not to escape herself but to find herself,
not to abase herself but to assert herself
-- on that day love will become to her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.
In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form
the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe,
woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself.
The innumerable martyrs to love bear witness against the injustice of a fate
that offers a sterile hell as ultimate salvation..."
--Simone de Beauvoir--
She wrote this in mid-20th century. This quote was included in Mui Huong Que -- The Fragrance of Cinnamon -- put to publication in Vietnamese by my parents in 1999, to preface a fiction work written in the late 80s (the period of time when I tried to combine a law firm job with artistic pursuits including dance, theater, and classical singing).
Looking back at the lives of many Vietnamese women, including my loved ones, I have written, too, that the biggest prison for women is their martyrdom and bondage to the concept of love. For that reason, I quoted De Beauvoir, back then: "The innumerable martyrs to love..."
The month of November 2017 was the time for me to look back at my youth during the 1980s and 1990s, among which memory of the performance of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit (Estelle the ingenue, the young woman who escaped herself by seeking the adoration of men as her safety net, such that even in her hellish existence, her self-denial perpetuated).
Sartre's embracing of communism was a turn-off for someone of my background, whose family had lived through what communism meant in the developing Southeast Asia. But as I delved into his written work, I had to acknowledge his literary talents.
I also found De Beauvoir's intellectual writing to be lacking raw magnet; yet, I quoted her because she had described hell in life for womanhood.
Looking back at my own ethnic culture, I also looked back at Mui Huong Que and my other works -- from stage plays that featured the quest for intellect and love, to short stories that rewrote the code of conduct for women, to quotes from de Beauvoir (and even De Sade), to the No Exit performance, and finally the symbolic theme coming out of the loss of Saigon. I personally think that none of these was meant for, or should be read by, my exile community, nor the Vietnamese back home, as many are still in the mode of surviving and recovering, and there was the gap of time, the "catch-up" interval. The seeds for understanding were not planted, hence the gap of misunderstanding too immense to become anything but farce. I found no delight or satisfaction in such gap between authorship and readership.
"Hell is Other People." Hell is here.
---
In this month of November 2017, I also accidentally re-examined the vocal art of Dmitrii Hvorstovsky, before I read anything about him. It is the first time in the history of my beloved operatic art that the man and his honest, true-to-form masculinity becomes inseparable from the nobility of his art, to such paradoxical results, all transformed into such exuberant rawness that awes and succumbs his audience into humility, adoration, and exhilaration.
Allegedly a lyric tenor, somehow Dimitrii became a baritone for various operatic roles, but many classify him as a lyric baritone, light and melodic, with dark timbre and just enough power to carry emotions, dominate the space, conquer the grand theater, rise above and across the orchestra, to electrify, and mesmerize...
I found him fascinating, yet I am also struck with awe for an entire different reason: I saw in him, the beauty of the man and his art, to encompass my notion of "straight is the gate, so strait is the gate"! What's between goodness and evil is simply linear, if we make it linear. So, the notion of a narrow passage.
Frankly, I do not think that Dmitri is classically handsome or the romantic heartthrob for women. In his beauty lies the honest, authentic rough edge that may hurt and not just heal, but it is the rough edge necessary for the best sounds to be delivered, and for the vocal art to thrill on an alluring, magnetic stage that belongs to the 21st century: His posture, concentration, and uninhibited open mouth and lips are what's needed for the best bel canto sounds to emerge. And his stage appeal -- such larger-than-life energy -- is un-apologetically authentic. That's what it takes. Such is the same type of rough edge and magnet appeal that Maria Callas had brought us, in her fleeting moments that lasted for an entire century, and beyond. The difference between them is not just the 20th century versus the 21st, but also female-suffering vulnerability versus male honest, joyous exuberance of power.
Yet in Dmitri art and life, his public has also found the ultimate sensitivity and vulnerability. If Maria was the doomed of love, then Dmitri has become our doomed of fate.
The thrilling yet perplexing nature of his stage presence and his delivery motivated me to sketch my first sci-fi fiction: I sketched the end of the world where the final battle between good and evil takes place in the form of martyrdom: the destruction of female intellect all in the name of love (that which de Beauvoir had hinted): In my sci-fi, it's her love for the irresistible voice of a man!
Then the next thing I knew was: my sci-fi is still in embryo, yet he's gone.
To discuss him and the beauty he represents -- his phenomenal fleeting sparkling streams of vocal (gleaming in darkness as well as under sunshine, in breathtaking sunrise as well as in gloomy sunset -- all in the richness of the age-old operatic art) will require at least...a thousand and one nights!
Unlike Maria Callas of the last century, who left us a rich legacy in the form of her spoken words, Dmitrii, whose voice lifts and ennobles us, leaves the English speaking word too little to give us a pedagogical understanding of his world and his art, except that when he talked to the West, he also talked of his past downfall and vulnerability, as well as his attachment to his homeland: how he treasured the tears of the Siberian audience that constituted his childhood. For sure, we know that he was the People's Artist of Russia, that he immortalized the role of Eugene Onegin and felt challenged by the role's ambivalence, that he also picked the rarely performed The Demon by Anton Rubinstein based on Lermontov's poem of the same title, and that he was cast as Don Juan in Mozart's Don Giovanni) (On the internet, one critic surmised that the charismatic Dmitrii and his director seemed to have left Don Juan's suave seduction in the...dressing room (what a criticism)! This is the only negative review of him, and it concerned his portrayal of Don Juan!).
CROSSING FROM CLASSICAL TO POP AND AN APPEAL TO DARKNESS, FOR A DIFFERENT PUBLIC:
The darker side of Dmitrii Hvorosovsky's art: sung with sensitive lightness, still the same alluring voice. The operatic voice was the result of the natural voice plus a set of skills acquired through arduous exercises, repetitions, maintenance, and perseverance. In this pop tape below, it is his natural voice away from all the rigorous bel canto training and application. The voice becomes a musical instrument housed and hosted by the body, and can be played so many ways.
The beautiful French ballad: story of a tragic heroine who accidentally killed her lover with a kiss and was condemned to hell -- analogous to the story of beautiful Orpheus from Greek mythology, who killed his mate the nymph Eurydice by simply turning to look at her, on their way from Hades back to Life. (I used the Orpheus-Eurydice tale for my own writing, and Maria Callas' J'ai perdu mon Eurydice by Gluck is among my favorites).
The visual theme of torture and dominance found in the tape -- suggestive images and emotions -- has been explored in the contemporary art of the West, time and again (I need not name, from Pauline Reage to Marquis de Sade!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rngFLVEqTo
Sartre's embracing of communism was a turn-off for someone of my background, whose family had lived through what communism meant in the developing Southeast Asia. But as I delved into his written work, I had to acknowledge his literary talents.
I also found De Beauvoir's intellectual writing to be lacking raw magnet; yet, I quoted her because she had described hell in life for womanhood.
Looking back at my own ethnic culture, I also looked back at Mui Huong Que and my other works -- from stage plays that featured the quest for intellect and love, to short stories that rewrote the code of conduct for women, to quotes from de Beauvoir (and even De Sade), to the No Exit performance, and finally the symbolic theme coming out of the loss of Saigon. I personally think that none of these was meant for, or should be read by, my exile community, nor the Vietnamese back home, as many are still in the mode of surviving and recovering, and there was the gap of time, the "catch-up" interval. The seeds for understanding were not planted, hence the gap of misunderstanding too immense to become anything but farce. I found no delight or satisfaction in such gap between authorship and readership.
"Hell is Other People." Hell is here.
---
In this month of November 2017, I also accidentally re-examined the vocal art of Dmitrii Hvorstovsky, before I read anything about him. It is the first time in the history of my beloved operatic art that the man and his honest, true-to-form masculinity becomes inseparable from the nobility of his art, to such paradoxical results, all transformed into such exuberant rawness that awes and succumbs his audience into humility, adoration, and exhilaration.
Allegedly a lyric tenor, somehow Dimitrii became a baritone for various operatic roles, but many classify him as a lyric baritone, light and melodic, with dark timbre and just enough power to carry emotions, dominate the space, conquer the grand theater, rise above and across the orchestra, to electrify, and mesmerize...
Frankly, I do not think that Dmitri is classically handsome or the romantic heartthrob for women. In his beauty lies the honest, authentic rough edge that may hurt and not just heal, but it is the rough edge necessary for the best sounds to be delivered, and for the vocal art to thrill on an alluring, magnetic stage that belongs to the 21st century: His posture, concentration, and uninhibited open mouth and lips are what's needed for the best bel canto sounds to emerge. And his stage appeal -- such larger-than-life energy -- is un-apologetically authentic. That's what it takes. Such is the same type of rough edge and magnet appeal that Maria Callas had brought us, in her fleeting moments that lasted for an entire century, and beyond. The difference between them is not just the 20th century versus the 21st, but also female-suffering vulnerability versus male honest, joyous exuberance of power.
Yet in Dmitri art and life, his public has also found the ultimate sensitivity and vulnerability. If Maria was the doomed of love, then Dmitri has become our doomed of fate.
The thrilling yet perplexing nature of his stage presence and his delivery motivated me to sketch my first sci-fi fiction: I sketched the end of the world where the final battle between good and evil takes place in the form of martyrdom: the destruction of female intellect all in the name of love (that which de Beauvoir had hinted): In my sci-fi, it's her love for the irresistible voice of a man!
Then the next thing I knew was: my sci-fi is still in embryo, yet he's gone.
To discuss him and the beauty he represents -- his phenomenal fleeting sparkling streams of vocal (gleaming in darkness as well as under sunshine, in breathtaking sunrise as well as in gloomy sunset -- all in the richness of the age-old operatic art) will require at least...a thousand and one nights!
Unlike Maria Callas of the last century, who left us a rich legacy in the form of her spoken words, Dmitrii, whose voice lifts and ennobles us, leaves the English speaking word too little to give us a pedagogical understanding of his world and his art, except that when he talked to the West, he also talked of his past downfall and vulnerability, as well as his attachment to his homeland: how he treasured the tears of the Siberian audience that constituted his childhood. For sure, we know that he was the People's Artist of Russia, that he immortalized the role of Eugene Onegin and felt challenged by the role's ambivalence, that he also picked the rarely performed The Demon by Anton Rubinstein based on Lermontov's poem of the same title, and that he was cast as Don Juan in Mozart's Don Giovanni) (On the internet, one critic surmised that the charismatic Dmitrii and his director seemed to have left Don Juan's suave seduction in the...dressing room (what a criticism)! This is the only negative review of him, and it concerned his portrayal of Don Juan!).
CROSSING FROM CLASSICAL TO POP AND AN APPEAL TO DARKNESS, FOR A DIFFERENT PUBLIC:
The darker side of Dmitrii Hvorosovsky's art: sung with sensitive lightness, still the same alluring voice. The operatic voice was the result of the natural voice plus a set of skills acquired through arduous exercises, repetitions, maintenance, and perseverance. In this pop tape below, it is his natural voice away from all the rigorous bel canto training and application. The voice becomes a musical instrument housed and hosted by the body, and can be played so many ways.
The beautiful French ballad: story of a tragic heroine who accidentally killed her lover with a kiss and was condemned to hell -- analogous to the story of beautiful Orpheus from Greek mythology, who killed his mate the nymph Eurydice by simply turning to look at her, on their way from Hades back to Life. (I used the Orpheus-Eurydice tale for my own writing, and Maria Callas' J'ai perdu mon Eurydice by Gluck is among my favorites).
The visual theme of torture and dominance found in the tape -- suggestive images and emotions -- has been explored in the contemporary art of the West, time and again (I need not name, from Pauline Reage to Marquis de Sade!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rngFLVEqTo
An obituary by the Sunday Times - UK -- went into what could be construed as his darker side, including his past rebellious behaviors and subsequent candidness in speaking about himself: smoking and drinking habits, plus he was once known for conflicts with directors and performance schedules, just like the late Maria Callas. The Times also prejudicially stated that his past drinking and smoking were contributing factors to the brain cancer that killed him. I found such statement to be defamatory -- there was no medical evidence whatsoever that linked these conditions. I also felt that substantial drinking and smoking did not go well with the career of an operatic singer and the voice maintenance needed for it -- he would not have been able to keep such gorgeous voice and the demand of singing.
The Times also seemed to attribute his "pop style" tapes such as "Moi et Toi" and "Deja Vu" to effective marketing.
The Times obituary was met with vehement objection from his fans and listeners around the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment