La Scala, Nabucco, the Holocaust

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concentration camps, Jerusalem, Jewish refugees, Luisotti, Milan, Temple

To find oneself sitting in the majestic auditorium of La Scala, Milan, is thrilling enough in itself. To be attending a performance of Verdi’s opera Nabucco, which decribes the biblical episode surrounding the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon two and a half millennia ago, is even more thrilling. To find all this being linked to the Holocaust that took place just seventy years ago almost beggars belief. But that is what happened to me during my unforgettable visit to Milan last week.

The opera also holds a special place in Italy’s history. It was Nabucco which first brought Verdi to prominence, and the touching chorus of the Hebrew slaves in the third act served to trigger the public demonstrations that led to the eventual unification of Italy under Garibaldi and Mazzini in the nineteenth century.

The story of the opera, as is customary in such cases, uses the historical events as a backdrop to a convoluted story of love, jealousy, disappointment and triumph, allowing the soloists to display their vocal artistry and dramatic talents. There is, of course, no factual basis for the story of the love triangle, but it all helps to move the characters along and bring the events to life.

In the production I attended last week the curtain rose to reveal a set of stunted pillars, representing the Temple, and somehow reminiscent of the Holocaust memorial that has been erected on the site of the former S.S. headquarters in Berlin. I didn’t catch the allusion until the choir entered the scene. They were dressed in clothes from the 1940s, and it was evident to me, at least, that the staging was meant to evoke pictures of Jewish refugees being assembled for deportation to concentration camps. The choir also included children who, although they didn’t actually sing, evoked the sense of uprooted families. The shock was so great that I had difficulty controlling my tears, to the consternation of the couple from South Korea who were sharing our box.

The opera proceeded most harmoniously and mellifluously, with wonderful soloists, glorious choral sections and orchestral parts, and stately staging. In the interval the audience mingled outside the auditorium, and it would be invidious to compare the elegance and splendor of the outfits worn by both ladies and gentlemen with those of our fellow concert-goers in Jerusalem, and even Tel-Aviv.

The chorus of the Hebrew slaves comes in the second scene of the third act. The dramatic opening chords were played to the closed curtain, which then rose to reveal the members of the chorus, crowded – possibly herded – together in centre stage, the children placed artfully at the front, singing the beautiful music that Verdi had composed to convey their longing for their homeland. The music began softly, then swelled as the conductor brought out the maximum from both orchestra and choir. I swear that there wasn’t a single dry eye among the two-thousand-strong audience. When the final, drawn-out, a-capella chord ended the whole auditorium erupted into wild applause, with incessant calls of ‘Bis!’ (encore) and ‘Bravi!’ (plural of bravo). The conductor, Nicola Luisotto, tried to avoid acceding to this demand, but the audience refused to calm down until he finally gave in and instructed the orchestra and choir to repeat the chorus. It was heart-rending and heart-warming at one and the same time.

The audience calmed down, the opera continued and eventually reached its wildly unconvincing ending, with King Nebuchadnezer regaining his sanity, converting to Judaism and allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem. But who cares? It was an unforgettable event, and a memory that I shall treasure for ever.

Malta and Caravaggio

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Hermitage in Leningrad, Louvre, National Gallery in London, Prado in Madrid, Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo, Valetta Malta

About fifteen years ago, while on a trip to Rome, Yigal and I ‘discovered’ a painter we had never heard of before, Michaelangelo Merisi, commonly known as Caravaggio. His pictures, which were painted with realistic exactitude and a heightened sense of drama, seemed to burst out of their frames. Many of them were on religious subjects, but instead of the idealized faces and figures of saints and martyrs what we were seeing was real people in real situations.

In the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome we were confronted by the startling, larger than life image of the hindquarters of a horse standing over a prostate figure lying on the ground, the foreshortened torso painted with amazing verisimilitude and bathed in light. This was Caravaggio’s painting of the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, unlike anything on the subject that we had seen before. On the facing wall was a picture of an old man being hoisted up to be crucified upside-down, with the back and bottom of one of the hoisters straining with the effort and seeming almost to project from the canvas. This was Caravaggio’s view of the Crucifixion of St. Peter.

After that we made a point of seeking out pictures by Caravaggio wherever we went. There aren’t too many of them, but they are to be found in most major museums in Italy, as well as in the Louvre, the National Gallery in London, the Hermitage in Leningrad and the Prado in Madrid. When we visited Sicily we were thrilled to find three huge canvases by him there. A few years ago several of Caravaggio’s works were brought together in Rome for a special exhibition to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of his death. The exhibition was mobbed, but Yigal and I managed to get in twice.

After a working life of scientific endeavour, ending with twenty years working in various high-tech enterprises in Israel, Yigal has become immersed in the study of Caravaggio and his work, has given lectures about him in various forums, and is considered to be quite an expert on the subject.

Almost every picture that Caravaggio painted on a religious subject took a completely fresh view that was almost revolutionary. The church was the main patron of the arts in Caravaggio’s time, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so that was where he was obliged to earn commissions. Some of his pictures were too radical for the religious authorities and were rejected; in some cases Caravaggio produced another version, in others he didn’t (he was a very temperamental chap, and was often involved in fights).

When we visited Malta a couple of years ago we were disappointed to find that the enormous painting of The Beheading of John the Baptist, the largest picture Caravaggio ever painted and the only one he ever signed (he didn’t really need to, no one could emulate his painterly skill and his gift for the dramatic) was hung on a wall at the far end of the cathedral in Valetta, with a barrier keeping viewers at a distance of about twenty feet, apparently because of an attack launched by an insane person several years earlier. We told the owner of the boutique hotel opposite the cathedral where we were staying of our disappointment, and left it at that. But a little while later Yigal received an e-mail from a cathedral official saying that if we ever returned to Malta the barrier and security alarm would be removed so that he could study the painting more closely.

So in another couple of days we’ll be on our way to Malta, to get up close and personal with Caravaggio’s monumental Beheading of John the Baptist.

A Wind of Change in Israel’s Parliament

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House of Commons, Selected Knesset Debates, Woolsack, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid

Anyone who is at all familiar with the procedure customary in the various Houses of Representatives around the civilized world knows that these are governed by rules and regulations that are often very old, their roots lost in tradition. For instance, the Speaker of England’s parliament (the House of Commons) sits on something called the Woolsack, because in mediaeval times wool was a commodity almost as precious as gold (and a lot more comfortable to sit on). The order and manner in which the members of England’s parliament speak is also governed by age-old rules, and no matter in how much contempt one representative holds another, he or she is required to always refer to a colleague as ‘the right honourable,’ or ‘the respected member for x,’ or some similar expression.

Many years ago, when I was involved in translating the six volumes of the Selected Knesset Debates into English, I tried to use a similar formula for the speeches of the Knesset Members. In the first few years of the existence of Israel’s House of Representatives this was not a difficult task, as on the whole people still tended to use quite formal modes of address. Some debates did give rise to agitation and excitement, but on the whole the members were mindful of the watchful eyes and ears of the nascent nation and adhered to ceremony and decorum.

The debating tradition is not as well-entrenched in Israel as it is in England, for example, where debating societies abound in schools and universities, enabling young people to develop their public speaking skills. The absence of this tradition is sadly evident in the way the debates held in the Knesset in recent years have on occasion descended into uproar, furore, farce, and even outrageous behavior on some rare occasions.

Be that as it may, the swearing-in ceremony of each new Knesset is always an occasion when formality reigns supreme, the atmosphere is one of solemn rejoicing, and everyone is on their best behavior. The recent elections in Israel brought to the Knesset the largest cohort of new members (46 out of 120), except for that of the First Knesset, and also the largest number of women (29, though still not proportionate to their share of the population, 51 percent), and among them was a striking number of young people.

Thus, it was really heart-warming to see youngsters in their twenties who had featured prominently in last year’s demonstrations against the high cost of living taking their places in the Knesset, though not necessarily as members of the same political party. The success of TV personality Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party also brought to the Knesset nineteen new and untried members, some of them old, some young, coming from a wide range of social and ethnic backgrounds. Other parties also brought in ‘fresh faces,’ and altogether one had the impression that the wind of change was blowing through the Knesset’s august auditorium. To add to the festive air, the public gallery above the plenum was crowded with proud and excited mothers and fathers, wives, husbands, children and even grandparents of some of the new members.

There were, of course, plenty of familiar faces, too, and those who had once been young and have matured in the Knesset took their places like seasoned veterans. Let’s hope that they haven’t forgotten that they were once new to the world of discussing and forming legislation, and that they will help the newcomers find their feet in their new role.

I’m not generally a fan of ceremonial events, but as I watched the scene on television as each Knesset Member, including those from the parties representing Israel’s Arab population, was called in alphabetical order by the Speaker, stood up and swore allegiance to the State of Israel I found myself moved to tears, especially at the end, when they all stood together to sing the national anthem.

Launching a book

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childhood games, German Colony of Jerusalem

One launches a ship, or an attack, so why is that the term we use for a book? Is there anything about a book that resembles a ship or an attack? Those are deep, philosophical questions that I don’t really feel qualified to answer. Like a ship, a book has a name, or title, and like an attack, a book sets out to conquer something or someone out there. But it is rather a quaint idea, when all is said and done, to equate one little volume containing nothing but words to the majesty of an ocean liner or the potential devastation of a military campaign. But that is the convention, and so when my good friend Sarah offered to hold a book launch for me, I naturally jumped at the idea.

Thus, Sarah, aided and abetted by her husband Martin, who happens to be my cousin, opened their lovely home in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighbourhood to friends and acquaintainces for the occasion. As far as I knew they were going to serve just coffee and cake, but when we walked in we found that they had put on a lavish spread, replete with goodies, cakes, and sundry delicacies that were a delight to the eye and a temptation to the palate. Just for that alone it was worthwhile getting there.

The occasion happened to coincide with a day of icy cold temperatures and pouring rain in Jerusalem. In addition, the municipality has been digging up the area outside Sarah and Martin’s house for several months in order to lay new sewage pipes. This meant that access to the house, which is difficult at the best of times, was further impeded by wet and muddy surfaces and puddles of various sizes and depths. We had sent out warnings to all those who had agreed to attend, describing the best way to get there, where to park without incurring a parking fine and what footwear it would be advisable to wear. As expected, quite a few of those who had said they would come found at the last moment that they couldn’t make it. I can’t say I blame them, as although I was born and brought up in London, and so supposedly inured to inclement weather, more than forty years of living in Jerusalem have evidently had their effect, and I’m as reluctant as anyone else to venture out into the cold and the rain if I don’t absolutely have to.

All the same, about ten intrepid souls did make the effort to come, and it was to them that I gave a little talk about how I came to write the book, what I was trying to achieve, what influenced me and how I arrived at the title (and added a subtitle, as instructed by the publisher). The balancing game was an actual game that the protagonist and her sisters used to play in their shared bedroom, ‘the nursery,’ in their childhood. Although the book is not an autobiography, it contains autobiographical elements. In effect, it attempts to describe the efforts invested by children in maintaining some kind of mental and physical equilibrium between two worlds, that of the home and that of the world outside, and which in this particular case were radically different from one another. I had originally thought of calling the book after the road the family lived in, but later came to see that the game I described was actually a metaphor for the life of the children.

After I had talked for a little while about the background to the book, I read out a passage, which caused the audience to respond with laughter, as I had hoped. I had a hard job keeping my own composure, but I think I managed it. Someone pointed out that the scene I described, a family meal, could also be defined as a balancing game. That was something that hadn’t occurred to me previously, but it added another dimension to the occasion. Anyone wanting to read more about the book can go to http://sbpra.com/DorotheaShefer-Vanson, or order it direct from the Amazon or Barnes and Noble sites.

Afterwards, we all fell on the food and drink, those present purchased the copies of my book I had brought with me, and everyone then wended their respective ways home, stepping delicately through the mud and the puddles once more.

I can never thank Sarah and Martin enough for their kindness, warmth and hospitality, and have promised them that if and when I ever publish another book, I’ll try to do it in the dry season.