Dictador

1988, Matagalpa. He has my Lake Woebegone hat;
I, his Sandinista fatigue cap in return. 

AP 19 September, 2022, San Diego

US migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua Soars in August

The number of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans taken into custody at the US border with Mexico soared in August as migrants from Mexico and traditional sending countries were stopped less frequently, authorities said Monday. 

Those are people voting with their feet. As I said last month in writing about failed states (September, '22: For Whom Tolls That Bell?) 

I watch Nicaragua with a special interest

In the spring of 1988, I was single and footloose, awaiting final divorce papers to come through. Plymouth Congrergational, of which I was a member, announced a mission trip to deliver medicines and school supplies to one of our sister-churches, Iglesia Morava, in Managua. The Brother/Sister Church Committee welcomed my inquiry about joining the delegation. I sought the opportunity not out of any particular churchiness but my need to leave behind the tension of the prior year's wrestle with  questions of divorce, the need to burn some vacation time, and my curiosity about who was telling the bigger lies, the Reagan Administration or Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas.

For the first in a long time, I was travelling not as a VIP mucky-muck officer of Genral Mills, Marriott or Westin. We were traveling budget-class, hopefully well under the radar of Contras and US embargoes, and staying in third-rate hotels, sometimes sharing rooms, . But my six fellow-delegates quickly classified me as one of the "they" as in 'they' don't dare have Marxists succeed in the Americas; 'they' want to restore United Fruit's and other corporations' grip on Latin America; 'they' can't tolerate Liberation Theology's challenge to the church establishment and business elites; 'they' just want to sell arms to dictators; and so on.

It was a heady experience. My eyes were opened in more ways than one. Later, that autumn, I gave a talk to a skeptical Downtown Rotary audience, an illustrated speech I titled "Go and See for Yourself", the point being that neither the Reaganites nor the Sandinistas were worthy of trust and one should trust your eyes. 

Earlier this year, Ann and I digitized all, i.e., hundreds and hundreds, of her and my old 35mm slides, and there among them my 34yr-old Nicaragua shots. And recently, after posting about failed states, I pulled out and re-read my journal of that fascinating trip. And thus, this post. 

The question today is how did Daniel Ortega evolve from the idealistic poet, convicted bank robber, exiled Cuban-trained revolutionary of the '70s, and disciple of the liberal populism of Sandino, into the absolute, self-serving dictator of 2022? Could it have been avoided? It's too late in the case of Ortega and Erdogan and Orban, but can we help others and ourselves avoid eruptions of autocracy? Must democratic processes carry within them the seeds of their self-destruction? Does democratic republicanism mean the dictate of the majority or the protection of the minority, or both? Were the doubts of Washington and Jefferson, of Madison and Hamilton and Franklin right after all? Or can we make this work?

The Trip

Yes, the trip was about extending a hand to a struggling congregation of fellow Christians and delivering embargoed medicines and school supplies to families in need. But it was also, thanks to our hosts, a marvelous education of us delegates, an opportunity to see, hear, smell, and feel the birth of a society that had thrown off shackles and were exploring how to become just, what equality means in practice, and how to peacefully resolve opposing voices in the public square. Still important questions today, especially here in these dis-United States. 

92 pages for a ten day trip

No day-by-day account but let the pictures and captions tell the tale. Italicized captions are quotes from the trip journal. 

(Re the photos: click on them to open a film strip. Click on a photo to enlarge and further enlarge by swiping apart with two fingers.)

(I can't believe anyone would want a copy of the 92-page, contemporaneous, handwritten journal, but I'd be happy to send them one.)

You had to go in through Canada, Scandinavia, or Mexico. We went and returned through Mexico. Most of the delegation had not traveled internationally; it was clown car time: lost passports; wrong terminals; no interlining, i.e., nine crates of medicines lugged from one airline to another; left backpacks; an overbooked Mexicana flight with four seats for the seven of us. The next day, we reconvened and via Aeronica, arrived in Managua -- immigration, full inspections of all cargo, declarations and finally into the welcoming arms of our Iglesia Morava hosts plus, from Turnica, the national tourist bureau, a "translator" whose secret dream was to get to the U.S.

The Museum of the Revolution is really devoted 
to anti-American intervention. Characterized the
occupations by US Marines from 1914 - '25
and again 1926 - '33 as "genocides." Sandino led
the revolt that drove out the Marines. The US
set up the National Guard and put a guy named
Somoza in charge.

Managua Cathedral, 1988.
It since has been replaced by a modernistic
cathedral, but that, in turn, has been 
firebombed by radicals and besieged by
Ortega's security forces for giving 
sanctuary to hunger strikers. 

An earthquake victim.
In '88: there is no city. Just a sprawl of one story homes
ranging from nice brick and cinderblock with tile roofs
to squalid plank huts with corrugated tin roofs. All
are latticed, gated, grilled, barred with ornamental 
wrought iron. Only the lowliest of shanties, mainly 
for war refugees from the north, are without
ornamental iron. 

In '88, there was no there there in Managua. The Spanish conquerors had never thought to ask the natives why they did not settle on that beautiful lakefront land. They found out: earthquake-alley. The Christmas Earthquake of '72 flattened 6,000 homes and buildings, 75% of Managua; destroyed the Cathedral; and spelled the beginning of revolution as Samoza and his pals pocketed millions in international relief funds and left a pile of rubble which wasn't cleared and replanted as pasture until the '80s.

Needs no commentary

Subsistence rations in the Atlantico
region.

We met with legislators, gov't spokesmen, 
publishers, opposition leaders (above),
churchmen, labor leaders, teachers. We 
couldn't meet Contras. Everyone tells conflicting
versions.

Homemade shrines to martyrs
abound; this one to a 20-year old 
"Fallen Hero." Killed in the battle of 
el Naranjo "por la liberacion de su
patria."

Grave of Seattleite Ben Linder, 26, captured 
by Contras near Matagalpa while 
surveying for a village-scale hydro-electric
turbine installation to power irrigation
pumps. Summarily shot in back of head.   

In '88, the median age was 17. Today it's 26.
The giggles are for the photographer -- one of 
their classmates using my camera.

This 13 year-old street entrepreneur would take 
your picture, develop under the hood, and
hand you a 2" x 2" wallet print. I wonder what
he owns today.

A Liberation Theology Catholic 
Church, strongly opposed by the 
Archbishop, thronged for a Friday 
night Mass. Here, the last communion
I ever took.

Sandino is everywhere, especially in the villages.

Dr. Fernando Silva, Director of 
"La Mascota" Pediatric Hospital 
who, when asked what he needed,
shocked us with his answer:
sutures. Twice escaped attempted
assassination by Somoza's National 
Guard and forced to flee the country. 

Sister Mary Hartmann, Order of St. Agnes, 
Dir. of the National Commission for 
Protection of Human Rights. She documented
CIA-trained Contra terrorizing rural areas.

Infrastructure: the road to Matagalpa. Up to our 
hubs in sand. A guy on a tractor pulled us out.

 

The daily meeting at the US Embassy of the US
Residents' Committee against intervention, duly
filmed and recorded by the guards at the gate.
Today, a guest delegation from Mexico whose
leader shouted a rouser of a speech to the
Embassy about not screwing around with
Latin America as you have been doing
these last 140 years. 

We got into the National Assembly and watched
debate and voting on reforms to bring self-gov't
to municipalities. At least seven parties, with 
Sandinistas holding a plurality but no majority.
Lobbyists and deal making -- just like the Calif 
legislature; Reagan would have recognized it
in a minute and felt right at home. 

Trip Findings

Both Ortega and Reagan were telling whoppers, but Reagan's the bigger ones. This benighted, victimized country of 5 million was no threat to us nor even to its neighbors, democratic Costa Rica or to rightist thugs of El Salvador and Guatamala. The Nicaraguans had earned the sympathy and tolerance of the Brits, the Danes, the Swedes, the Belgians in addition to the as-one-would-expect Cubans, Venezuelans, Roumanians, Bulgarians and other Eastern-bloc tag-alongs (though not so much the Soviets who by the late '80s had grown weary and wary of idealistic, rervolutionary poets who rob banks for the cause.) Reagan's Contras were murderous terrorists, our then version of today's ISIS; his diplomats hukered down inside their gated stockade, ears plugged with ideological wax, determined not to hear and see, much less meet and talk.

I had to be careful with the Seattle's upright and proper Rotarians, of course, so I just showed them what I had seen and suggested that they go to trouble-spots and see for themselves rather than drink either the right or left lemonade on offer. 

2022: Ortega is Dictador

How did we get here? How did Commandante Daniel get here, 35 years on, today's autocratic master of Nicaragua? First of all, persistence.  In 1990, Ortega was defeated in his first re-election bid by Violeta Chamorro, widow of slain opposition La Prensa publisher, Pedro Juaquin Chamorro. Violeta was once a supporter of Sandinistas but later turned off by Ortega's radicalization. Daniel ran again in '96, losing to a church and business candidate representing a coalition of conservative, nationalist, and socialist parties including even the Nicaraguan Communist Party. Defeated a third time in 2002, he retired from politics. In 2005, he married Rosario Murillo, a once-exiled revolutionary and Sandinista activist.

By 2005, the ineptitude and impotence of coalition governments was evident. Coalitions could win the Presidency but couldn't govern. Sandinista leadership, bolstered by rural popularity, called on him to return. He forsook Marxism and radicalism, ran on a platform of "Christianity, Socialism and Solidarity," and claimed that "Jesus Christ is my hero now."  He supported the conservative legislature's new law banning all abortions. (The law still stands.) His hypocritical run was successful. Elected President in 2007 and given a Sandinista majority in the National Legislature, he now had all the tools he needed for a text-book majoritarian autocracy.

First focus : reform of the judiciary, done through a 1998 Sandinista agreement with the leading opposition party to share Supreme Court appointments from lower-court incumbents, then through flooding lower court candidates with Sandinista members. By 2007, Sandinista judges made up the majority of the Supreme Court. 

In 2009, his politicized Supreme Court changed the Constitution to allow Presidents to run for consecutive second terms; 2011 and 2016, amended again to allow unlimited, five-year terms. Ortega re-elected in 2011, 2016, and 2021. His wife, Rosario Murillo, has served as his Vice President since 2016. 

Concurrently, he began to purge independent media through administrative censorship and licensing moves, then to take control of or assure broadcast and print media were in hands of loyal Sandinistas. Since 2007, 54 news outlets have been closed down, eleven media managers jailed, and 140 journalists forced into exile.

He legislatively turned the army into a national police force under his command. Student protests in 2018 resulted in the deaths of 300 protesters at the hands of the army. Subsequent trials of survivors were blatantly and harshly pro-government. Murillo declared the 2018 protests "an invasion of evil spirits . . . who want evil to reign in Nicaragua." 

He has jailed opposition leaders, disenfranchised opposition parties, had priests and bishops arrested and most recently passed a law making criticism of the government a criminal offense. He now has effective control of the police, the judiciary, and the legislature -- all dressed in laws and court endorsements. A majoritarian autocracy; a government by dictate.

The ultimate hypocrisy: two days ago, he called the Roman Catholic Church a "dictatorship." 

What drives a person to become a dictator?

It takes, my view, four dominant character traits and beliefs to make a dictator out of any stripe of politician:

1. Empowerment: they agree with me, they like me.
2. Enlightenment: I know what is best for my people, my nation.
3. Indispensability: it all depends on me, "I alone can fix it."
4. Belief that ends do justify means: ruthless measures are necessary to achieve my goals.      

And all this results in a fifth characteristic,
      5. Entitlement: I deserve whatever I want for all I have done for my people.

 

For Whom Tolls That Bell?

Who owns failed States? Who answers the bell? 

Failed States: the alarm bells are ringing more often. I define a failed state (other folks have other definitions) as a government incapable of protecting its citizens from physical harm, incapable of delivering essential public services, unable to exert authority over its citizens and borders, powerless to stop increasing inequity. What causes them? What problems do they pose, and to whom? More important, what should be done about one, if anything, and by whom: leave it to them, their neighbors, those affected, those who contributed to their failure, or larger communities of NGOs, institutions as the UN, WTO, World Bank, the IMF, and/or coalitions of healthy states? Just as many cities are afflicted with homelessness, the world is becoming afflicted with the helpless and hapless trapped in failed states.

 I do not have answers. My purpose here is not to prescribe but to get you thinking about these questions because with the advance of sea levels, temperatures, storms and droughts; the increase in migration and ethnic confrontations; the breakdown of constraints against war, violence and insurrection; the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and growing inequality, failed states and what to do about them will become uppermost in the lives of your children and grandchildren.

Yemen: #1 on the Fragile States Index

Topmost on lists of failed states is Yemen, proxy for murderous competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yemenis are abandoned victims of man-made disaster.

 The widely accepted measure of failure, The Fragile States Index, is compiled annually by The Fund for Peace, an international mediation and data-driven not-for-profit org based in Abuja and Washington, DC. It assesses 179 countries and tracks 12 categories of indicators of the risks and vulnerabilities faced by each. An index of 120 is total collapse; an index of over 100 indicates high likelihood of failure. This year, Yemen is at 111.7. Others over 100 in the latest index: Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Chad, and Myanmar. Fast approaching the 100 club are Burkina Faso, Haiti, and Lebanon.

The ten least fragile, i.e., the most stable, are (as you might guess, the usual suspects) Finland @15.1, followed by Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, Ireland, and Sweden. Others of our counterparts, as Germany, The UK, Japan, South Korea, France, Italy and Spain all score better, i.e., are less fragile, than the US @ 46.6.

My friend, David S, has a special interest in Nigeria. It ranks 16^th most fragile of the 179, @97.2, with “factionalized elites”, lack of “public services”, and “demographic pressures” its most glaring weak spots. And it’s worsening.

I watch Nicaragua with concern – I’ve been there –because of historic US antipathy and Daniel Ortega’s turn to unalloyed dictatorship. I am surprised it scores only 77.7; its main weak spot is, of course, what Fund for Peace calls “state legitimacy.”

I went to Nicaragua in 1988, at the height of the Contra War out of curiosity about who was telling the bigger lies, the Reaganites or Daniel’s Sandinistas. Recently, Ann and I digitized all our slides, including those 34-year-old slides of Nicaragua. Yesterday, I pulled out and read again my 92-page travel journal; it brought back anew the vivid moments of that heady trip. But I will write about Nicaragua then and now another time.

So, is Nicaragua on track to become a failed state? Apparently, not soon. Fragility is not a matter of political system but of delivering the goods. Life there is tolerable so long as you don’t care to have a voice, are content with censored news and state-managed propaganda, and willingly keep your head down. Like life for a Chinese or Hungarian or Russian.

It’s Not Whether But How. It’s Not Later But Now.

Whether or not Nicaragua or Nigeria become failed states, the larger questions loom: what should be our response to state failure? Who should do what? Who takes responsibility? How will we decide? Will the world just react crisis by crisis or will we develop strategies to foresee, forestall, and mitigate damage? Will each country react alone, universal NIMBY-like, or will we apply our strengths in concert?

Who’s next? Lebanon? Venezuela? Nuclear-armed Pakistan? Iraq? (“if you break it you own it.”) The sea is rising, droughts drier, fires hotter, floods deeper, tornados stronger. Migrants are on the move. Ethnic conflicts are flaring up. Anxiety, suspicion of the “other”, threat of loss eat away at the foundations of community.  

I don’t have answers, for there will be multiple answers for different situations. But we must develop a consensus on communal strategies and mechanisms for caring for citizens victimized in and by a failed state. The time for debate is now.

Long Live Elizabeth's Example; Long Live King Charles

While not a monarchist, I am a figureheadist. Figureheads, if skillful, if empathetic, if accessible and visible -- as was Elizabeth Windsor -- can be a commonwealth asset, a shared identity symbol in the same way as is joining together to sing a national anthem whether republican or democrat, conservative or liberal, native born or immigrant, black, brown, red, yellow, pinkish gray, or blue. (cf We Need a New National Anthem, below, July, 2022.)

Charles has chosen to become Charles, the Third. (They do have a choice and don't, as do we, have to go to court to change their name. Even the dramatic change from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, in 1917, was done simply by royal decree.) But as for "Charles": to this Anglophile, that is an inauspicious choice. 

Charles the First's head was separated from his body in 1649. Charles the Second kept secret his Catholicism after pledging faith to the Episcopal Church of England. He also broke his marriage vows to Catherine. He treated Parliaments with disdain. He was haughty and dissolute, and barely avoided being driven from the throne, as was his son just three years after his death in 1685. 

For three hundred years, kings of Britain have eschewed the name Charles; they opted to be a George, a William, or an Edward. But now the Brits have a Charles again. 

I hope it works out. Long Live King Charles III.

Live Opera Again!

Ann has brought many grand gifts into my life, among them the joy of sailboat gunkholing in the Salish Sea, the exhaustions of biking (back before my wobblies,) the magic of cross-country skate skiing in The Methow and Sun Valley, the majesties of mountain hiking in the Dolomites and Cascades, and my growing appreciation of Opera.  Those first ones are fast becoming memories as age overwhelms us, but we can still sit and watch and listen and learn.

Live Opera Again!

Ann and I relished return of live performance, first in Naples in June and here in Seattle earlier this month.

Ann awaits overture, Teatro San
Carlo, Naples (2022)

In Naples, we snagged spur of the moment tix to Evgenii Onegin, by Ćajkovskij, as they spell him. We were headed out of our hotel in Galleria Umberto to embark on a walking tour of Naples and there, right across the street: Teatro de San Carlo.  Yes, the season was on. Yes, they were performing during our stay. Yes, that very evening in fact. Yes, they had seats available.

It was a wonderful production: imaginative staging; full complement of chorus and orchestra; great casting in character, i.e. youthful and attractive; good acting; three fine voices singing Tatyana, Evgenii, and Lenski. Based on Pushkin’s novel, Onegin explores the pettiness of social conventions, rejection, remorse and loss. Super-titles in Italian and English. (Unlike once in Aix en-Provence, listening to Janacek’s Prihody Iisky Bystrousky, The Clever Little Vixen, sung in Czech while struggling to read super-titles in French!) In Naples, the sitting bit was via velvet upholstered armchairs.

1960 500 -- Still Tearing About (2022) 

Seattle’s return to McCaw Hall after a two year hiatus was also wonderful: L’elisir d’amore, The Elixir of Love, by Gaetano Donizetti. It is an over-the-top, slapstick opera buffa with one redeeming feature, Nemarino’s thrilling tenor aria, Una Furtiva Lagrima. In the end, off he and Adina went in his MG Midget; better had it been a period FIAT 500, like those in which we raced about Modica last April. And Dr. Dulcamara is left to scam the gullible villagers en masse (just as Dr. Oz is wont to do this November in Pennsylvania.)

The Met Live in HD

Don’t misunderstand me: virtual productions can be thrilling, too, but in a different way. Over the past few years, Ann and I have spent many a Saturday morning in movie houses watching The Met Live in HD: real-time, Saturday matinee Metropolitan Opera productions satellite beamed around the world into local theatres and onto their large screens. It’s a completely different experience from live attendance: multi-camera angles and close-ups; backstage interviews with principals during intermissions; and watching scrambling but professional stagehands whisk away the cathedral and install a chandelier-lighted ballroom in those twenty minutes between acts. You watch over the shoulder of the production chief and hear her or his call “Maestro to the podium, please; Maestro to the podium” and you’re off on another voyage into make believe, emotion and music. 

Since launched in 2006, Met Live in HD has introduced tens of thousands to opera, sold 28million tickets in 70 countries around the world, and generated around $25mm gross for the cash strapped Met each season. More important, it has changed opera production forever. Where once a 280 pound, 44-year-old soprano with stunning voice could get away with playing svelte, sixteen-year-olds Isolde or Juliette because the audience was there for her voice and sat a long way back from the stage. But today’s audiences, with those close-ups, in addition to superb singing, demand looking the role, acting skills, and beauty.

 . . . as Carmen

Garanca -- diva . . .

And beauties we get. Eliña Garanĉa

as Carmen, no dessert tart, she, but one for whom we would desert.
Natalie Dessay as Donizetti’s Lucia sprawled head down at the bottom of the staircase in the mad scene, singing her soul out.  And, of course, Renee Fleming singing anybody, anything.

Renee Fleming

(These from the web.)

Whether fan or not, when the winter blahs set in, take a Saturday morning with The Met. Next up: Medea, Oct.22^nd. Check https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/ to find your local venue.

Oh, those Austrians

Liza, left; Corriell, right. Salzburg (2010)

“Renee Fleming” -- she brings back memories of 2010 in Vienna. We took granddaughters Corriell and Liza Stoner on their first trip to Europe. We chose Austria, figuring that they would tick off London, Paris, Rome and Berlin on their own in another few years.  Good choice: scenery, art, history, and schokolade.

In Vienna one morning, Ann spotted a Staatsoper poster for Renee Fleming appearing that night in Strauss’ Capriccio. It was, of course, SRO, but Fleming is tops among Ann’s favorites; would the American teenage sisters like to try opera? Sure!

To buy one of Staatsoper’s treasured 150 SRO tickets, one physically has to be present in line by late afternoon, and have passed inspection of the uniformed Line-Marshall policing shorts, bare feet, mini-skirts, tank tops male or female, and other touristy no-nos. Ann and I were safely in line at around #25 or so and had passed Gimlet Eye’s inspection, but the girls who had gone off on their own that afternoon were nowhere to be seen. Time grew short, anxiety grew, the SRO doors opened and in we filed to claim our spots on the tiers. Each tier has a railing for your support and on which is mounted a little screen for digital display of sub-titles in the language of your choice. We had given up on the Stoner gals and then, gaily greeting us, came care-free Corriell and Liza holding tickets # 149 and 150!

Once the SRO’s are in place, there is quite a period before doors are opened for seated attendees – you don’t want patrons mixing with SRO riff-raff, afterall. We left a sweater draped over the rail to hold our spots, gathered the girls and went off to the restaurant for a snack. I was self-conscious because we had not planned for any dress-up times on this trip, so I had no sport coat much less a dress shirt and tie. But with my black jeans, a pair of black loafers and a black turtleneck, I passed. I thought.

Sitting nearby in the restaurant was an elderly, aristocratic couple, he mustachioed and in white tie and tux. As he passed our table to exit, he paused, looked down at me, and audibly sniffed his disdain. “Did you see that” fumed Liza, who wanted to challenge him to a duel. Oh, those Viennese, indeed.  

Capriccio is not ideal for a first exposure to Opera – lots of recitative, no memorable arias to become ear worms – but the girls loved it, to Ann’s delight and my relief (Jeez, Mom, they made us go to an opera, ugh!)

My opera journey: The Met and I

When I started dating Ann in the fall of 1988, I knew nothing about opera – despite having appeared in a dozen or so -- with The Met, no less!

 What!?

Yes, me.

In the mid-70’s, I happened to meet at a Minneapolis cocktail party a guy who had just finished appearing with The Met as a supernumerary during its annual summer tour of Minneapolis. Barbara (my first wife) and I weren’t opera goers, but that sounded like a real kick. The next summer, following his instructions, I showed up at U of Minn’s Northrup Auditorium for audition and I was in the super squad. A “super”, you understand, goes where he is directed, does what he is told, and keeps his mouth shut. Over the next four years, I was variously a crucified prisoner in Aida, a serf appearing twice in Boris Godunov, a naval officer, a priest, a Cardinal, a street bystander, and so on.

What does one wear to be crucified?
Aida (1980)

 We would be “cast” purely on age and stature: “OK, I need a Pope; you: Pope. Two Cardinals; you and you. Six priests; you, #1, you, #2, you, #3, . . .” and like that. Then the assistant would holler “OK, standard bearers, Act II, scene 2, now pay attention: you walk up stage when prompted, line up across the back, turn toward the audience, and plant your flagstaff like this. OK? Walk through, follow #1. Fine; go down to make-up and get fitted for costume.” In the meantime, the basso is wandering about warming up his voice singing dirty limericks. An hour later, curtain goes up. Another hour and a half later, Act II: now, after having schmoozed with stagehands, had a beer and brat from the commissary, and taken pictures of each other, the get ready call comes. You panic because you’re not really sure what the hell you were told way back then. Anyway, the prompt comes, “OK, standard bearers, go!” and you find yourself marching onto stage with lights in your eyes keeping you from seeing the thousand faces you know are out there. It is a kick.

But with all the distractions, you learn nothing about the opera and don’t experience as a whole, as does the audience. So, yes, ten years post-Met, I knew nothing about opera.

The Ring and I

The first opera Ann and attended together in the fall of ’88 was Massenet’s Werther. I remember giggling inappropriately as Werther picked up his revolver to blow out his brains over what he assumed was unrequited love. He’s mistaken but mortally wounded when she admits her love. He dies; she swoons; Fletch giggles – all very French. We’ve been opera goers and ticket holders ever since and have seen the Seattle Opera grow into a very accomplished company.

Seattle decided to make its mark in the opera world with quadrennial productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle as Der Ring des Nibelungs has come to be called (same inspiration as for Tolkien.) I knew little about Wagner other than the Nazis liked him, therefore I didn’t. When the Ring came along in 2001, Ann and I both took off a week from work and attended workshops and seminars; back-of-house tours of costume shop, set construction, how to make Valkyries fly and funeral biers burn; pre-concert lectures; and the four operas – Das Rheingold, Die Walkϋre, Siegfried, and Gӧtterdӓmmerung -- in five nights, 16 hours of Wagner.

 I learned a lot about Wagner, that bi-polar/manic-depressive antisemite (who used the sophism ‘I’m not prejudiced, one of my best friends is a ________.’ Fill in the blank: Muslim, Jew, Black, Mexican, whatever. All antisemites use it as every Jew knows.) Most composers work with lyricists; Wagner worked with himself. Over ten years, he wrote the book and the librettos for all four operas before starting to compose the music for the first! He developed the use of motif, a musical signature for each character. He founded a festival and built Bayreuth, the temple to which Wagnerians from all over the world make their annual pilgrimage. At our 2001 Ring (we’ve since done one other) a lecturer asked us to raise our hands if we’ve done more than one -- three? – five? – ten? – fifteen? The last hand standing: 23!    

 I also learned something about myself. Ann likes memorable arias and the sweep of grand music. I like those too, but I am more focused on plot and the psychology and cultural values being presented. I’ve learned about national character; seen how Italian operas reflect different persona and world views from those of the German, the French from the English and Russian and so on.

Khrushchev, Eisenhower, and Porgy and Bess

As I reflect on all this, I am struck by a memory from 1955, my Junior year at Hamilton. Being a super with The Met was not my first brush with opera, after all.

In the mid-fifties, the State Dept was experimenting with cultural exports as an arrow in our quiver in the  Cold War between US and Soviet hegemony. In 1955, State funded a company of Porgy and Bess starring Leontyne Price as Bess, William Warfield as Porgy, and Cab Calloway as Sportin’ Life. It toured various European and Russian cities to great acclaim.

That Spring, State previewed their production at their Foggy Bottom HQ. Dad loved Gershwin and Porgy and Bess so for their April anniversary, I gave Mom, Dad and myself tickets. What a night – of entertainment, of feeling very grown-up to be treating my parents, of seeing opera for the first time. I still love P&B, especially “Summertime, when the livin’ is easy.”

Fandom

Ann has turned me into a fan. Not the kind who can debate this singer vis-à-vis that, but a fan with opinions nonetheless. I once scandalized a discussion group of psychoanalyst and psychiatrist opera buffs to which a friend invited us, ‘Opera on the Couch’ they called themselves, by panning La Boehme for cardboard-thin stereotypes – the struggling painter, the poet, the playwright, the gold-digging courtesan – and that Poor-Me-Mimi, she’s a joke. Those Bohemians as stereotypes: did Puccini use them or did he create them stereotype? Whatever, we weren’t invited back. 

Opera has enriched my life, my interests, my travels. On a repeat stay in Rome,

Chagall (a favorite) ceiling of Palais de Garnier
(2013)

Castel Sant’Angelo took on a completely different meaning from my earlier visit because of Tosca. Knowing something of the works makes admiring opera houses, as Paris’s Palais de Garnier, Vienna’s Weiner Staatsoper, Palermo’s Teatro Massimo (second largest in Europe), Naples’ Teatro de San Carlo, the Oslo Opera House, or New York’s Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, more than just “seein’ the sights.” (One night in the late ‘70s, I took Harvey Robinson to The Met, can’t remember which opera, on my first visit to the Lincoln Center Opera House. It was she [yes, Harvey is a she] who taught me to cocktail on champagne at the Stamford Court, while in San Francisco to testify at the FTC’s 1978 hearings re advertising to children. I see that the FTC is re-visiting the subject this fall. I’m glad those days are far behind me.)

Puccini ended Tosca with the fat lady singing
as she leapt from Castel Sant'Angelo to
evade retribution for killing Scarpia, her
sexual predator (2006)

I have come to view opera as the ultimate performance art – acting, drama, myth and story, psychology of enmity, and music orchestral and vocal – cultural touchstones for peoples throughout the world. (Even the Chinese have theirs; I once sat through a half in Beijing.)

Yes, Ann’s given me fandom.

Two Italian Trips in Sixty Days -- Isn't That a Bit Much?

Well, no.  As a great American philosopher, Mae West, used to say, "too much of a good thing -- is just right." 

Ann and I had spent much of April on our first foray into the south of Italy: Puglia, Basilicatta, and Sicily. Then we were invited to fill in for parents of our daughter-in-law, Michele Janes, at a COVID-delayed, Fischbach family reunion. Kathy and Mike had to pass because of back flare-ups, and so in mid-June were were again in care of Lufthansa, this time to Florence. 

It's true what you read about European travel chaos: delays, missed connections, a hotel layover in Frankfurt, arrival a day late, and lost luggage on the return. But the renovated farm house finally reached in Castellina in Chianti made a lovely, quiet and peaceful base. Cam had picked a winner. We nine gathered there were Michele’s brother, David Fischbach, who lives in Leipzig, and his wife Frieda and 3-yr old Tavi, charming companions; and Michele and Cam, our son/her husband, and Max and Mollie Janes, our two adolescent grandkids.

Castellina in Chianti; a commune of 2800 souls, 45 minutes south of Florence, 20 mins. north of Siena, and 40 mins. due east of San Gimignano. The house is way out in the country at the end of a “white road”, an Italian euphonism for an unpaved, dusty, rutted track gravelled with limestone. Anyway, it was well-worth the trek – beautifully landscaped with pool, bathhouse, lovely kitchen and living spaces, five air-conditioned bedrooms (it was near 100F all the time) and four baths, and airy out-buildings. 

We did the obligatory Florence visit one day amid hordes of tourists, though far fewer than Ann and I experienced in pre-COVID times. Incidentally, on the whole, Italians were masked and cautious but the tourists must have thought they were bullet-proof. Another day, an outing to Montepulciano.

 Ann and I spent more time in Siena. Cam had enrolled us in Scuola di Cucina di Lella, which turned out to be great fun. We made our dinner of bread soup, grilled chicken, picci with a tomato-garlic-basil-pinenuts sauce, and panna cotta for desert. (We later learned that Christopher,  Ann's nephew, and AnnaMaria, his fiancé, earned spare cash working there as translators for Lella during their time at an international college in Siena: small world.) 

After five days basking in the peace of Castellina, Ann and I took a Frecciarossa, a high-speed bullet train, from Florence to Naples, which neither of us had before visited and about which we were curious because of our recent trip to Sicily. We cruised the countryside at 243km/h. After a harrowing cab ride down the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic, we got to a wonderful refuge: The Art Hotel Galleria Umberto.

 I’m glad now to have seen Naples – once. Naples is all that Castellina is not: crowded, frenetic, like an anthill cut through by a plow, and the noise -- everyone lives at the top of their lungs. 3mm people, 2mm of them scooting about on 1mm motorbikes, “mottos” – loud, stinky and threatening – and 1500 historic cathedrals and churches catering to the 5% who attend on occasion.

 We were waved off climbing Vesuvius in light of my age and the heat. We walked the city and that night caught a production of Evgeny Onegin at the Opera. We were guided through Pompeii one day . We hiked about the Castel of Sant’Elmo, a 14thC Norman fortress lurking high above the city and its harbors. The highlight was a driven tour (you do not want to drive in Naples!) of the Amalfi Coast. It is gorgeous! Big Sur doesn't come close. 

Naples food was great (but we never ordered a pizza; can you believe it?) People-watching: super; the mottos: horrible: and conversations with locals in restaurants always a delight. 

Glad to have spent five days in Naples. Second prize: ten days in Naples.

The House in Castellina in Chianti

Herbs and Bees and Butterflies

Frieda Fischbach and Gustav

The Fischbach clan and fill-ins

The amazing inlaid floors of Siena's Duomo

The Piccolomini Library, Sienna

Max with Lella

Cam's panna cotta

Four Janes make picci

Ann in bathing suit. First since pre-COVID

Ann awaits an overture

The forum of Pompeii
and the destructor lurks in the background 

Ravello, high above the Amalfi Coast

Amalfi

Above Positano

                      

Galleria Umberto

                                                                             

Pasta, seafood, wine and olive oil -- what's not to love?

Not that long ago, American and German 
aircraft took turns bombing the Bay of Naples