Monday, April 14, 2008

Panayiotis Terzakis singing "My Black Swallow"

We heard Panayiotis Terzakis and Maria Georgakarakou on Saturday night, in their concert, "Graecia Magna: Byzantine Hymns, Laments and Historical Songs from Early Modern Greece".

It could have been sleep-inducing -- the repetition of the minor keys, the melancholy of the poetry and the sounds -- but it was not. We loved it. The dark Taxiarchae church was the right setting. His voice is a little bigger than it was last year. Hers gets better after she warms up. There's a harsh edge to it early on. I like the wild yelps and inflections she gives the folk songs.

One song, "Mavro mou khelithoni -- My black swallow" was a small miniature of the whole concert. Here are the last few lines (taken from the program), about a man who wants to write a letter home:

They forced me to marry here in Armenia,
To an Aemenian girl, the daughter of a witch.
She put a spell on the ships, and they do not sail.
She put a spell on the sea, and it does not swell.
She put a spell on the rivers, and they do not flow.
She put a spell on me, and I do not come home.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

When character is everything -- Alice Munro's short stories in "Castle Rock"

I finished Alice Munro's book of short stories, "Castle Rock," and was moved by her respectful depiction of the people in her family tree and childhood. The stories of ancestors are of course fictionalized, and they move on to stories apparently from her childhood in rural Ontario.

The stories themselves are slight narratives. They're less important than the characters, their thoughts, their obsessions, their moments of in-character or out-of-character behavior. I got caught up in them and felt fondly of the people, even those who weren't likable. It's so old fashioned in some ways. She almost seems lazy, simply recording seemingly inconsequential events lived on a boat crossing the Atlantic, of a young girl on isolated roads, of a father in a barnyard. The events barely come together to make a story. But I feel as if I can still see their faces, and expressions, and gestures.

About the "Big Bang theory" of ending a play

A friend sent a link to an interesting op ed piece by Ed Siegel, the Boston Globe's former theater critic, about finishing a work of art powerfully. This is in regards to Conor McPherson's play, "Shining City." Siegel argues that a powerful ending sears the images of the work in our memories, and he feels the appearance of the "ghost" at the end of Shining City is such. I replied:

"I totally agree with Siegel -- a "big bang" ending can really shock and illuminate the story. In the last instant, we can get a profound understanding of what we've seen or heard, and what will happen from that moment on, after we leave the theater.

"But the audience has to "get it." In McPherson's ending seconds, what we get is confusion. Why are we seeing that macabre actress standing behind the door? The grieving older fellow in the play saw the ghost of his wife -- as he describes it, it looked like his wife, for all he knew, it actually was his wife, and that's what chilled and disturbed him. What was that bizarrely dressed actress at the end, behind the door? Did she look like the therapist's girlfriend? Not to me. If it was the ghost of the therapist's girlfriend, or a ghost of some other soul or demon appearing to him as an image of what he has to atone for...why would that be? Isn't shutting down his office and moving to be closer to the girlfriend and their daughter? The therapist says he doesn't believe in ghosts, and the play has almost nothing substantial to do with ghosts. Why introduce that image in the last instant?

"So I don't get it."