him win the daughter’s hand. The catch is for ten years, the mother has not seen her husband and so, when Léonore refuses, the mother offers herself. This is made funnier by the mother being acted by a  man with a rotund belly and, yes, Kilbride did a great job in this female role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“La Veuve Coquette” (The Coquettish Widow) involves Isabel, a woman (soprano Pascale Beaudin) who is pursued by two seemingly desirable men—the wealthy financier Chrisogon (John Taylor Ward and the military man Léandre (Scott Brunscheen). Isabel, dressed in riding gear which possibly suggests she is a Dominatrix, sloughs off the advice of her friend Doris (Angel Azzara) who encourages picking one or other. The rich man woos her with an elaborate dance which she is eager to see but, in the end, she tells both suitors no. The centerpiece of this tragedy is the dance.

 

 

 

“La Femme” (The Wife) is a comedy about Dorante (Scott Brunscheen), a man  who woos a masked woman though he has a beautiful and sexually appealing wife (Pascale Beaudin). Unmasked, the woman turns out to be Dorante’s wife Caliste which is taken cheerfully in stride by the married couple. At this time, Thalie, the muse of comedy, breaks into the scene as the audience claps and declares herself the winner—that comedy wins over tragedy according to the audience’s appreciation.

 

The final scene entitled “La Critique” (The Criticism) pits Thalie as librettist against Polyhymnia, the muse of Music and therefore the composer, and Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance and therefore the choreographer. She calls for mediation by Apollo, who sends a substitute. While Thalie may have won over the audience to comedy (versus tragedy), she must contend with the judgement of Momus, God of Mockery and otherwise known as the critic. With an extra kick of comedic irony Patrick Kilbride gleefully takes that role and knocks down her pride by saying he was glad he didn’t write the libretti for her comedies. However, this scene is not a tragedy, Momus assures all the muses that everyone deserves appreciation and that all should “laugh, sing, and dance” which is exactly how the Dresser felt leaving this well-orchestrated and fun-filled performance.

 

 

Photos: Jennifer Packard

Diana Tokaji’s Flight out of Mad Gravel

 

To a full house in the Bethesda, Maryland Writer’s Center Reading Room on April 17, 2024, Diana Tokaji explored through dance, poetry, and music how to fly despite obstacles. The  Dresser noted that the obstacles included a tremor in her hands, vocal issues, and the loss of a dance partner through A.I.D.S. What shone through was an indomitable  spirit with the ability to literally move her audience in a very well thought out  and engaging program.

 

Twelve pieces divided in three sections comprised Mad Gravel & Other Life Stories, an hour-long program. “Limping Dance with Ripe Persimmon”  provided an upfront confession of onset disabilities though not all, like limping and stuttering were personal disabilities. Using a colorful flowing scarf, the dancer demonstrated her ability to flow and move gracefully though there are moments like limping and shaking that interrupt.

 

Her introduction to “In the Hut” revealed to the audience that the repetitious poetry of this piece was detrimental to her voice, so she was going to cut it from the program. However, people around her raised a clamor, so she enlisted her Artistic Assistant Margaret Riddle to recite the poetry  while sitting on a stool as she, the dancer, stood behind and used her arms to sculpt the dance.

 

The next several pieces brought birds and trees into view. She asked the audience to picture themselves as a tree and to tell a nearby seatmate what tree. Then she asked everyone who was able to stand up, to cross their limbs with their seatmates, to sway and to feel the sun shining on them. She said (and maybe this was part of a poem) “these woods are improv.” Whether this was a particularly sympathetic audience or her ability to engage is just that powerful, most people in the room readily complied, including the Dresser who has a deep-seated love of trees.

 

The second section dealt with the importance of “small moments,” a “Loss of Words,” and what activities were still negotiable—“Are You Still XYZ?” The XYZ potently refers to dance (among other things)—Are you still dancing? The answer comes in a video within a video. Tokaji is shown dancing with both her dance partners: Linda Ellis Rawlings who is in the main video with Tokaji and Daryl Lloyd who is in a projected video behind them. Lloyd is the partner who died of A.I.D.S.

 

The last section gets the audience involved again as she asks everyone to consider what they would bring in a small boat as part of her presentation of “Poem of Trust. Poem of Fearless.”  Then she presented a taste of her dance opera Mad Gravel and her poem “Post-Assault Prescription When I Fear My Spirit Dying.”  This is the poem which was published by Washington, DC’s Split This Rock poetry festival and which was dedicated to Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, the poem profoundly looks at what the dancer is capable of  as she strives for justice that may never be achieved:

 

 

Post-Assault Prescription When I Fear My Spirit Dying [excerpt]

Here in the mud
of my history
beneath the rage
is counsel.

Where grace
expands like the air
under a bird’s wings
all day it seems,

rising
soaring
gliding.

Willingness
to take the air
and ride it
is grace.

Riding,
being lifted
by air
is grace.

I seek grace now
as my rage deepens
exponentially
to hate.

As I see my own dreams –
the day ones
the night –

and witness my capacity
to do to another
real harm.

I return to silence
I am not saying
it is easy.

I return to silence
I am not saying
I will be quiet.

I return to silence
I am not saying
I won’t shout my grief
from the rooftops.

Diana Tokaji’s program had many helping hands including Jess Harris, audio Visual Technician, Denaise Seals of Slingshot Video, camera operator Yegide Calhoun, photographer Angelique Raptakis, costume designer Rachel Knudson, and Artistic Assistant Margaret Riddle. Proceeds from this show were donated to Ella’s Gift: Yoga Therapy Scholarship Fund for Women. There will be a video forthcoming from this performance.

 

Photos by Angelique Raptakis

 

The Breakables of The Glass Studio

 

 The heart is the fragile part

            that allows things to break

   from “The Flaw”

 

 

                                                     L e t  t h e s e  l I n e s  b e  s t r o n g e r

t h a n  t h o s e  b r o k e n  a t  e v e r y  s u p e r m a r k e t ,

b r o k e n  w i t h  p e o p l e  h o a r d I n g

   from “Cognitive Overload Virtually Invites Disaster — 19”

 

 

he broke my mother’s body

                to create something sacred

   from “The Glass Studio: I must go back”

 

 

                                                             …as if it were

 

my body, it broke. But I forgive you for the miracle

of everything you shatter.

   from “Oracle”

 

 

                                         not comprehending

                                   what glass stood for: breakable,

                       unbroken, seamless, flat.

   from “Properties of Glass”

 

The Dresser notes that broken and fragile things are featured in Sandra Yannone’s The Glass Studio, a collection of poetry published in 2024  from the Irish press salmonpoetry. Some of the broken things are massive—New York’s Twin Towers and the people who perished there during the terrorist attack of 9/11, the Titanic ship that hit an iceberg sending its passengers into icy waters, the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died and 53 others were injured. While all the poems employ the word glass, over half of the poems in this collection use some version of the word break, including the last poem “The Glass Studio — Glass eyes, glass flowers, glass attics and floors”, which ends “Now go home to your glass house and unpack every glass mirror you forever hoped to break.”

 

This work is about the fragile proposition of living and finding connection through love. The opening poem “Cut Glass” makes this clear as the “I” narrator, presumably the poet, gives her lover a jar of tap water and sea glass “worn down/by years/of turbulent waves/and rocks.” In a way, this odd gift is like a snow globe meant to be shaken. But unlike the scene of snow falling over an idyllic landscape, this jar when disturbed  floats glass that cuts, has cut the poet marring her once perfect skin.

 

What is perfectly intact is this intelligent and sensitively arranged work of 36 well-sculpted poems presented in four sections, most prefaced by a quote on glassmaking and each ending with a poem entitled “The Glass Studio.” Variety prevails in terms of poetic forms used but also includes a sestina in every section. Other forms include sonnets, prose poems, quatrains, couplets, tercets, a variety of indented and interleaved poems where alternating lines hug the left and then the right margin.

 

A less familiar form occurs in “Cognitive Overload Virtually Invites Disaster — 19”, a pandemic lockdown poem where even the letters of the words observe “social distancing.” Toward the end of “Cognitive Overload…”, comes this line: “W I l l  t h I s  p o e m  b e  m y  f I n a l  l o v e r ?” Here this meta poetic question elevates the plight of the poet by superimposing a capital I (to emphasize the first-person point of view) in the words wIll, thIs, and fInal. It is part of the poet’s cognitive overload. Cognitive overload occurs when the brain gets too much information and stops working. Not all the i’s in the poem are capitalized and the Dresser guesses that not every reader will notice the emphasis the poet is placing on the letter I.

 

Poetry of merit deserves rereading, and, in that rereading, one hopes to discover something new. The Glass Studio is a book to slowdown for, to let its letters, words, forms, and meanings have time to coalesce as the making of a stain glass window might. In other words, Sandra Yannone practices careful craftsmanship in her glass studio.

Of Love and Monsters

 

 

 

The desire to be held looms large in T. De Los Reyes book of poetry And Yet Held. The fruition of that desire comes despite obstacles.

 

                                     …you looked at me from

across the room in a way that made me feel held.

Oh, how I am but skin fragmented by touch, from

which a little flower blooms amidst all the wreckage.

And, having been found, waits to be kissed.

[excerpt, “Debris”]

 

 

                                  …Can you hold me when I am

unbearable and especially then. What I mean when

 

I say thirst is your eyes drinking me in, telling me

you’ll dig through bones and cinders just to be here,

 

wherever here is.

[excerpt, “Forest Fire”]

 

 

                          …Wasn’t I scared of dying

…

collision, accidental fires, earthquakes…

…

I am terror struck by the monster living under

my skin…

And hadn’t you draped your shadow around

my shoulders saying, I will hold you, I will hold

you now and always…

[excerpt, “Umbra”]

 

And Yet Held is a love story with monsters and some of those monsters like the one named in “Umbra” reside in the narrator. In her seven-part poem “Monsters”, the poet deals with an all devouring and wild love which she compares to possibly a one-night stand that made the narrator feel the shame of racism and not being seen. The wild lover makes the narrator feel equally monstrous in a good way: “I am your/ leviathan among the woods” and unafraid of being seen: “No one can stop me/ from holding your hand,/ not even the demons that/ corrupt their heart.”

 

In this time where many poets, writers, and ordinary people speak of loneliness and heartbreak, this beautifully produced book with a hand touching flowers on its predominantly blue cover  (Durham, NC: Bull City Press, 2024) explodes with the galactic light of love:

 

                  …What I love about a ship going

to deep space is the proximity near light

and darkness and the reluctant decay of

days and years. When you kiss me I forget

my name. I forget myself. I recognize only

the skin and bones that house this body.

Permission to disturb the gods in slumber.

Permission to scatter, as if hundreds of fish

in the warm sea, as if an exploding star.
[excerpt, “Near Light”]

 

 

T. De Los Reyes, a Filipino poet and designer, is author of Woeman, a poetry chapbook. She has been published in such journals as Crazyhorse, Hobart After Dark, and Pleiades.