Another Month in Heidelberg, Part 12 (Boat-ride)

Today the weather is gorgeous and my time in Heidelberg coming to an end; so at Manuela’s suggestion I take a boat-ride on the river. It’s a very relaxing ride up river to Neckargemund and then on to Necharsteinach, where the ship turns round and comes back. The Neckar River rises in the Schwartzwald (Black Forest) flows for 127 miles and joins the Rhine at Mannheim. It’s a lovely three-hour ride with beautiful scenery; we pass through two Schliessen (locks) each of which raise and lower the ship 9 feet. I have a good lunch on board and talk to an American family from Half Moon Bay (about an hour from Oakland) traveling with their two teen-age sons, one of whom is studying in Heidelberg.


Photos:
The river-boat 5#041
Castles on the river 5#034 and 5#039
The locks 5#040

Another Month in Heidelberg, Part 11 (Neckargermund and Lucia)

On Sunday the weather is beautiful and I take a drive through the countryside. I drive through Heidelberg and along the Neckar River to Neckargemund, a pretty little river-town with an old castle some lovely old buildings. Then head inland through woods and farmland to Mauer and Meckesheim where I see a signpost for Anglasterhausen, I like the sound of that and drive along narrow country roads and through tiny villages till I get there and find that the name is the most attractive thing there! Then on to Sinsheim for a bite of lunch and home on the Autobahn. Lovely!

In the evening I go to Mannheim for “Lucia di Lammermoor” by Donizetti. It’s a Festlicher Opernabend (Festive Evening of Opera) meaning there are special guest singers and everybody gets dressed up. This is one of the best dressed audiences I’ve seen; most men are wearing suits and ties and I see several where the man’s tie is an exact match to his lady’s gown! The music and singing are spectacular. Iride Martinez from Argentina sings Lucia, Franco Vassallo, who has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Vienna State Opera sings her brother Enrico. Salvatore Cordella sings her lover Edgardo. This is another modern interpretation. The setting is Scotland at an indeterminate time with the men in tartan kilts that look more like sarongs. There’s a choir of 25 men in kilts and bright red tam-o‘shanters and a woman’s choir of an equal number wearing tartan skirts, white blouses and beehive hairdos! Arturo, the man Lucia is being forced to marry is dressed as Idi Amin. The scenery is very modern; on stage there is a small pond in which Lucia dangles her fingers and in the third act she dies on stage in a much larger pond!

The European Soccer Cup matches started yesterday and luckily Germany beat Poland in the first round. 23 year-old Podolski kicked in both goals. The whole country would have gone into a large-scale funk if they had lost! Evidently all team members must be citizens and several of the German players had played for Arsenal and Chelsea (British teams).

Monday night, at the Stadthalle, I go to a piano concert by students of Mannheim University; of the six students five have Asian names. I speak to two of the students, a woman from Korea who had played an obviously very difficult Prokoffiev sonata and a young man from Bulgaria who had played an extremely complicated piece by Ginastera, an Argentinean composer. These students play without a score, are very talented and I believe are the future “Van Cliburns ”.

Photos:
Neckargemund 5#007
Neckargemund 5#008
Stadthalle, Heidelberg 5#012
Die Comedian Harmonists 5#011

Another Month in Heidelberg, Part 10 (Pascal Mercier and Eugen Onegin)

This evening I go back to the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut to hear Pascal Mercier read from “Nachtzug nach Lissabon” (Night Train to Lisbon) an international best-seller that I’m working my way through, in English. He is very good, speaks German with a Swiss accent and the large room is packed to the rafters. He studied in Heidelberg in 1993 and later in Berkeley. The book, which I find very dense and slow reading, concerns an elderly college professor of Latin, Greek and other ancient languages in Bern, Switzerland; who suddenly changes his entire life by taking a night-train to Lisbon. Mercier, a Swiss philosophy professor living in Berlin says that, “its partly in homage to his teachers”. I was surprised at how much I understood; including his jokes and at question time I asked, “How he liked the English translation?” He gave a long answer, after all he is a Professor of Philosophy, about the translator coming to Berlin for 10 days and they worked together from 10 till 10 and he feels that the translation is an “American Night Train to Lisbon!”

This evening I had to choose between Pascal Mercier; a concert of Lieder by Franz Schubert based on Johann Wolfgang Goethe at the Musikhaus Hochstein AND a concert of Klezmer music!

On Saturday fireworks are planned for Heidelberg Castle and the newspaper warns that many streets will be closed, with traffic at a standstill. I have dinner at “Zum Goldenen Schaf” (Golden Sheep). In spite of the restaurant being founded 1749 and owned by the family of Dr. Kischka; the food is very mediocre, the service slow and the place full of Americans. Next time remind me to pass on this one! I then walk over to the Stadtische Buhene for ”Eugen Onegin” by Tchaikovsky. Once again an ultra modern production; the set is a 1920s fairground with a very dilapidated merry-go-round in the center and overhead a sign of lights “LIEBE MACHT GLUCKLICH” (Love Makes Happiness) which harkens back to “Arbeit Macht Frei” the sign over the gates at Auschwitz. For some reason, completely beyond me, most of the characters wear these large fiberglass (?) heads, taking them off and on and often singing with them on! The voices are unbelievably beautiful; Tatiana is a Russian soprano, Onegin is Spanish and Lenski sung by Emilio Pons, a tenor from Spain, who I saw previously in Idomeneo. This time I sit in the front row of the balcony of a very full house. As we come out of the theater the last of the fireworks are going off and traffic is a mess.

Photos: City Theater, Heidelberg 4#056

Another Month in Heidelberg, Part 9 (Music for Voice and Roma)

Next evening I attend another Mannheim University chamber concert; this time it’s Kammermusik fur Stimme und Instrumente (Chamber Music for Voice and Instruments) at the Alte Aula in the old University of Heidelberg building. I love this old room and the professor of voice introduces the program and says that the spirits in this room always inspire her! The students put on an interesting program: voice with Waldhorn (English horn) and piano, voice with piano and viola, and voice with flute. During the first half all the singers are women and have wonderful clear, ringing voices. I leave at intermission; the hall is very hot and I need a ‘Campari Orange’!

Next day at class I bring in photos from California and explain them to Manuela. We again talk about finding an apartment for next year. In the evening I decide against two chamber music concerts at Stadthalle and at Palais Prinz Carl.

On Wednesday morning while at the little newspaper store on Rohrbacherstrasse I talk to the newsagent and his wife a dental surgeon; they both favor McCain because, they think he will keep US troops in Germany and Obama will bring them home. She thinks that without the troops Russia will take over Germany! I discussed this later with an American studying in Heidelberg and he thought it was Quatsch! (garbage) I had planned on going to a concert by the Monet Quartet at the Stadthalle; however, it started raining so I stayed home for a quiet dinner.

Many of today’s papers have stories and pictures about the high-speed train wreck that happened 10 years ago in Eschede, in north central Germany in the vicinity of Hamburg and Hannover; 101 people died in the derailment caused by a faulty wheel. The worst train accident in Germany since the War.

On Thursday after class I visit the Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, a Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem) for the Nazi persecution of the gypsies of Europe. Gypsy, Zigeuner in German, are now considered discriminatory terms. Roma originated in Romani the language of this minority living in Germany, while Sinti refers to those living in other southern European countries. The Nazis persecuted this minority to the same degree as they persecuted the Jews; their identification papers were stamped with a red Z for Zigeuner. Most of them were sent to Auschwitz and other camps and 500,000 were murdered. This permanent exhibition shows and explains their lives previous to the Nazi era and their persecution and extermination. The exhibition is very moving with an excellent commentary in English. On a Wall of Remembrance I find several entries for Samujlowicz and almost a dozen for Sakozyi!


Photos:
Old University of Heidelberg building 4#052
Heidelberg 4#053
Heidelberg 5#029