Tuesday 10 September 2013

Gift-wrapped in Verona

Aida props plus serious author
Some of you may remember this post. It was a small thing, forgotten after a while, but at the time quite devastating. It made us very upset.

Last week, on the day my book 'Pelt and Other Stories' happened to be coming out, we went to this city. Many of you have probably been there. You may have sat on the steps of the Roman Arena and watched Aida, or Carmen, or Nabucco, operas that are often staged there. You might have seen a contemporary performer like Alicia Keys, while cursing the slippery Roman marble, your wet numb bum and the guy in front with a tartan umbrella. You might have even been married there, like a small woman I once knew, in Juliette's frescoed tomb, with a Shakespearean sonnet read out from nervously held paper.


I'm talking about Verona, a city an hour or so away that I barely know. It is where you go for concerts. It is full of Germans. It is full of that Romeo and Giuletta parlaver. I've been told I'm not romantic.
Screamin' Young Soprano

Once again I left the young soprano at the scrolled doors of an ancient building. We've done a bit of that over the past year. As much as I despise being pointed out, looked at and still sweat when I'm playing for my own piano maestro, my daughter the Young Soprano is at home on the stage, speaks to the audience, reaches unwavering high notes in the same way (seemingly) that she flicks her hair.

I didn't want to transfer my nerves. My dry mouth. My overall confusion masked not-at-all by my stupid conversation.

Mum, shut up. Sit here.

So I sit for two hours in a bar. I order juice. I order ginseng coffee. I write to an ill friend, trying to send her the beauty of the September light in the piazza, the facade of the church, the hedge of potted plants, my hopefulness. I blab about my book.

We are often told that what happens is what is meant to be, even though the icon of my early adulthood - Simone de Beauvoir - explained that you are responsible for all choices in all corners or your life. Is that so? Are we really steering ourselves towards our destiny? Or is our destiny a collision of forces - as flimsy initially as the dust of this planet sparked to life.

This summer I learnt that Mme. de Beauvoir, whom I always thought was a tower, wept, took valium, raged and suffered with the same nauseous pain as all of us. She threw herself onto Sartre's coffin in the ground, in the end.




Well, she's in. The Young Soprano was accepted into her course. It's done. Congratulations young lady.

14 comments:

  1. Congratulations! Am delighted it finally worked out. You are right about Simone de Beauvoir too, I was surprised at just how jealous she was of Sartre, how she struggled with an open relationship - perhaps we are all better at theory than practice.

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    1. Thanks Marina. We are very very pleased!
      Yes it was a difficult and heavy read - I mean the material, not Hazel Rowley's work. Sartre came across as a sex-obsessed little man and SdB's agonies were palpable. Both were on crazy uppers and downers most of their lives. And I thought Paris was Kir Royale and Pastis!
      Even the way de Beauvoir's milked her personal life for her novels became rather nauseous after a while. La Nausée! And until Sartre suggested a seminal work on Le Deuxième Sexe, she'd never even thought of it!

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  2. I too was a soprano - but we called them trebles in the Dulwich College choir!(My high notes lasted a few short months before the most prolonged voice-break in recorded history!). GG is much better looking than me too! Congratulations to her from an admirer of her mother's literary daughters as well! I haven't received my pre-ordered copy of 'Pelt...'; but I will see you on Friday evening.I'm trying to rustle-up some company but my male...magnetism?..is strictly limited these days...limited to the desperate & dangerous?! Simone de Beauvoir & Sartre?...never quite worked that one out! Verona has always been good to me...'visentini man'iagat'i...veronesi,tutti mat'i!'...

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    1. Thanks Mangiagatti! Perhaps you might find some lovely lady company on Friday night... never know. Didn't know you had a singing past... Yes Verona was really sweet to us too! Ci vediamo venerdì !

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  3. Hi! So glad for your daughter.
    I really like the way your write, it's a pleausure to read your writing!

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    1. Thanks Patrizia! Your last post really had me laughing! Pool rage!! Xcat

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  4. So glad the last torturous audition was a winner!! I was with you both every step and note of the way!!
    Well done Cat & GG!!

    Love and hugs - see you soon xoxox

    Best wishes too for Friday and the launch of PELT!!!!!

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    1. Thanks Ingrid, yes nervous madre greatly appreciated your support. You'll be invited to the first concert xxx

      And I KNOW you'll be with us on Friday night in spirit !!!

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  5. OMG, OMG!!!!! I'm near to tears. Oh, happy day!!!

    Congratulations to your little songbird.

    XO

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    1. Thanks Averil!! Mille grazie! I weep every time she sings so I see a lot of weeping ahead for me... One day you and I will be watching her singing in the Arena, I promise, and the tears will be a-flowin xxxcat

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  6. A huge congratulations to you, Mama Soprano!!!! I can't imagine what a thrill it is to see your baby up there, and to hear her voice, and to look around you and see the effect she's having on perfect strangers. Love this.

    And, that said, I'm so glad your girl is "in" and that you can now return to your home and your piano. :-)

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  7. Thanks Teri! You know, every time she sings I'm weeping along. Can't stop. Hate to think where a real opera would take me. She's a performer - I'd rather disappear than stand up on a stage. This is where she needs to go.

    You've said the magic word: piano. How I've missed my Hadyn sonata this long busy summer! Back to my Argentinian maestro this week. Will most probably have my fingers rapped (joking) and be told to get practising!

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  8. Very, very cool, Cat! As I take my second voice lesson tomorrow, I'll keep this in mind as inspiration. Now, if I only had half her talent... Congrats!

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