“The House of Representatives can pass a bill to extend the deadline retroactively, giving states until 2020 (or later) to ratify the E.R.A. Here’s where Nancy Pelosi can try to fix the problem. With Democrats controlling the House, such a bill would be certain to pass (get on it, House Dems!), leaving its fate in the Senate’s hands. The politics of 2020 (impeachment, election) might make passage difficult, but they could also cut different ways in predicting an outcome here. Regardless, without making a prediction, it’s clear pressure would be huge. After all, do Republicans want to campaign in 2020 against equal rights for women? Maybe they are comfortable doing so, but Speaker Pelosi should force the issue and make them own it by passing an extension in the House.”Meanwhile, the public has gotten comfortable with the sight of five confident women (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Marianne Williamson) running for president during the current election cycle. Having already been passed in the House of Representatives, H.R.1585 (The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) awaits a vote in the Senate. And, on November 18th, Christine Blasey Ford accepted the Rodger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California.
While maternal instincts can be fierce and furious (as evidenced by stage mothers, Tiger moms, and helicopter parents), not all children are blessed with equal levels of love and protection. Some live in extremely dysfunctional families while others are at the mercy of parents struggling with substance abuse. Other kids just have rotten luck.
Some children are cursed by their family's poverty and/or hyper-religiosity. Sometimes a mother under severe stress might even think about sacrificing her child in order to remain alive. In an odd way, two recent stage productions demonstrated what can go wrong when "A Mother's Kisses" are simply not enough.
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Little Red Riding Hood makes a surprise appearance on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House during the San Francisco Opera's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's operatic adaptation of Hansel and Gretel. Along with other characters (Prince Charming, Cinderella, Snow White, The Wolf, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Fox and the Woodsman, and the Will-o'-the-Wisp) immortalized by the Grimm Brothers in their 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales, the young girl is part of a dream pantomime created by the production's director and designer (Antony McDonald) as a substitute for the 14 angels who usually stand guard over the children at the end of Act I.As I watched this piece of overindulgent directorial conceit, the first thing that came to mind was the 86th episode of South Park ("Simpsons Did It"). I wondered if the creators of South Park would eventually create a sequel entitled "Sondheim Did It." The famous composer of 1987's Into The Woods certainly did a better job of weaving a tapestry from traditional fairy tales than McDonald.
To be fair, I have adored Humperdinck's opera since 1967, when I first saw a fully-staged production at the Metropolitan Opera House starring Rosalind Elias and Teresa Stratas as the two rambunctious children whose mother sends them off to pick strawberries in the Black Forest (where witches and other dangers lie in wait). Because I fell do deeply in love with the score (and the Met's new stage machinery), I didn't give much thought to why the opera's libretto was nowhere near as cruel and sadistic as the original story told by the Grimm Brothers.
The 1960s was a decade of major discovery for me. I was just beginning to develop a passion for opera and, despite people telling me that I should start with Mozart and Rossini before moving on to Verdi and Puccini, my ears responded to very different stimuli. The first time I attended a performance of Richard Strauss's Elektra I had a visceral reaction to the music not unlike sticking my finger in an electric socket. Benjamin Britten's sea interludes and mighty choruses in Peter Grimes captured the aching loneliness of a social misfit as well as the strange colors and undercurrents of the ocean. The final moments of Turandot left me sailing out of the theatre on a wave of sound I could never have imagined.
Although I had once attended a student performance of Rossini's Barber of Seville at the old Metropolitan Opera House on West 39th Street and Broadway (I can still remember a throng of screaming kids who sent paper airplanes soaring through the auditorium's Golden Horseshoe), as I started to develop a hunger for more French and German opera, I realized that Hansel and Gretel would have been a much better introduction to the art form than four hours of Handel's Giulio Cesare, Weisgall's Nine Rivers From Jordan, or Ginastera's Bomarzo. But I didn't know why that was so or, for that matter, why I lusted for more bel canto mad scenes.
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| Michaela Martens (Gertrude) and Alfred Walker (Peter) in a scene from Hansel and Gretel (Photo by: Cory Weaver) |
Nor did I have any way of appreciating the huge influence Richard Wagner had had on Humperdinck. Thanks to Paul Thomason's program note for the San Francisco Opera's production, I now know that:
- After winning the Mendelssohn Award in 1879 at the age of 25, Humperdinck traveled to Naples where he made the acquaintance of Richard Wagner.
- Wagner subsequently invited the young composer to become his assistant at Bayreuth.
- While living and working with Wagner between 1880-1881 at Bayreuth, Humperdinck copied the score of Parsifal in preparation for its world premiere in 1882. While at Bayreuth he also met and befriended Richard Strauss, another one of Wagner’s assistants
- Humperdinck served as an assistant conductor at the Bayreuth Festival, where he introduced composers Max von Schillings and Hans Pfitzner to each other.
- Following Wagner’s death on February 13, 1883, his widow, Cosima, asked Humperdinck to become the musical tutor for their son, Siegfried.
- The original mezzo-soprano scheduled to sing the role of Hansel sprained her ankle during the dress rehearsal, missed the world premiere performance, but married Strauss in September 1894.
- Hansel and Gretel was the first complete opera to be broadcast on the radio when it was transmitted from the stage of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden on January 6, 1923.
- On December 25th, 1931, Humperdinck's opera was chosen for the first radio broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera, inaugurating a tradition of regular broadcasts that continues to this day.
- In 1967, when the Met debuted its new production of Hansel and Gretel, a 31-year-old English pop singer performing under the stage name of Engelbert Humperdinck was dominating the popular music charts in the United Kingdom with two singles: "The Last Waltz" and "Release Me." To date, his international sales top 140 million records.
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| Heidi Stober (Gretel), Robert Brubaker (The Witch), and Sasha Cooke (Hansel) in a scene from Hansel and Gretel (Photo by: Cory Weaver) |
Humperdinck’s inspiration for Hansel and Gretel came from his sister, Adelheid Wette, who asked him to compose several children’s songs for a play she had written. The composer ended up delivering 16 songs that formed the basis for a singspiel (play with music). When a flu epidemic in Munich caused the premiere of his opera to be delayed, the 29-year-old Strauss (who subsequently conducted Hansel and Gretel's world premiere at the Hoftheater in Weimar) wrote to Humperdinck, stating that:
“It is truly a masterpiece of the first class … after a very long time, it’s something that really impresses me. Such heart-refreshing humor, such deliciously naïve melodies, such art and refinement in the orchestration … such resplendent polyphony, and it’s all new, original and so authentically German. My dear friend, you are a great master, and you’ve given the Germans a work they scarcely deserve, but let us hope all the same that they will very soon learn how to appreciate it fully … I implore you to insist on me conducting it -- that old simpleton Lassen [the theater’s elderly chief conductor] must not be allowed near it! And young Hansel is devilishly difficult!”
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| Sasha Cooke co-stars as Hansel in Hansel and Gretel (Photo by: Cory Weaver) |
San Francisco Opera's current staging of Hansel and Gretel (a co-production with The Royal Opera in London) uses an English translation of Adelheid Wette's libretto by David Pountney that has supposedly been changed for American audiences (with the Gingerbread Witch now being referred to as Rosina Lickspittle). Frankly, there are better translations that not only call the witch Rosina Daintymouth but are far more appealing and easier for American audiences to comprehend. With the use of subtitles, the difference is painfully obvious.
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| The Witch's Gingerbread House magically appears in Act II of Hansel and Gretel (Photo by: Cory Weaver) |
McDonald also claims Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film, Psycho, as his inspiration for the design of the witch's house. And yet, for all the technical tricks used in Act II, perhaps the most enjoyable effect is the way (aided by lighting designer Neill Brinkworth) the gigantic chandelier in the War Memorial Opera House has been tricked out to deliver a dizzying and demonic zest to "The Witch's Ride."
Whatever quibbles I may have had with the production's stage direction and translation did not carry over to the musicians. With Christopher Franklin conducting, Sasha Cooke was a brash and brilliant Hansel, partnered by the sweet and sensitive Gretel of Heidi Stober. As their parents, Michaela Martens (Gertrude) and Peter Alfred Walker (Peter) were more than adequate. In cameo roles, Ashley Dixon was a quaint Sandman and Natalie Image an appealing Dew Fairy.
The juiciest role in Hansel and Gretel is, of course, the witch. Robert Brubaker did a superb job in combining a sweet and salty sense of malice with predatory glee and pedophilic depravity. However, the witch's gruesome death while drowning in boiling chocolate is a bit underwhelming once you've watched someone take a bath in Nutella.
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Every so often one encounters news reports about a depressed mother who has committed grave harm upon her children. Sometimes the tragedy takes the form of drowning them in a bathtub or driving the family car off a cliff. In other cases, a mother may deny her child nourishment or desperately needed medications.One of the most painful crises parents face occurs when their child runs off to join a cult. What could possibly be worse than that? Perhaps when an overly idealistic and possibly delusional daughter becomes the leader of a violent cult, commanding an army of men who, in their desperation, have faith in the young woman and are willing to follow her into battle.
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| Sherman Fracher (Isabelle) and Rosie Hallett (Joan) in a scene from Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Born in approximately 1412, Joan of Arc had her first "holy encounter" at the age of 13. On February 23, 1429, the 17-year-old woman met the Dauphin at Chinon, easily picking Charles out from the crowd despite his carefully chosen disguise. Her new friend was crowned King Charles VII of France on July 17, 1429 at the Cathedral in Reims. Joan's newfound celebrity, however, was short-lived. On May 24, 1430, she was captured during the Siege of Compiègne, sold to the English for 20,000 pounds, and turned over to the Catholic Church to be tried for heresy.
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| Scott Coopwood as Jacques Arc in Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
After Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431, her father is reported to have died of grief over his daughter's death. Nearly 25 years later, Pope Calixtus III held an inquest in 1455 which cleared Joan’s name in the presence of her mother, Isabelle. During the following summer, Joan's condemnation was nullified by the Catholic Church.
While most people may have heard about Joan of Arc’s military exploits and her fiery death, few know that during her brief time on earth Joan did a solid job of annoying people as she bucked the status quo while insisting that “Only I can fix this.”
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| Rosie Hallett (Joan), Sherman Fracher (Isabelle Arc) and Scott Coopwood (Jacques Arc) in a scene from Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The Marin Theatre Company is currently presenting the West Coast premiere of Jane Anderson's historical drama entitled Mother of the Maid. Directed by Jasson Minadakis on sets designed by Sean Fanning (with costumes by Sarah Smith, lighting by Christopher Lundahl, sound design by Sarah Huddleston, and original music by Chris Houston), the play is a far cry from George Bernard Shaw's 1923 drama, Saint Joan (which premiered three years after Joan was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church). As MTC’s resident dramaturg, Laura Brueckner, writes in her program note:
"Joan never stood a chance of blending in. Even as a young girl, she was noted in the village for preferring prayer over games with friends her age. At 13, she experienced her first ‘voice from God’ telling her to ‘be good and go to church often.’ She soon began to hear it once or twice a week and became convinced it was the voice of an angel. At the height of her contact with the divine, Joan was receiving visits and instruction from St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Margaret, and the Archangel Michael (Heaven’s commander in the war against Lucifer) several times daily.”
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| Rosie Hallett as Joan Arc in Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
“What was dangerous for Joan (as she, her family, and the Church fathers would find out) was her unswerving confidence in her own truth, even when it collided against Church edicts regarding submission and conformity. As a young woman, Joan refused her parents’ attempts to marry her off to a local man and swore to remain a virgin until God should notify her otherwise. As a military leader, she refused to obey the orders of the men beneath her and visited humiliating defeats on the men opposing her. As a prisoner, she refused to wear women’s clothing, even though her attire was one of the main obsessions of her judges. Throughout her life, Joan repeatedly refused to acknowledge any authority save God, his angels, and his saints as she alone heard them. It is easy to see how her fiery certainty inspired armies to follow her on what became, under her leadership, a holy mission. While her star was rising, and her labors served the interests of the Dauphin (whom she made King of France) she was sacred, the hopes of a nation made flesh. The same certainty, however, proved her undoing once the crown was safely on Charles' head.”
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| Rosie Hallett as Joan of Arc in Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Some of the most interesting scenes in Anderson's play include the desperate pleas of her mother, Isabelle (Sherman Fracher), to her son, Pierre (Brennan Pickman-Thoon), to look after Joan as he accompanies her to Chinon. Joan's father, Jacques (Scott Coopwood), is scornful of his daughter's military ambitions and her insistence that she is being driven by divine forces. What becomes obvious is that her peasant parents were illiterate farmers and, because Joan could not read or write, her letters were dictated to scribes. Not only are Isabelle and Jacques incapable of understanding Joan's insistence on defying established gender roles and the newly-found celebrity bestowed on their rebellious tomboy daughter, a fawning Lady in Waiting (Liz Sklar) assigned to Joan gets a humbling lesson in how pitifully useless blind adoration seems in the eyes of a despairing mother whose daughter is about to die.
While the talented Rosie Hallett paints a full-blooded portrait of Joan as an eager, stubborn, and naive young woman, Sherman Fracher has some of the meatiest scenes as Isabelle, a woman who is caught between her husband's stubbornness, her daughter's idealism, and her overwhelming sense of impending doom. On the day of Joan's execution, all Isabelle can do is tell her daughter how much she loves her and try to reinforce Joan's beliefs as her daughter meets a horrific fate. That scene alone is worth the price of admission.
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| Rosie Hallette (Joan) and Sherman Fracher (Isabelle) in a scene from Mother of the Maid (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Performances of Mother of the Maid continue through December 15 at the Marin Theatre Company (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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