Appearance Intervention: A Night at the Opera

So, your significant other has just surprised you with tickets to the New York Philharmonic’s upcoming performance of Stravinksy’s Firebird. Or, perhaps, your boss is leaving town on business next weekend and you’ve scored his primo tickets to Rigoletto at the Chicago Lyric. Well, my friend, it would seem that some congratulations are in order! Why, you hypothetically ask? You may not know it yet but you are about to experience something special that too many in our society unfortunately never will. While it may be true that the sartorial expectations of an audience continue to lower with each passing concert season, I would argue that it still behooves one to dress-to-impress in such situations (when able). In today’s overtly-casual world, it is becoming increasingly easier to sport something as simple as a necktie and still wind up with accusations of being “overdressed” in the court of public opinion. The opera, however, is not one of these places. There are too few options these days for a gentleman to don a real dapper ensemble and make a special evening out of it. I urge you to take advantage of this fact and make the most of this upcoming opportunity which lies before you.

*Disclaimer: The suggestions in this article operate under the pretense of idealistic circumstances and you mustn’t let my pretentious musings deter you! In the end, as long as you make some sort of effort on your appearance and are not wearing a pizza-stained Budweisert-shirt and torn jeans you will still fit in with today’s concert-going society. That being said, here’s to a perfect world:

Style:

Tuxedo? No. Not unless you are attending an invite-only gala or are seated in either a private box or $450 orchestra seats. A standard-issue dress suit will suit you fine (get it?) with extra credit going to those in well-coordinated three-pieces. Tradition dictates a peak lapel for evening formal wear. However, today’s ever-loosening fashion environment allows one to look equally as smart with notch lapels.

Patterns:

Pattern? No. If you have the option, stick with a solid. If not, try to keep the pattern very subtle: thin stripes, simple plaid, etc. The same applies to your shirt. I would recommend solid white, but if you choose otherwise keep it modest.

Colors:

Unless the performance is a matinee, you will likely be attending this event during the evening hours. If you’ve ever seen the show 30 Rock, you perhaps may know that the character Jack Donaghy wouldn’t be caught dead in anything but a tuxedo after 6:00pm. Sure, this rule-of-thumb Jack abides by may be a bit tongue-and-cheek when taken at face value, but in the grand scheme of things there exists some real merit to this. As I mentioned before, a tuxedo would likely be overkill. However, when it comes to the color scheme, Jack’s adage is spot-on. This is all to say that when the day turns to night and all becomes dark, it is best if your suit does likewise. Black is the ideal choice, but navy or dark charcoal are other safe substitutions. I know this may sound ridiculous, but the last thing you want is to distract a patron sitting in the mezzanine because there’s some fop seated on the main floor wearing a suit louder than Leonard Warren.

Neckwear:

The rules here have relaxed a lot, so you should feel comfortable wearing either a necktie or a bowtie. Either way, a bowtie will not be considered “over dressing” and, conversely, a necktie will not be considered “under dressing.” Regardless, at least wear something. Drinks at that hip jazz club in Uptown may warrant a blazer sans a tie, but avoid sending your neck to the opera naked. If you show up with an undressed neck, shirt halfway unbuttoned with your chest hair flapping in the breeze you will be likened to that guy Vinny who runs that pizza joint down the street from you. You know the place. As for color/pattern, don’t overdo it. Symphony Hall probably isn’t the best place to premiere that novelty Looney Tunes tie your nephew gave you for your birthday this year. Choose a silk tie with something understated like a diagonal-stripe or pindot pattern. This will make the process of coordinating your other accessories much smoother.

Shoes:

The selection of shoes is going to be pretty straight forward and difficult to mess up if you just follow conventional wisdom. Coordinate appropriately for your color scheme (keeping in mind the 6:00pm “darker-is-safer” rule) and keep things formal: oxfords are preferred but bluchers are fine, and keep the brogues to a minimum.

Accessories:

Tie bar? Yes. Collar bar? Optional. Pocket square? Highly recommended. Make a smart coordination choice in color and stick with a formal fold: try a square-ended, triangle, four-point, or puff pocket square fold. Want extra style points? Try a boutonniere. No, really! Play it safe and get a single, modest, white carnation without all of the extra additives you find attached to a typical prom or wedding boutonniere. Chances are your date is likely to see you as a modern-day Fred Astaire. Now that’s dapper! 

Now that you are ready, don’t forget your manners and be sure to enter with an open mind. If you consciously attempt to make it a special evening for you and yours, it will certainly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A night at the opera with great company is likely to be an evening you will look back upon fondly for many years to come. Oh yes, there’s just one more thing: please remember to silence all electronic devices. Few things can ruin a concert faster than a screaming baby or a patron with an incessant cough; an excerpted version of “SomebodyThat I Used To Know” amplified through a cellphone’s external speaker is one of those things. Enjoy!

Support: from One Artist to Another.

There is one thing that has been brewing in the back of my mind a lot over the past year is how artists are treated in society... by other artists.

I think you know what I am talking about! Sure. I am guilty of it, you are guilty of it, we are all guilty of it. Being "catty" with other human beings is natural; all humans from all walks of life in all professions have done it before. It is futile, however, to deny that we in the "performing industry" are particularly prone to this sort of behavior.

Recently I stumbled across a video on YouTube entitled "Pavarotti gets laughed at! (Spirito gentil, live 1974)." Below is a link to the aria; I encourage you to watch it, it's fantastic of course! However, I digress; watching this video kick-started a nearly hour-long binge of watching "opera fail" after "opera fail" by simply continuing to rummage through the "Suggestions & Related Videos" found on the right-hand side of the screen. Okay, so everyone has heard the famous "Tenor Crack", correct? However, it is not often people take time out of their day to watch demigods the like of Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti mess up on stage!

I will admit that the singer inside of me—for a brief moment—chuckled at the sound of the great Pavarotti's folds fumbling over one another for just a moment, or perhaps Joan Sutherland's classic "fly-swatting" impulse when she screws up a passage in Les Contes d'Hoffmann:

Even, perhaps, singers from a more "current" generation such as Renée Flemming flubbing a coloratura passage might induce a chortle—as my generation describes it—"out loud":

 

However, my time spent watching these videos lead me to a somewhat obvious realization: it happens to all of us. Instrumentalists and vocalists alike all make mistakes. Chances are, if you're anything like me, you probably feel like yours seem to ALWAYS be worse than everybody else's. Of course, this—more often than not—is usually a personally-conflated exaggeration we create in our own heads because we all tend to be WAY too over-critical of ourselves. Regardless, we all know what it is like to be on stage and make a big mistake. One thing we may know even better than making a personal mistake, however, is the feeling of being on or off stage and witnessing another fellow artist make a mistake. It is innate to react in some manner whenever a musician on stage makes a mistake and thus must deviate from the original plan. When you or I observe a mistake made by someone else in the very moment it is happening, our instincts will activate and—without much thought—we will take some sort of immediate action or have some sort of impulsive response. If, perhaps, we do not react at all then that in-and-of-itself is a reaction (the very act of inaction is a reaction... make sense?) However, regardless, all of these "initial instincts" will vary from person to person. In an instance of great stress (i.e., a mistake on stage) the human body will release a catecholamine (the most famous of which is adrenaline) which activates our body's famous "fight, flight, or freeze" response and these moments are what define us--not as artists--but as a colleagues.

On February 17th, 1983 the late, great Joan Sutherland was performing Violetta in a performance of Verdi's La Traviatta in Genova; conducted by her husband of (at the time) nearly twenty years, Richard Bonynge. Despite this production having the Dame Sutherland as the lead diva, this production's famedom happened because of a completely different reason. The lead tenor, Lamberto Furlan, began to show vocal fatigue as early as the first act and—as a famous recording shows—continued to get worse as the opera progressed further. By the final act, Lamberto Furlan's voice was so tired he was no longer able to avoid cracking throughout the famous "Parigi o cara" duet, and this caused outrage and disorder from within the audience in attendance. Decades later, Sutherland is able to recall this very incident with great detail, about which she details in her own autobiography, "After a very slight crack of the tenor in act 1, the audience voiced its disapproval momentarily. The opera proceeded without further interruption until the last act duet "Parigi o cara" when catcalls and booing erupted from a portion of the house..."

 (Above: A recording from 1983 in Genova of tenor Lamberto Furlan and

Dame Joan Sutherland singing "Porigi o cara" from Verdi's "La Traviata"

Note the audiences reaction, for I shall return to this innate impulse for audiences to react in such a way later on in this article. However, I shall first turn my attention to how the other performers within the opera company reacted. After the audience drowned out the performance with an uproar of booing and hissing, Sutherland escorted Lamberto Furlan off stage and the two of them were met by her husband and maestro, Bonynge, in the wing. After a brief discussion of how they should proceed,  Sutherland and Bonynge decided in a fit of outrage decided that the show mustn't continue. They did not come to this conclusion because of the Furlan's level of fatigue, however. They concluded that such an audience does not deserve the satisfaction of viewing the completion to Verdi's "La Traviata." In her autobiography, Sutherland continues, "Lamberto had done nothing to warrant such an outburst and I said quietly to him "We don't have to try and sing against that - come on", nodded to Richard and the three of us returned to our dressing-rooms." What parallels—if not surpasses—the importance of the audiences reaction is Dame Sutherland's response. Rather than curse Lamberto Furlan for causing an end to this performance right in the middle of one of Violetta's big scenes and—as we all know as performers, risking the possibility of tarnishing her image with the inevitable public backlash from one bad performance—Sutherland took it upon herself to nurture and support her fellow cast member. In an ever increasing generation of stage-hoggers and back-stabbers, Sutherland transcended natural inclination to act up and instead stood up.

The important "moral" of this story is simple: support your fellow musicians. We are all in competition with each one another; this is no secret and we all know this. As we stand in line outside of an audition or competition, there is ample time for our brains to remind us quite well on their own that every other singer standing next to us is our competition. The last thing any of us need is another artist reminding us of this fact. There's an old adage that states, "What matters is not how you fall off the horse, but how you get back up." A very real and true statement, for we do need to find the inner strength to cope with stress when accidents like these happen onstage. However, I feel there may be a second sentence to this adage that perhaps has been dropped over the years for the sake of brevity, and it says, "What matters is not how your fellow man falls off the horse, but how you help him get back up." When a fellow musician makes a mistake with us on stage or in front of us as we sit in the audience, our reaction defines us as artists and even as humans. What's even greater than that: our individual reactions contribute to the definition of the art as a whole. Classical music is failing. It's disappearing. Art as a whole is struggling. Audiences are finding it more and more difficult for themselves to justify paying the money and spending the time attending the arts in today's economy, and as we continue to head down this "sterilized" path of perfect studio recordings (which is a whole other topic that needs to be addressed at a separate time and place) it's becoming easier for audiences and even singers to forget that any given production may have hundreds of little unseen—and often perhaps one or two rather easily seen—mistakes. They expect perfect performances like "that one recording they heard" or "that one YouTube clip they saw" and when it isn't delivered they may often feel cheated or ripped-off. Criticism of the arts is as high now—if not higher—than it has ever been; especially from the common populous. The last thing we need is unnecessary criticism from one another! There is a very real possibility that by the time my generation of artists "grow up" and step into the field, we, as the performers, may also be the only supporters of the arts. We may very well become the only patrons attending each others' shows and funding each others' opera companies, symphonies, art galleries, and theaters. If this unfortunate dystopian society ever comes into fruition, we would need to know that our fellow colleagues would be there to support and lift each other up rather than to harshly criticize and be "catty" towards one another.

On that note, I would like to leave you with yet another video of Dame Sutherland; this time in a dress rehearsal for a 1984 production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann in Sydney, Australia. We have all been here, and they are friendly reminders that mistakes will continue to happen throughout our entire career. Enjoy! =)

Keep singing,

-Jerron

Flight history of 2010

I have been raised in a family that believes money is best spent traveling with the people you love. Luckily they actually practice what they preach and because of this I have been the lucky benefactor of much travel over my lifetime. To give you an idea, here are my flights and some statistics regarding them from the year 2010 alone!

Flight Distances Flight Time Flights In Miles   36,399 In Kilometer   58,579 Earth Circumnavigation 1.46 x Distance to the Moon  0.152 x Distance to the Sun 0.0004 x     Hours   90:05 Days 3.8 Weeks 0.5 Months  0.13 Years 0.010     All   25 Domestic 21 Intra-Continental  0 Intercontinental 4 Other flights 0

Flight map - 2010 United States

Flight map - 2011 World

Top Ten Airports # Airport  Amount  % 1 MSP Minneapolis  10  20.0 % 2 ATL Atlanta  10  20.0 % 3 MKE Milwaukee  6  12.0 % 4 FSD Sioux Falls  3  6.0 % 5 PHX Phoenix  3  6.0 % 6 AGC Pittsburgh  2  4.0 % 7 SFO San Francisco  2  4.0 % 8 SLC Salt Lake City  2  4.0 % 9 DEN Denver  2  4.0 % 10 CDG Paris  2  4.0 %

Top Ten Airlines # Airline  Amount  % 1 AirTran 10  40.0 % 2 Delta Air Lines 8  32.0 % 3 SkyWest 2  8.0 % 4 Allegiant Air 2  8.0 % 5 Pinnacle Airlines 1  4.0 % 6 Comair 1  4.0 % 7 SkyWest Airlines 1  4.0 %

Top Ten Routes # FlightPath  Amount  % 1 MSP - MKE 2  8.0 % 2 ATL - MSP 2  8.0 % 3 FSD - IWA 1  4.0 % 4 PHX - ATL 1  4.0 % 5 MKE - STL 1  4.0 % 6 IND - MKE 1  4.0 % 7 MKE - DEN 1  4.0 % 8 MSP - ATL 1  4.0 % 9 ATL - PHX 1  4.0 % 10 AGC - CDG 1  4.0 %

Additional Data Total Airports  15 Total Airlines  7 Total Routes  23 Total Countries  3

Longest Flight (distance): 5,072 mi, 11:10 h, Paris (Charles de Gaulle) - Salt Lake City (International), 08-20-2010 Longest Flight (duration): 11:10 h, 5,072 mi, Paris (Charles de Gaulle) - Salt Lake City (International), 08-20-2010 Shortest Flight (distance):  197 mi, 0:55 h, Sioux Falls (Regional, Jo Foss Field) - Minneapolis (Wold Chamberlain Field), 07-04-2010 Shortest Flight (duration):  0:55 h, 197 mi, Sioux Falls (Regional, Jo Foss Field) - Minneapolis (Wold Chamberlain Field), 07-04-2010 Fastest Flight:  528 mi/h, 4,791 mi, 9:04 h, Atlanta (Hartsfield Jackson) - Munich (Franz Josef Strauss), 05-11-2010 Slowest Flight:  108 mi/h, 508 mi, 4:41 h, Salt Lake City (International) - Phoenix (Sky Harbor Airport), 08-20-2010 Average Flight: 1,456 mi, 3:36 h

La reine de cœur - Maurice Carême

 La reine de cœur

by Maurice Carême (1899 - 1978)

au français:

Mollement accoudée

A ses vitre de lune,

La reine vous salue

d'une fleur d'amandier.

C'est la reine de cœur.

Elle peut, s'il lui plait,

Vous mener, s'il lui plait,

Vous mener en secret

Vers d'étranges demeures

Où il n'est plus de portes,

De salles ni de tours

Et où les jeune mortes

Viennent parler d'amour.

La reine vous salue;

Hâtez-vous de la suivre

Dans son châeau de givre

Aux doux vitraux de lune.

in English:

Softly leaning

on her window-panes of moon,

the queen gestures to you

with an almond flower.

She is the Queen of Hearts.

She can, if she wishes,

lead you ins ecret

into strange dwellings

where there are no more doors,

or rooms, or towers,

and where the young deat

come to talk of love.

The queen salutes you;

hasten to follow her

into her hoar-frost castle

with smooth stained-glass moon windows.

This is one of may poems by French poet Maurice Carême that he wrote for children. For a children's piece, however, I think it's an incredibly mature text. Carême paints such an incredible portrait of a cold, desolate castle where the Queen of Hearts sits. I picture the witch from the Disney's Chronicles of Narnia movies. The setting is just cold--bitter cold--yet warming. The idea that the Queen of Hearts can beckon you towards her castle and lock you away at her will. Perhaps the location to which she can lead you, "strange dwellings where there are no more doors, or rooms, or towers, and where the young dead come to talk of love" is not actually a place, but an idea. The Queen of Hearts can beckon you to her castle and lead you to heaven.

-Jerron Jorgensen

#7 - Canyoning in the Pyrenees

Quite possibly the single largest physical achievement I feel I've accomplished next to running a full marathon: Canyoning. For those who are unfamiliar with this activity, it involves hiking up a mountain and then zip-lining, rappelling, hiking, swimming, and jumping off of waterfalls to get down.

This summer, I spent about two months in France, partaking in an opera program called the Franco-American Vocal Academy. It took place in Périgueux, France; located in in the Southwestern region of Périgord. As the program progressed and, inevitably, friendships were formed, much talk circulated about what we would be doing with our break the second week of August. Shall we go to Paris? Switzerland? Bordeaux? Barcelona? Way back in the first couple of weeks of the program, my friend Chris Lopez showed me a website detailing canyoning in Interlochen, Switzerland; needless to say, I was hooked. I had never heard of it before but once I knew it existed and how close we were to it; I needed to have it! We fought, and pondered, and fought, and pondered, until we reached the conclusion that going to Switzerland over our break was simply not within our price range or within the time constraints of the break. There was, however, an overwhelmingly large interest amongst other company members in driving Southwest, across the border to Barcelona, Spain. After this thought brewed for a little while, it dawned on Chris and I that we would be driving STRAIGHT through the Pyrenees mountains, which (of no coincidence) straddle the border between Spain and France. Low and behold, we looked online and found that there were, indeed, several companies in that offered canyoning in the Pyrenees! A few e-mails later (okay, it's quite a bit more complicated than a few e-mails, but the struggle we had to go through to get this all set up isn't really important to the story) Chris, our friend Suzanne, and myself were on a train headed South, to the town of Tarascon-sur-Ariège.

We ended up taking a train South to Toulouse, France, where we got off for some sight seeing, food, and a quick nights rest.

La Gare, Toulouse, France

Carousel we found on our self-guided walking tour of Toulouse (in search of food, most importantly)

Suzanne and Chris at a fountain in the city of Toulouse, France

The next morning were on a train before 6:00 A.M. and headed further South to the Pyrenees mountains, stopping just short of the French-Spanish border. It was obvious we were up in the mountains at this point. The air was brisk, fresh, and misty. The city of Tarascon-sur-Ariège was a cute little mountain village with a few cafés, a bank (of which we ended up needing to take a visit to), and a gorgeous view.

Tarascon-sur-Ariège

Tarascon-sur-Ariège

Getting artsy-fartsy in Tarascon-sur-Ariège

Shortly after arriving in Tarascon, we called a taxi to the train station and drove a short jaunt higher into the mountains to the even-smaller-village of Niaux, at the Pisciculture de la courbière, which was our rendezvous for the canyoning

View at the rendezvous in Niaux, France

Suzanne and Chris; obligatory thumbs up! Niaux, France

Suzanne and I at the rendezvous, Niaux, France

After a short wait our guides arrived. Our group was assigned to our guide Yann; a goofy character who gave us our safety instructions in a sort of amalgamation between French and English.

Our canyoning guide, Yann. Keep in mind: this was the man we entrusted our lives and safety to...

We geared up, were joined by another family, and hopped into a van that drove us quite a bit further into the mountains to the village of Artigues, where they have a lovely self-entitled canyon. There were apparently several canyons in the area to chose from and it just depended on the size and experience of the group. Since our group was made up of mostly youngins, they took us to an intermediate canyon despite this being the first time canyoning for all of us.

We arrived out our destination, gathered the remainder of our loose gear, and took what turned out to be quite a hike up to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately from this point forward we did not have our photographic equipment so our only photographs are the ones taken from Yann's waterproof camera. The view from the hike up was incredible! We continued to hike further and further (passing what seemed like several very old stone huts which were now ruins consumed by the mountain shrubbery) until we reached the mouth of the canyon. We sat down, ate our lunches, then the canyoning commenced. The canyoning consisted of a few hours worth of amazing sights, waterfall jumps, natural luging, swimming, hiking, rappelling, and zip-lining. The water was COLD. We all wore cold-water suits but the shock of the water after a 27foot drop off a waterfall still got to you anyways.

Suzanne at the canyon

One of the mid-level jumps in the canyon

The group at the end of the canyon

Chris and I at the bottom of the canyon

Suzanne has successfully conquered the canyon!

Left to right: Myself, Chris, and Suzanne somewhere within the canyon

Chris and Suzanne climbing out of one of the little pools

Suzanne rappelling

Either very excited or very nervous to zip-line down... The two often go hand-in-hand, yes?

Zip-lining down, either high, tired, the hypothermia was setting in, or just mid-blink... Could be any combo of the four as well I suppose

Myself rappelling down to the zip-line point

Again, myself  rappelling down to the zip-lining point

Chris before zip-lining

Chris preparing to zip-line

Left to right: Suzanne, Chris, and I navigating the slipper rocks towards a waterfall

Left to right: Myself, Suzanne, and Chris standing under a waterfall at the bottom of the canyon. I was surprised by how strong the water was falling from just a mid-level waterfall like this one!

When we were finished with our adventure we returned to a neighboring village for food and rest (and also hypothermia recovery if you were me... I hate having awful thermal-regulation).

View from our hotel in the Pyrenees

We woke up early the next morning, had our breakfast, and continued our Southward journey to Barcelona, Spain!

Chris, Suzanne and I in the back of our vehicle en route to Barcelona, Spain

Best wishes,

-Jerron Jorgensen