Candlemas is, as are so many other traditions, adapted from an old pagan celebration - the Festival of Light - and was the time when Christians blessed the candles to be used in the church during the coming year. An olde Englishe rhyme tells:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright Winter will have another fight. If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, Winter won't come back again.
Any Christmas decorations not taken down by Twelfth Night (Epiphany, January 6th) should be left up until Candlemas Day and then taken down, so get looking for that xmas bauble that you left pinned to the notice board ….
Well, here it is cloudy and warm enough (around 0º) for rain, so here’s hoping! It’s been a tough winter this year - even 90 year-olds are saying they haven’t ever seen so much snow. The temperature has plummeted at times to –20. Tartu city pavements are labyrinths winding through snowy two metre (six foot), and higher, canyons. Personally, I am managing rather better, having bought a pair of high quality Finnish crampons for my boots that keep me upright and, by keeping the car in the garage, I save on excessive snow work … also, indoors, I am beavering away, at exercises given me by a physiotherapist and designed for someone who spends a lot of time seated behind a computer …
Mezzo TV is just the ticket for we culture vultures that don’t want to fall flat on their fannies in the snow. It’s broadcast by the French, showcases quality music and jazz and its motto is Écouter, Voir, Oser (Listen, Look, Dare) and its menu is dazzling. Goodies include Natalie Dessay as Lucia di Lammermoor (Opéra National de Lyon - Dessay’s home town), Hansel and Gretel with Angelika Kirchschlager, Diana Damrau and Thomas Allen (Royal Opera House, London), Katya Kabanova with Karita Mattila (Teatro Real de Madrid), Valkyrie with the Swedish powerhouse soprano Nina Stemme conducted by Daniel Barenboim at La Scala de Milano, Shostakovitch´s Moscow Cheryomushki (Lyon) and the 2011 New Year Gala at the Berlin Philharmonie with Gustavo Dudamel and Elina Garanca.
Nabucco
And while I’m chattering on about culture, I must mention my last visit to Riga late last year. I went with my jolly Tartu opera group to see Verdi’s opera Nabucco (short for Nabucodonosor, English Nebuchadnezzar, Akkadian Nabû-kudurri-uṣur, meaning "Oh god Nabu preserve my firstborn son”). It was known as the composer’s ‘Jewish’ opera because the plot tells of the plight of the Hebrews taken in slavery to Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem in 597BC. As we entered the auditorium the show, if not the actual opera, had already begun as immobile Israelites stood against a backdrop of white writing dripping down the curtain. The scene was a rather good impressionistic reproduction of the Ishtar Gate, the eighth gate to Babylon – I have seen the repro in the Pergamon, Berlin – built by Nebuchadnezzar around 575BC. This gate, has, for me, a Tartu connection as it depicts, unforgettably, in blue and yellow tiles, a herd of large ox-like beasts trotting above a frieze of pretty little flowers: the beast is an aurochs, a predecessor of modern cattle.
Now, “Tarvas” was the ancient Estonian word for an aurochs and “Tartu” is a contraction of “Tarbatu” – derived from “tarvas.” Or so I read. We know that the silhouette of an animal head (a bear) was used for an ancient Estonian town name (Otepää), so “Tarbatu” could mean “Aurochs head.” Did the silhouette of the hill looked like a prototype ox? Or were we, perhaps, the place of the Ox-ford over the Ema River? Tartu town’s ancestors were well dug in by 575BC but we weren’t marching out to conquer the world, let alone building bovine Babylonian gates … the building season up here is too short, for one thing - there’s barely time to shove up a suvila (summer cottage). But I dare say we had our joys and sorrows just like those old Akkadians …
Back to opera. Nabucco is that odd mixture of fact, fable and hokum so usual in opera … a combo of stories from the Book of Daniel and Psalm 137 -
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom
in the day of Jerusalem;
who said, Rase it, rase it,
even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones.
This version of the elegant but vengeful song – full of eye-for-an-eye Old Testament sentiment – is from the King James bible. But I daresay most folks of my age will conjure Rivers of Babylon, a Rastafarian song written by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians. They recorded it in 1970 but it became best know outside of JA by the 1978 cover version by the German disco band, Boney M. Aaah, memories of boozy late night parties… relive it at
Required of us a song
Now, back to Nebz … its no wonder that Black people homed in on “they that carried us away captive required of us a song” – they were not the first …
The soprano role of Abigaille (the meany) is notoriously difficult, requiring a very high range. Leontine Price and Joan Sutherland refused to have anything to do with it and Maria Callas sang it only three times. Julianna Bawarska sang the part in Riga and acquitted herself admirably. See her (in Aida) at
I couldn’t find a Riga Nabucco but catch the tonsil ticking tunes Verdi concocted for Abigaille at
sung by the excellent Bulgarian soprano Ofelia Hristova, a protégé of Boris Christoff (one of my fave basses). I had never heard of Ofelia but she’s good!
William Blake’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...) hairy, mad Nebuchadnezzar was, during my London days, always a regular target whilst visiting the Tate Gallery. I like watercolours and Bill Blake was usually followed by Peter Rabbit at al from the Beatrix Potter collection. Usually after an exhibition of something modern … and very conveniently place beside the Ladies…
Nebz, of course, wasn’t the king of the “writing on the wall” – it was his successor, Belshazzar, but Riga’s poetic licence certainly helped set the Babylonian scene! And now I have to re-tell the story of the “writing on the wall” because it’s such a cracker!
Belshazzar is having a big booze-up in Babylon using the sacred gold and silver vessels looted by Nebuchadnezzar from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The King praises “the gods of gold and silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone” and, immediately, a disembodied hand appears and writes the words מנא ,מנא, תקל, ופרסין (Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin) on the wall of the palace. These words are Aramaic names for currency: Mene, a measurement known to the Greeks as a ‘mina’ (from "to count"), tekel a spelling of shekel, a currency first used in Mesopotamia in 3000 BC (from "to weigh") and peres, half a mina (from "to divide", but also resembling the word for "Persia"). The royal magicians are flummoxsed by the omen. The King sends for Daniel (he of the Lion’s den, but that came later) a Jew taken from Jerusalem, who had served in high office under Nebuchadnezzar, because he is renowned for his interpretation of dreams. Dan rejects any reward and warns King Bel of the folly of his blasphemy before interpreting the message as mina – “God has numbered the days of your kingdom and it will end;” shekel, “you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting;” half-mina, “your kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” And the prophet, of course was right. They always are. So annoying.
The last word on that old Mesopotamian digit goes to Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 translation of Omar Khayyam, the 11th –12th century Persian poet, from the collection known as The Rubáiyát (رباعیات عمر خیام),
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Fitzgerald’s work is not known for its fidelity but, like myself, he aimed for atmosphere – “At all Cost, a Thing must live … Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle." So Bravo Riga! Bravo Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi! Bravo Ed Fitzgerald! and Bravo! (for I am working on this at the moment) to our very own Estonian “Papa” Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882) whose Kalevipoeg (Son of Kalev) national epic, so chokka full of wonderful things, is estimated to be a measly 8-12% actual folk material. –[/i]Vanemuine, Lo! Lend me your lyre …