Puccini: A Birthday Celebration

The Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini, was born on December 22, 1858 in Lucca, Tuscany.   In 1876, he was inspired to write opera after hearing Verdi’s, Aida.  Four years later, he enrolled at the Milan Conservatory where he studied under Antonio Buzzini and Amilcare Ponchielli.  His first opera, Le villi (1883), lost in the school’s competition but gained him great respect.  While his second opera, Edgar, was a failure, he gained international success in 1893 with Manon Lescaut.

Manon was the beginning of an extraordinary career.  Although once dismissed by musicologists due to a supposed lack of “depth”, he is regarded today as one of the greatest composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  A remarkable use of orchestral colors, melodic artistry, and harmonic sensibility mark his work.    His work is also distinct due to the natural style in which the characters sing short phrases to each other as though they are truly conversing.   For this reason, critics state his best scenes are those in which two characters are alone.  Perhaps the best example of this is La Bohème.   Premiered at the Teatro Regio Theater on February 1, 1896, it is considered one of the most romantic operas ever written, mostly due to the earnest arias between Rudolfo and Mimi.

Rudolfo and Mimi sing of their newly discovered love:

After achieving great success with Tosca in 1900, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly met with initial failure in 1904.   Criticized for its excessive length, Puccini cut out a song from act one, and divided the second act.  He premiered the revised version  at Brescia on May 28, 1904.   From then on, the story of a Japanese woman betrayed by a callous American naval officer has been considered one of the most beautiful operas ever written and one of  the most performed around the world.

Maria Callas singing, Un Bel Di:

Puccini died on November 29, 1924 before he could complete his last opera, Turandot.   He had based it on a Persian story from The Book of One Thousand and One Days.  Using the 36 pages of sketches that Puccini left behind, the work was finished by Franco Alfano.  Although the opera is considered to be flawed, it brought the world the aria, Nessun Dorma:

Victorian Women And Their “Toys”

Matthew Sweet states in his book, Inventing the Victorians:  “William Acton’s The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs (1857)- in which he famously remarked that ‘ That majority of women are not very much troubled by sexual feeling of any kind’- is frequently cited as the defining slogan of Victorian attitudes to female sexuality…..Sources concurring with Acton, however, are rather less easy to find than those arguing against exactly the opposite- that women’s erotic appetites were strong, and that sexual abstinence could harm the health of the female subject….Selective quotations from her (Sara Stickney Ellis) occupy a similarly prominanent position in the discussions of the domestic lives of  nineenth century women.  Selective quotations from her didactic writing has launched a thousand critiques of the power of Victorian patriachy, yet such studies rarely acknowledge that allusions of her work in more mainstream literature- in the works of  Wilkie Collins and Geraldine Jewsbury, for example- are invariably dismissive.  How do we know that using Ellis or Acton as keys to the nineteenth-century mindset is not like using Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus or The Surrendered Wife to explain the complexity of our own?  Why should we assme that the Victorians’ self-help books and sex manuals were any less silly, flaky or ephemeral  than those that fill today’s bookshops?”

Indeed.

For one example, one only needs to look at female hysteria, which was a widely diagnosed malady in the nineteenth century.  An 1859 report stated that over a quarter of the female population suffered from it, and a seventy-five page catalog of symptoms was published.  These included everything from headaches, nervousness, fainting spells, and stomach pains to depression  and ill-behavior.  

  A popular remedy was administered by doctors in which they massaged their female clients in their office until the women reached orgasm.  One physician, Dr. Swift, traveled extensively, and kindly made house calls.  These pelvic massages proved incredibly beneficial; however, they also proved time consuming for the doctors. George Taylor rectified that by inventing the first steam-powered vibrator in 1869.  In 1883, Dr. J. M. Granville  invented the first electromechanical vibrator.  This mechanical device proved so effective and popular that after the turn of the century it was marketed  as a home appliance for women.

Nowadays, it is believed that female hysteria was an incorrectly diagnosed medical condition.  Rather, it is assumed, most of the women probably suffered from anxiety disorders. 

Regardless of the underlying cause, it is clear that the 19th century medical community, despite any nonsense pop writers like Acton might have claimed, understood full-well the needs of women to be sexually satisfied for both their physical and mental health.

Poems by Tyutchev

Fyodor Tyutchev:  Russian Romantic poet. 

 November 23, 1803- July 15, 1873

Silentium!

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal

the way you dream, the things you feel.

Deep in your spirit let them rise

akin to stars in crystal skies

that set before the night is blurred:

delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?

How should another know your mind?

Will he discern what quickens you?

A thought, once uttered, is untrue.

Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:

drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone

within your soul a world has grown,

the magic of veiled thoughts that might

be blinded by the outer light,

drowned in the noise of day, unheard…

take in their song and speak no word.

                                                                                  -Fyodor Tyutchev

 

All Day She Quiet Lay

 

All day she quiet lay, lost in a trance, The closing shadows all of her embracing… The madcap rain of summer frisked and pranced, At leaves it drummed, down garden paths went racing.And slowly, slowly she revived and sought To hear its voice, its warm and merry patter. Withdrawn she lay, plunged deep in conscious thought, And listened to the rushing, singing water.Then suddenly she sighed and spoke; I heard… (I was alive, alive through force of habit) The softly whispered, simple, broken words: “O how I loved it all, O how I loved it!”You loved… To love so well none ever durst… Then, even such love fades, to be it ceases… To watch you die, and live! How did my heart not burst, Not break, O God, into a thousand pieces!-Fyodor Tyutchev

Various Facts of the Not-so-Pretty Victorian Age

1. On New York city streets, horses deposited 2.5 million pounds of manure daily.- source, “Victorian America” by Thomas J. Schlereth

2. “The Thames stank.  The main ingredient was human waste….Human excrement was sold as useful fertiliser to the nursery gardens and farms outside London, by the night-soil men who emptied the cesspits.  Sometimes chamber pots were upended out of windows on to luckless passers-by, or on to streets, their contents adding to the rich mix of dead dogs, horse and cattle manure, rotting vegetables.”- source, “Victorian London” by Liza Picard

3. Washing sheets:

 Water was heated in a copper in the scullery.  The linens (soaked from the night before) were rinsed in hot water and then placed in a washtub where they were beaten with a possing stick.   After the sheets were wrung out, a jelly (made by shaving a bar of soap and dissolving it in water) was rubbed into them.  More water and jelly was added for a second scrubbing.   Next, the sheets were placed in the copper for an hour and a half to remove all the soap.  Once that was completed, the sheets were removed and rinsed again in boiling water and then finally, rinsed in a tub filled with cold water.- source, “Inside the Victorian Home” by Judith Flanders

4. While the upper-classes had several servants to perform different tasks, the less well-off made do with one maid-of-all-work.

A typical day for this general servant was thus:

-rise at six a.m.

-open all curtains and shutters

-draw the fire in the breakfast room

-put the kettle on.

- polish boots and knives

-while waiting for the water to boil,  shake the hearth rug outside, and then clean the fireplace

-dust the furniture and sweep the floor of the breakfast room

-scrub the floor of the front hall

-whiten the front steps

- empty all the fireplaces of cinder

-draw the kitchen fire

- change clothes

- serve breakfast (and eat her own)

- air bedrooms and strip the beds

-empty slop buckets and clean the chamber pots

-clear breakfast table

-clean, dust, and sweep the rooms

- change clothes

-prepare dinner

-clean up after dinner

-eat her own dinner in the kitchen

-clean the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea

-serve tea

-clear up after tea

-Nighttime: put out the fires, turn off the gas, lock the doors, and shut the windows

…”The Mistress said she was very glad to be at home again, it’d been such a hard day for her.  She said that as I carried the umbrella over her from the front gate.”- Hannah Cullwick

source: “Inside the Victorian Home” by Judith Flanders

All NaNos’ Eve

October 31st. 

All Hallows’ Eve.  The night when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is lifted, and spirits come to visit.  The night when people honor their dearly departed with lit candles and dumb suppers.  Men and women hold hands around tables across the world to call upon the dead.  Girls gaze in mirrors to see the faces of their future husbands.  Children bob for apples and play Trick or Treat. 

For some, Halloween is a solemn occasion.  For others, it is Samhain, the Celtic New Year.   The beginning of the dark time of year.  The time of ends, and new beginnings.   And for others, it is simply a fun time of sticky sweet candy and staying up late watching Bela Lugosi.

And then, for a small group of quite nutty (but harmless) others, it is the beginning of a fervent time called, NaNo. 

Yes.  National Novel Writing Month is here again.

I did my first NaNo in ‘07.  My second in ‘08.  Everyone has their own reasons for participating.  Mine was to teach me discipline.  I wanted to approach writing as a professional.  I wanted to develop the discipline to sit down at the keys when I didn’t feel like it and when the Muse was off shopping for a new dress.  In that, I succeeded.  Ever since I won my first Nano- writing everyday  has become a natural part of my life and I’m pleased with the results of such effort.

So today, I wondered- Why am I doing NaNo again?   What lesson can I gleam from it this year?  And then the answer came: abandonment.  I want to stop thinking so much of the novel I have out on submission.  I want to simply write and have fun.

So, here’s to 3o days of wildly clicking away at the keys.  Total banishment of evil inner editors.  No reading professional blogs about the dire state of the publishing world.  I’m going to write in total, wonderful, ignorant bliss.

For those of you doing NaNo- what are your reasons?

And Happy Halloween, everyone!

Thoughts On Writing From Madeline L’Engle

Presently, I’m hard at work on, “I Remember Jacqueline”.   But I wanted to share these words.  Ms. L’Engle doesn’t say anything profound.  There isn’t anything unique or clever here.  Nothing one hasn’t heard before.

No. 

She speaks the truth.

And I don’t think any of us (myself included) can ever here that enough.   The Muse helps those who show up to do the work.

Madeline L’Engle (from her 1963 Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech):  “…And I’ll never forget going to the final exam and being asked why Chaucer used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways.   And I wrote in a white heat of fury, “I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things.  That isn’t the way people write.

I believe this as strongly now as I did then.  Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately.

Do I mean, then, that an author should sit around like a phony Zen Buddhist in his pad, drinking endless cups of espresso coffee and waiting for inspiration to descend upon him?  That isn’t the way the writer works, either.   I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the typewriter.  I know what he meant.  Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade, they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, does come.  This is the moment when the writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to communicate to others.”

Isadora Duncan: The Free Spirit

“People do not live nowadays. They get about ten percent out of life.”

“You were once wild here.  Don’t let them tame you.”- Isadora Duncan (1877-1927)

 

Born in San Francisco, the poetic thinker and dancer proclaimed,

“I, Isadora Duncan hereby vow on my twelfth birthday that I will dedicate myself to the pursuit of art and beauty; and to the single life.  I will never marry.  I will never submit myself to any claims other than to truth and beauty.  To seal this vow, I hearby burn my parents’ marriage certificate.  Beauty is truth.  Truth, beauty.  That is all we know on earth, and all we need to know.”

While Isadora did eventually marry the Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin, in 1922, the Mother of Modern Dance kept her vow of dedicating herself to the pursuit of art, beauty, and truth.

From early childhood, Isadora studied the lines of ancient Greek sculpture and the movements of nature; both of which she incorporated into her unique style. Rejecting classical ballet which she deemed, “ugly and against nature”,  she clad herself in Grecian tunics, threw off her shoes, unbound her hair, and danced from her soul.  Stressing improvisation and pure emotion, she strove to rid her movements of all artifice.   The result was a simplicity of grace, which like all masterworks, appeared deceptively easy to achieve.

Isadora considered the solar plexus the “internal motor” and would stand hours in trance.   ”I spent long days and nights in the studio, seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body’s movement. For hours I would stand quite still, my two hands folded between my breast, covering the solar plexus… I was seeking and finally discovered the central spring of all movement, the crater of motor power, the unity from which all diversions of movement are born, the mirror of vision for the creation of dance.”

   In 1903, she gave a lecture in Berlin where she stated her dance principles. 

“My intention is, in due time, to found a school, to build a theatre where a hundred little girls shall be trained in my art, which they in turn will better. In this school I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements, but to make their own, I shall not force them to study certain movements, I shall help them to develop those movements which are natural to them.”

 She opened her first school in Grunewald, Germany in 1904.  Driven by her belief that, “Every child that is born in civilization has a right to the heritage of beauty”, she  covered the poorer students living expenses.  During class,  she urged her students to listen to the music and wait until it moved them to dance.

Of dance, she said:

“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.”

“Natural dancing should only mean that the dance does not go against nature, not that anything is left to chance.”

“The true dance is an expression of serenity; it is controlled by the profound rhythm of inner emotion. Emotion does not reach the moment of frenzy out of a spurt of action; it broods first, it sleeps like the life in the seed, and it unfolds with a gentle slowness. The Greeks understood the continuing beauty of a movement that mounted, that spread, that ended with a promise of rebirth.

The Dance – it is the rhythm of all that dies in order to live again; it is the eternal rising of the sun.”

“If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and always will be the same.

The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever the same lasting harmony.”

“It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.”

Ada Lovelace: The Enchantress of Numbers

 

Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and Annabella Millbanke, was born on December 10, 1815.  After her parents separation,  she was raised alone by her mother.  Annabella was determined that her daughter would not fall victim to the ways of her, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”- father.   Annabella further believed that the way to avoid such madness was to strengthen one’s mind.  Therefore, despite a very sickly childhood which often kept her bedridden, Ada was given an intense education focusing on science and math.

During this time, Ada was tutored by such notables as  the social reformer, William Frend;  the polymath, Mary Somerville; and the British mathmatician, Augustus De Morgan.

On June 5, 1833, Mary Somerville introduced Ada to Charles Babbage, the English mechanical engineer and inventor.  They corresponded often regarding Babbage’s plans for building a Difference Engine, and later, an Analytical Engine.   Impressed by Ada’s scientific mind and passion for mathematics, Babbage nicknamed her, “The Enchantress of Numbers”.

In 1843, Ada translated an Italian article on Babbage’s plans for his Analytical Engine.  In her notes,  she advanced a process for calculating an order of Bernoulli numbers.  Unfortunately, the Analytical Engine was never built in their lifetime due to lack of funds.  However, it has been discovered that her sequence of numbers would have run perfectly.  Thus, Ada is considered to be the very first computer progammer in the world.

Ada Lovelace died of uterine cancer on November 27, 1852.  She was thirty-seven.

The United States Department of Defense named the computer language, Ada, in her honor.

Happy Birthday, Leonor Fini: The Fiery Artist

 

“I paint pictures which do not exist and which I would like to see.”- Argentine  painter, Leonor Fini (August 30, 1908- January 18, 1996)*

 

 

 

Leonor on her aesthetic strategy:  “I strike it, stalk it, try to make it obey me.  Then in its disobedience, it forms things I like.”

 

“She is magnificent, perturbing, mocking enigmatic, terrible and compassionate.  She is Leonor Fini; painter of the surreal, illustrator of books, theater.  Her art is the crack in the mirror, the edge of the equation, the dream of tremendous important half-grasped upon awakening, whose meaning dissolves with daylight.”- Catherine Styles McLeod  from the Architectural Digest , March 1986

 

“In her life as well as her art, Fini continually advanced the notion of autonomous, absolute woman; beautiful, imperious, and governed by passion.”-  Whitney Chadwick, Art Historian

 

 

 

links for further information on this extraordinary painter and writer:

http://www.leonor-fini.com/

http://www.cfmgallery.com/Leonor-Fini/leonor-fini.html

* some sources claim her birth year as 1907

Writing Update: Steampunk Ahead

music playing:  Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting for the Man”

After brainstorming  for my Victorian murder mystery,  “INSIDE THE LANCHESTER HOUSE” for the last few weeks, I’ve decided to put it aside for the meantime to work on this steampunk novel idea that’s been brewing in my head.

I’ve always wanted to try my hands at steampunk, and last night I remembered a very old fantasy novel I’d hidden away.  I took a look at it, and thought, “You know, with some revising (okay, a lot of revising) this could work.”  The writing is hilariously bad (over a decade old so you can imagine.  No.  Please don’t imagine), but the story itself is a lot of fun.

This morning, I revised the first chapter.  Yeah!  My plan is to go through the whole thing, revising the general story, characters, writing, etc.  When that’s done I’ll see about building my alternative, steampunking Victorian world.

As much as I love the story behind, LANCHESTERS, my heart wasn’t presently into it.   Today, working on the steampunk novel, or what shall become a steampunk novel, was fun.  And I realized after finishing, PORTRAITS, which is rather dark, I needed to engage in something more playful.  So, steampunk ahead.

How’s everyone else doing?