The Blanche du Bois Effect - Part 3

How strange that I should be called a destitute woman!  When I have all of these treasures locked in my heart.  I think of myself as a very, very rich woman!"

This fall from prominence with respect to the humanities has not, historically speaking, always been the case.  Prior to the second half of the twentieth century, an education was not to be considered complete without some considerable exposure to humanistic study.  Whereas nowadays, I would not be at all surprised if some graduates, greedily set on the capitalist highway, obtuse to the humanistic byways, have taken little to no courses in philosophy, art, literature and the like.   This is egregious error; while the capitalist mindset provides the physical basics, it offers little sustenance for the heart, mind, and soul.

So what was it that a humanistic education could give one?  The obvious advantage to humanistic pursuit lay in its emphasis on language, on vocabulary development and the contextual understanding that comes with it.  Also, a certain cultural broadening results from reading into the variety of life lived in every time and place known to man and the highs and lows of human experience.

English departments also used to teach old-fashioned grammatical analysis, largely abandoned in the last few decades in the rush to extirpate from the classroom that which stifled expression and did not produce effortless prose.  (This may be a correct and sensible conclusion with respect to writing finesse, but it bypasses the larger question of whether such emphases on objective analysis of the rudiments of language train the mind as a whole in systematic and analytic thinking necessary in so many fields of study and in so many ventures. Furthermore, by abandoning grammatical analysis, the field deprived itself of one of the few barometers of objective rigor available to it. Thus English as a discipline today is synonymous with a miasma of uncertainty, tentativeness, and unknowables.  The tragic error of so many in this field lay in their solipsistic mistaking of this central fact of their discipline for a universal trait of all others.)

Mitch:  I thought you were straight.

Blanche:  Straight? What’s straight?  A line can be straight or a street.  But the heart of a human being?

Above all, what humanists do, some recklessly, others shrewdly, is probe and analyze the murky undercurrents of human behavior, the underlying motivations and sub rosa drives, as it were, from which they extrapolate, infer, and imply.  What humanities people seem particularly predisposed to, beyond their apparent verbal facility, that more “what you see is what you get”-oriented math/science folk cannot (or choose not to) is instantly assessing the layers in a social context, the unstated motives, the hidden agendae, and making connections to other potentially contributing factors (to be sure, sometimes where they might not exist).  They are un-scientists, as it were, devoted to a view of life essentially not straight, not linear, but amorphous and not to be apprehended by logical-mathematical means, the stock in trade of the sciences.  In sum, they are insightful and perceptive, occasionally mystical, in ways that cannot always be rationally explained.  But they cannot coherently assemble these traits and their findings into a theory.  They cannot empirically demonstrate their observations and explanations -- i.e., they are essentially unfalsifiable -- relying on the intangibles of instinct and subtle sensitivity and a general consensus as to their veracity founded more on feeling than fact.  

I would like to argue that the humanities offer something beyond the tangible and somewhat practical effects made available by science:  the closest thing our secular culture has to religious training, to the development of a certain refinement and sympathy for the depths of despair and an appreciation of the heights of joy, for the value of compassion and sensitivity, for the aesthetic and emotional as valid, crucial life experiences.

In his seminal essay On the Idea of a University, Cardinal Newman describes higher education as a place for the teaching of "universal knowledge" rather than vocational training or research, where students may pursue a broad-based liberal education (the word university itself, ultimately derived from the Latin universus, implies that which surpasses the immediate and personal to encompass nothing less than the cosmos, or at least that which concerns all mankind).  The university promotes "formation of character" and nurtures "habits of mind" useful in lifelong endeavor, applicable to any situation.  Such unfashionable sentiments carry more than a whiff of quaint, old-fashioned notions of literature and the humanities in general as the moral educator of the culture.  (Who, outside of compulsory high school English class, reads the classics nowadays?)  Be that as it may, Newman’s sober assessment would seem to provide a sturdier (albeit antiquated) framework for discussion and imbue sober legitimacy on the notion of the validity of a liberal education.

And yet the taint of Williams’ fragile, voluble heroine lingers.  A hard-headed Stanley Kowalski realist might argue why resist the numbers?  They provide all there is to know that is worth knowing.  But what the Stanley Kowalskis of the world do not always recognize is that the materialist approach does not represent the one and only value in life.  It cannot account for the mystery, the love, the beauty, spirit, and soul that hold us in communion with this world and with the promise of something better to come--that which encompasses and embraces, nurtures and heals.

Mitch:  You might teach arithmetic.

Blanche:  Never arithmetic, sir! Never arithmetic!  I don't know my multiplication tables.  No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor.  I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drug-store Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!

Mitch:  Well, I bet that some of them are more interested in other things.

Blanche:  How very right you are.  Their literary heritage is not what they treasure above all else!  But they're sweet things.  And in the spring it's touching to notice them making their first discovery of love.  As if nobody had ever known it before.

Blanche does have her usefulness--she reminds us what a fragile thing it is to be human, to feel, to trust, to love.  Her tragedy lay in her unsympathetic environs and a culture that too soon discounted her reprobate ways and overlooked the sensitive, refined creature beneath.

Like Blanche and her rattle-trap streetcar, the humanities survive.  As Blanche might say, they provide a cleft in the rock of the world to hide in, one from which we can gain a better understanding of this life and a richer appreciation for its manifold joys, griefs, and wonders.  

Death by Puccini

In questa reggia is a fabulous aria.  I love its stark, fiercely enunciated opening salvo in which Turandot’s brief, telegraphic shrieks pierce the still night air around her—a cry in an operatic no-man’s land.  And then, as if a dream, the tale unfolds of her ancestress cruelly conquered by warrior kings.  A trance, a sing-song incantation ensues.  This was, it should be mentioned, the part of the aria that jazz artist Bob Belden explored in his controversial take on Puccini’s ice princess.  


Belden underlines the uneasy, subtle dissonance (almost atonality) of the first part of the aria, all too easily overlooked in the more extroverted, melodic mountain-climbing of the latter part.  The aria sways back and forth, the keys beneath Turandot’s chants anxious, unsettled over an abyss perilously yawning below, a portal to death and violence poised to open from which, like Pandora’s box of psychological horrors, the passion of the Turandot will emerge. 

And then come the stabs in the operatic firmament—Quel GRIdo e QUElla MORte!  That cry and that death!  And a solo shriek echoing throughout the house, this charge, this j'accuse de Turandot, shatters the uneasy calm after which the tune’s lush, florid yet ferocious strings swell belying Turandot's ice maiden appeal.  Mai nessun m’avra!  No man will have me!  When the reality is Turandot is alive and filled with frustrated passion.  No timid maiden she, here is a woman alive yet terrified by the overpowering forces within her, the lure of sex, the violence of love’s wrenching sock in the gut, the vortex swirl in which she loses Turandot and becomes the captive of the sex-soaked male who consumes her, driving her higher and higher, rage and terror yielding to love and gasps of full-throated ecstasy.  A fight, a duel this aria, a seduction, musical rape.  Tenor takes on soprano, man versus woman. 

The aria ends in a draw.  Turandot makes her case flagrantly, elaborately, operatic excess an embodiment of pain and rancor unleashed to its full, fierce splendor, but Calaf rises along with her, mirroring her vocal thrusts with tenor-tenacity.  As the chorus echoes excitement at the fray, the music recedes, like a tide at ebb, power in reserve, forces mustered.  And the riddles commence.    

The aria demands no more than a splendid singer to convince.  Those jabs, those piercing cries must carry, must overwhelm in a sheer wall of sound; fear must limn ostensible hate; passion must seethe amid the bombast.  Great Turandots have been few.*


  

Eva Turner - legendary English soprano.  Not the typical dramatic soprano with a rich, sonorous middle, Turner's voice was rather high-lying and frigid-sounding to these ears, not entirely inappropriate for the Chinese ice princess.  The high notes glistened while lower in her range the voice could sound somewhat stern and creaky, rather like a headmistress chiding her charges for bad grammar or tracking mud all over her newly washed floor.

Birgit Nilsson - La Nilsson's handicap was always her less-than-ideal Italianate emission.  Her voice sqawked where it should have caressed; rubati, portamenti, and legato were all Italian graces not in her arsenal.  But Turandot was different.  Italian Wagner, as it were, in the long, broad strokes of Puccini's soaring lines, the role's imposing tessitura proved no problem for Our Lady of Sweden. 

Eva Marton - no fewer than three commercial video documents exist of La Marton's Chinese princess.  The Met's 1988 venture shows her voice thickened and unsubtle while San Francisco c. 1992 shows a voice already coming apart with high note wobbling through which the proverbial truck could pass.  But Vienna 1983 showcases Marton at her best.  The role's high-lying range presenting no discernible problem, La Marton musters appropriately gleaming tones.  Even better, to my mind, she rivals Dame Gwyneth Jones as the best acted Turandot.  If the Met and San Francisco videos show a tired Turandot whose cruel edict presents no real psychological threat, in Vienna this is a neurotic, angry woman not to be messed with.

Ghena Dimitrova - My personal favorite among dramatic sopranos can be seen to her best advantage in the open air Arena di Verona, transformed into an arctic-looking ancient Peking, all the more sympathetic for Dimitrova's gargantuan, monolithic, icy Turandot. Her voice has never been heard to greater advantage--the acuti are resplendently full and throbbing, the middle is voluptuous, free of the wobble that later afflicted it, and the bottom notes threatening in the riddle scene. She is attired in a shapeless white gown; her black hair cascades to the floor in great sheathes. She looks like some primitive Kabuki-inspired vision of woman as temptress-destroyer, inhumanly confident and imposing. Her rival Marton may have the edge on Dimitrova in acting, but Dimitrova clearly sweeps the field with the sheer power, range, and ease of her voice. Madame Dimitrova is partnered here with the always reliable, if hardly inspiring, Nicola Martinucci--he looks a bit like an Italianate Sonny Bono outmatched by a physically and vocally grander Cher. 

Dame Gwyneth Jones - I love Dame Gwyneth, although, it must be said, hers is a voice that takes some getting used to.  At its worst squawky, raw, and wobbly, Dame Gwyneth's voice at its best could muster trumpeting laser high notes while keeping vocal unsteadiness at bay.  Her best attribute was the total commitment she brought to all her roles.  Dame Gwyneth was never an indifferent performer; she could never be accused of phoning in a performance.  Her best moments in this Turandot are frequently nonvocal--the long seething stare she shoots Calaf before launching In questa reggia--as if to imply, "How dare you challenge me!" 

There have been more Turandots in recent years tending toward the full of figure and full of voice to the more slender variety.  Jane Eaglen undertook the role for several years during her brief heyday but soon abandoned it--all considered, probably a wise decision.  Where Turandot's tessitura blossoms to thunderous acuti, Eaglen's voice narrows to a pinch.  Alessandra Marc was, during the 1990s and early 2000s, another notable exponent.  Possessed of a refulgent middle and shimmering top, Marc struggled to convey character and overcome the limitations of avoirdupois.  Both Madames Eaglen and Marc are of the heroic phenotype, something of a rara avis in our intensely visual, movie star-struck age. 

Two other Turandots of recent years reflect this shift.  Maria Guleghina has had her weight ups and downs, but her success seems in part to be based on statuesque appeal.  Of the divas mentioned above, only Dame Gwyneth Jones can be said to have evidenced the same.  Guleghina came to the role of Turandot somewhat late in her career, and the voice has suffered for it.  While still possessed of a warm middle of impressive volume, the high notes have become wiry and the chest notes weak.  Even more than Guleghina, Liese Lindstrom is something of a glamazon Turandot, one not possessed of a voice of significant girth but rather some thrust and an appropriately metallic timbre.  Hers is a lithe, visually striking Turandot, striking poses worthy of Erté.  But it is the voice that matters above all in this most cruel of parts, and one wonders how long Lindstrom's essentially lyrical instrument will hold out or whether it too, like Turandot's suitors, will be felled by her riddles.

*The diligent opera aficionado will notice that the obvious diva, Madame Callas herself, is nowhere to be found in the pantheon above.  La Divina was a sublime artist, but one, in this reviewer's opinion, whose genius flowered in the more hothouse subtleties and dramatic exigencies of bel canto than Puccini's broadly drawn battle of wills.  A great Norma, Violetta, and Tosca, Callas was not the ideal Turandot, a role requiring something of the blunt impact of a 747 taking off.  Callas offered psychological complexity, to be sure but was somewhat lacking in more elemental qualities of power and thrust.