The Return of Old Hurts, and My Take on "Little Women"

Well, it seems I am in a writing mode again, although I have not felt like revisiting my memoir.

I thought I was "done" with a lot of the old hurts that I used to write about, but I just found out that once again my teacher is helming a concert with his opera cronies and I am not in it.  I am done having an argument with him about this. He will just throw out one excuse after another.  I think he began agreeing to participate in nursing home concerts with me because at one point I made noises about leaving him so I could study with a teacher who put on "studio recitals".  Then at least I would have something.

Sadly, if I know how to leave "well enough alone", he doesn't.  His wife sent me an email about their concert which went out to a large email list of "family and friends".  I couldn't help but notice that when she tells people about my concerts with her husband, it's only a few choice people.

Anyhow, when I went for my lesson yesterday I didn't mention the email but when we were done singing my teacher did.  So I told him that first, I am not free on Saturdays, and second, that since I resented not being asked to participate, I wouldn't come anyhow.  Then he said he knew that.  So why did he bring the bleeping subject up???

As I mentioned in my previous post, my anger and sadness about not being able to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies has mostly receded.  Partly because of age, as I said.  All I really want is to do solo singing in front of an audience, wear something glamorous, and eat up the limelight.  So I can do that.  Of course it's not all a walk in the park.  If I want those things, I have to work hard, which I do.  And really church people are a lot nicer than opera people.  Interestingly, my teacher and his wife seem to have made a friendly social life in that milieu but I never found those types of classical singers to be a nice bunch. 

As to the second subject of this post (I guess it's a "twofer") I got to thinking about Little Women again because of the new movie that has come out.  Interestingly, the first chapter of my memoir is partly about my relationship to Little Women and how my mother was bemused by the fact that I did not identify with Jo.  "Don't all brainy women see themselves as Jo?" she would ask.  Well, first, at 11 or 12 I hardly saw myself as a "brainy woman".  I liked to read fiction, but what I liked most was playing the piano and trying new lipstick shades.  As for Jo being an "independent woman", well, in 1962 that was not as anomalous as it was in 1862. Most of the young women in their 20s whom I knew worked after they graduated from college.  Many eventually married and some stayed home (my mother did that and in fact considered being able to stay home a "privilege") but reading and writing was a calling or a job, not a "lifestyle".  I just realized recently that it was probably from reading Little Women and modeling herself on Jo that my mother bought into the trope that "brainy women", women who read and write, don't care about their appearance.  I remember her once talking about a close friend and saying "Well Hattie obviously doesn't take herself seriously as an intelligent woman because she dyes her hair."  To all these points, growing up I certainly didn't see Jo as "rebellious".  She was just like all the "politically correct" women I knew over the years who were always scolding other women for primping, or buying products that they shouldn't.  I mean selling her hair for a greater good? How goody two shoes can you get?  I mean I think it was a noble sacrifice, but it certainly doesn't fit my definition of "rebellious".

My role model as a 13 year old was Kim Novak's Moll Flanders (and after seeing the movie, I read the book). She looked just like me for one thing (at 13 I was five foot six, weighed 155 pounds, wore a bra size 36D, and despite all that extra weight had a tiny waist). Katharine Hepburn I was definitely not.  Recently, I saw the PBS Little Women and decided that if I had to identify with one of the girls it would be Amy.  She took herself seriously as a painter and loved pretty clothes, primping, material comfort, and flirting.

Of course I don't think my mother wanted me to grow up to be a literary spinster like Louisa May Alcott.  At the end of Little Women, Jo marries a professor many years her senior.  My mother did likewise.  Was it because she saw herself as Jo, I wonder? Jo loved the professor because he engaged with her writing (even if only to criticize it) not her femininity.

Ironically, I grew up to be a Lesbian who paired off with a butch who loved me for my beauty (in her eyes) and sweetness. When she could afford it she bought me flowers and jewelry.

Opera, Dickens, and the French Revolution

Since I'll be doing a (small) role in Dialogues of the Carmelites, I have been immersing myself in the French Revolution.

First, I bought a recording of the opera. I wasn't all that familiar with it, only having seen it once, at the Met, years ago in English.

I am going to be playing Mother Jeanne but since I had originally auditioned for Mother Marie, I want to sort of learn her part too (I don't really sightread, but I have a superb ear and can learn music pretty quickly if I listen to it over and over).

Well, after listening to the opera about 6 or 7 times I must say it really gave me the creeps! At the end you can hear the guillotine and at the very end it actually cuts someone off mid-sentence. Then there's just silence. Eerie.

To get myself in the mood I read a novel that I found in my laundry room (where there's a book freecycle) called A Place of Greater Safety. It's loooong, and huge sections were boring, but you really get the flavor of the period, including all the executions.

Then today I spoke to my mother (I'm glad we had a nice talk - we hadn't been getting along all that well, she's 93 and housebound but as domineering as ever) and she said the movie of A Tale of Two Cities was on tv so I turned it on and watched the end and cried buckets. I remember my mother taking me to see it when I was a teenager.

In fact before I fell in love with opera I fell in love with Dickens. It started with my seeing the musical Oliver! and then with my mother reading Oliver Twist to me when I was 12 and had the flu (with a very high fever). After that I read all of Dickens. I just loved the denseness of the plots, the mysteries, the secrets....so unlike my sterilized High Modernist life in a New York City apartment where what you saw was what you got, and where embarrassingly frank talk about everything from sex to politics showed that you were "enlightened".

Actually, Lady Dedlock in Bleak House would make a great operatic heroine. She sort of reminds me of Violetta but without the TB. Deeply depressed and disaffected because what? She had sex outside of marriage 20 years before the story began and had a child? That she was damaged goods. Sort of as if Violetta had married the Baron and lived sadly ever after.

Now I'm listening to Andrea Chenier just to continue the theme. It's got an execution at the end but it's not as gory as Carmelites.