I did have one book, Orhan Pamuk's "Snow". My brother, who last year bought me the kindle for my birthday, this year bought me a stack of books. Guess he doesn't quite grasp the concept, luddite that he is. Not wanting to schlep them all back with me, I finished most of them before I came back. But I had a feeling "Snow" would take a while, so I took it to read here. It's about an Istanbullu who goes to Kars (in the east) to investigate and write about girls who recently committed suicide because they were forbidden to enter school wearing a headscarf. (The headscarf issue is still in the news today, so it felt very relevant. ) But the book is also about East/West dichotomies, Turk/Kurd politics, romance and mystery.
None of the other books at the meeting really grabbed me, so I ended up with your basic American murder mystery. The funniest thing happened as I walked through Kaleici on the way back. Kaleici is full of carpet and souvenir shops, and men are always trying to stop tourists and sell them something. (My favorite: "Mixed nuts kaufen!") This time the approach was different. "You look Turkish" he says to me, in English. OK, I'll bite. "Are you a teacher?" he asks. This isn't that astonishing a guess, since most of the foreigners here are teachers. I guess I didn't look like a tourist. He goes on for a while about how Ataturk said all these great things about teachers, yada yada. Then he looks me in the eyes and asks "does this beauty come from Brooklyn"? Whoa, where did he get that? As it happens, I was in fact born in Brooklyn and I tell him so, and ask if he's psychic. "No I am not a witch. I see it in your eyes" he says. He then invites me to his shop for tea. Not to sell me anything, he says, just for conversation. This is what they all say to get you into their shops to sell you something, but I don't care. He's kind of interesting, and I've managed to escape thus far without being intimidated into buying anything more than a 20 Lira ($15) purse. So we go to his shop and he tells me about his family in the mountains and shows me the woven saddle bags made by his grandmother. Of course he will make me a special price because I'm a teacher, and I live here (and I'm human and in his shop). I thank him for the tea and extricate myself. I take his card and promise to recommend his shop.
On Tuesday I went to the extravagant home of Fritz, the pianist. He has a two-story apartment in Lara, steps from a park overlooking the water. He's been here eight years, and has all the comforts of home including a grand piano. We drank coffee and chat for a while before getting to the music. I'd brought my audition aria book, but thought it might be nice to warm up on a song. There were many in his library, but all in high key. He showed me a book of standards, and I figured that might be fun. So we read through "All the things you are" in a truly horrific arrangement that had the piano doubling the vocal line. It was a bit awkward. So I showed Fritz my aria book but he balked, saying he couldn't possibly play any of those without practicing ahead of time. Really? To be fair, Fritz never claimed to be an accompanist, even though he has done concerts with Elif, a mezzo I met at the Symphony concert. His background is as a solo pianist and teacher, and I guess sight-reading isn't a required skill for either of those pursuits. Still, it reminded me how lucky I've been to work with some of the best vocal accompanists in the business. (You know who you are!)
After returning to the standards for a stab at "Misty" we took another coffee break. Fritz had been invited by Elif to attend the Trovatore dress rehearsal tonight and invited me to go with him. So we headed out (in Fritz's giant van) to the opera house, which unfortunately is in the middle of nowhere adjacent to a shopping mall. There was much strife in getting the thing built at all; the Minister of Culture objected to spending money on "the art of the infidels" but he was overruled, with a compromise that part of the building would be used as a school.
The theater is actually quite nice, with an excellent acoustic. But the rehearsal was called for 6 and didn't start until 7. This put me in a rather foul mood, especially since I hadn't had dinner. Once it started though, it seemed promising. The bass singing Fernando was quite good. Unfortunately, the Russian mezzo they'd brought in for the opening was not singing this rehearsal, and the light lyric soprano (yeah, I said it) essaying Azucena caused me much pain. And it wasn't as if you could focus on anything else. Although the costumes were nice, the scenery was non-existent and the "staging" was limited to placing the singers on the stage. It was old-fashioned, Eastern European stand-and-sing; more a series of tableaux than anything resembling direction. At the end of act 2 I'd seen enough, and said I needed to get something to eat. Elif was done at that point, and Fritz joined us at the food court of the shopping mall.
The opera here has a structure I've never seen anywhere else: All singers sing in the chorus, from which most soloists are chosen. The girl who sang Azucena tonight is Elif's rival and (according to Elif) keeps getting cast because she's good at sucking up. Well, something funny is going on, because even from the bit she sang in the car I could tell Elif would have been a better Azucena than her rival was. For one thing, she has access to her chest register. Also, she sings vowels.
So, do I want to try to get an audition for this company? Undecided.
