Mezzomania

Inspired by my feverish anticipation of two upcoming concerts … and by a certain Woody Allen film (with apologies to all concerned).

Scene: A doctor’s office. The MOTHER enters with her young SON, who sits in a chair before the doctor’s desk. The MOTHER hovers nearby.

MOTHER: Thank you for seeing us, Dr. Flicker. I’m at my wit’s end.

DOCTOR: What seems to be the trouble?

MOTHER: He says he’s depressed! Nine years old, and he’s depressed!

DOCTOR: Why are you depressed, Alvy?

Mezzomania: Could your child be at risk?

[The SON sits, hanging his head.]

MOTHER: [Answering for him] He says it’s something he read.

DOCTOR: [Amused] Something he read, huh?

SON: The universe is expanding.

DOCTOR: The universe is expanding?

SON: Well, the universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart, and that would be the end of everything!

MOTHER: What is that your business? [She turns to the DOCTOR.] He’s stopped doing his homework!

DOCTOR: The universe won’t be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. And we’ve got to try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here!

MOTHER: What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in France! France is not expanding!

Symptoms may include headache, dizziness,
and inflammation of the Berlioz.

SON: [Continuing as if he hasn’t heard anything they’ve said] And if everything comes to an end, I might not get to attend the concerts by Joyce DiDonato and Susan Graham next week! And in that case, what’s the point of living?

DOCTOR: [Suddenly serious] I see. Alvy, would you mind waiting outside for a minute?

SON: Might as well. It’s not going to make any difference, anyway. [He exits.]

DOCTOR: Mrs. Singer, how long has Alvy been listening to mezzo-sopranos?

MOTHER: Why — I don’t know. It all started with Marilyn Horne, I guess. Is there a problem, Dr. Flicker?

DOCTOR: Mrs. Singer, I’m going to level with you. Alvy may be suffering from Mezzomania, a possibly fatal condition.

MOTHER: But Marilyn Horne!

DOCTOR: Yes, yes, I know, it seems harmless enough to begin with. I mean, how can you like music and not like Marilyn Horne? But then you keep going … and going … until you’re listening to Susan Graham, Joyce DiDonato, Joyce Castle, Cecilia Bartoli, Vivica Genaux, Angelika Kirchschlager, Bernarda Fink, Anne Sofie von Otter, the list goes on.

MOTHER: You’re telling me! They’re all he wants to talk about. He’s just crazy about his mezzos.

DOCTOR: Literally, I’m afraid. And then comes the harder stuff, Dolora Zajick and Stephanie Blythe.

Some patients may experience occasional redheadedness.

MOTHER: Oh, Dr. Flicker! Just yesterday I caught him locked in the bath­room, listening to Ewa Podleś.

DOCTOR: A contralto! Why didn’t you tell me this immediately?

MOTHER: I didn’t realize —

DOCTOR: We’re going to have to operate immediately. Time is of the essence! If we don’t act now, he could start listening to —

MOTHER: [Horrified, sobbing] Countertenors!

DOCTOR: I’m afraid so. Mrs. Singer, you did the right thing in coming here today. And with any luck, Alvy will be back to normal in no time.

SON: [Sticking his head in the door] Is this going to take much longer? Because I don’t want to miss Frederica Von Stade’s farewell.

DOCTOR: [On intercom] Nurse, cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day, and call an ambulance. This is an emergency!

This is International Mezzomania Awareness Week.
Please be aware.

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Festival at Canari, 2010: Singing

Corsican Idol: In concert during a Festival singing competition.
Front row, left to right: Jacques Scaglia, Michèle Command, Gabriel Bacquier.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.
Coming soon: Photos from this year’s Festival.
Check for updates!

The culmination of every Festival International du Chant Lyrique de Canari is a public concert in the sanctuary of the 505-year-old Convent of Saint-François. In odd-numbered years, the concert takes on a Star Academy atmosphere, as the young singers who have competed all week perform one last time and receive the verdict of the judges — and of the audience. In even-numbered years, the kids who have worked all week in master classes with Michèle Command and Gabriel Bacquier show us what they’ve learned.

This year, I was struck by the progress made even by those young singers in whom I hadn’t seen much progress day-to-day during the course of the week. Something about performing in front of an audience (and a sold-out, appreciative one, at that) seems to rally the internal forces of a young artist. Bits and pieces, individual lessons, discrete phrases, and sheer adrenalin come together to create a satisfying whole. There’s a lesson in that. In at least one case, I worried that the lesson might be negative: struggling with a sore throat and only just beginning an intensive technical study, one young singer nevertheless knocked our socks off. “Now that you know you can do it, you don’t have to do it again,” I said afterward.

One reason for such prudence is that all of us — all of us — hope that these kids will be knocking our socks off ten and even forty years from now. Both Michèle and Gaby stress the need to say no to roles and repertoire; they’ve seen too many young singers pushed too far, too soon, with burnout the inevitable consequence. Deploy your resources wisely, though, and you can sing your heart out, over the course of a long, rewarding career.

Michèle, la Belle
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

That’s why I hope that all the young singers in Canari this week paid special attention to the example Michèle set at the concert, when she sang for us on Friday afternoon.

She hadn’t sung publicly in about eight years, she told me, and, after a run-through, she declared, “Not bad for a 63-year-old woman!” Seeing my consternation that she’d admit to such a scandalous (in the view of most French women) thing as her own age, she shrugged: “Je m’en fiche.”

Surely no one who heard her on Friday would have guessed her age. With the indomitable and inspired pianist Sylvie Lechevalier-Bartoli as her accompanist, Michèle gave us Reynaldo Hahn’s “Si mes vers avaient des ailes” (If my verses had wings, to a text by Victor Hugo*), and then, to my indescribable satisfaction, three songs from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été.

Waiting for the next performance:
Music-lovers outside the Convent of Saint-François
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

As she took the “stage” of the chapel of the Couvent de Saint-François, following the first round of student performances, she admitted to a case of nerves. But she was completely confident for the Berlioz songs: fresh and supple in the Villanelle, sonorous and sorrowful in “Sur les lagunes,” then buoyant for “L’île inconnue.” In sum, this was a kind of Helen Reddy moment — Michèle was Woman, we heard her roar, in voice too luscious to ignore — the performance of a lifetime, and I was overwhelmed.

Literally so, as it happened. Seated on the floor next to a stack of folding chairs, I fell against them. BAM! Michèle looked my way, but there was no damage. Sometimes music has a powerful effect on me, physically, and this was one of those times.

Having watched her dance and act during the master classes all week long, I began to dream of the projects she might undertake tomorrow. (Surely an astute choreographer or director could devise a theater piece for her like the Winterreise that Trisha Brown created for Simon Keenlyside.) This much seemed clear: we haven’t heard the last of Michèle Command, and thank goodness for that.

The Festival lived up to its international title yet again this year, with singers from Canada, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, Armenia — and oh yes, also from “The Continent” (a.k.a. France). Another veteran singer (his age somewhere in between Michèle’s and the students’) took the stage at Friday’s concert, too: Corsican native Carlo Ciabrini compensated for the mysterious dearth of tenors on the program with four arias that also give an idea of the range of repertory we typically hear in Canari, from Le Roi d’Ys to La Fanciulla del West. Seated in the audience was the legendary French soprano Renée Doria, gorgeous and charming.** In all, a festive occasion, and a triumph for Jacques Scaglia.



*NOTE: The French words for “verses” and for “worms” are the same — for reasons that defy explanation. But now you know why I can’t help but think, each time I hear this lovely song, “Si mes vers à moi, eux, avaient des ailes, il seraient des mouches!” Please understand nevertheless that Michèle’s verses were assuredly birds, and not houseflies.

**I didn’t get much of a chance to talk with Mme Doria, but perhaps that’s just as well. For one thing, I was awestruck, and for another, my French accent flew out the window whenever I came near her. I sounded like a tourist. I couldn’t possibly have said anything that would interest her in the slightest — and I can’t imagine why she’d want to speak to me at all.

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Festival at Canari, 2010: Teaching

You gotta have heart: Bacquier (seated at left) with a student,
in the 12th-century Church of Sainte-Marie.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

At the reception following the final concert of this year’s Festival International du Chant Lyrique de Canari, I spoke with most of the student singers. In particular, I was intrigued by the Japanese singer who was participating in the Festival for the third time, as well as by the Armenian singer, who struck me as having substantially more training and practical experience than the other students in the master classes. What brought them here, I wondered?

The desire to work with Gabriel Bacquier and to learn both from him and Michèle Command about French repertoire, the students answered. As they spoke, I realized that I hadn’t taken nearly enough notes during the master classes, and I’ve already reported on several of Michèle’s lessons. But herewith, I offer a few more words of wisdom from Michèle and Gaby.

Michèle, running through several vowel sounds, all based on the letter E: “There’s a whole palette of colors there. It’s very expressive. People always say, ‘Oh, it’s hard to sing in French!’ I don’t think so.”

Later, however, listening to an Asian student’s struggles, Michèle admitted that, “Believe me, if we were singing in Japanese, we’d have the same problems you’re having.”

Michèle: “Work with a mirror. Watch the gestures, the attitude, the face.”

Gaby: “The voice isn’t here [indicating his throat], it’s here [his mouth]. So it’s here [the mask] that you have to look for the sound.”

Both Michèle and Gaby are constantly on the lookout for images that will help singers visualize the lessons they’re trying to teach. This extends to gesture and dancing, but also to verbal metaphors, and in Gaby’s case, the language can get pretty salty.

Trying to get one young singer to relax, Gaby argued: “If you want to take a shit without feeling it, you’ve got to open up. It’s the same with singing.” Then, looking around the 12th-century Church of Sainte-Marie, Gaby added, with a shrug of his peerlessly expressive shoulders, “It’s an image.”

Gaby, to a young soprano: “You’d rather sing tears than coquetterie, right? It’s possible that, in a season or so, a director will say to you, ‘Why don’t you sing Sophie [in Massenet’s Werther]?’ And you’ll say yes — for the money. You’ll make an effort to be Sophie, but only for the money. The role won’t last long in your repertoire.”

Gaby, to a student who protested that “It’s complicated!”: “No, it’s not.… You have to work, but you have to use what’s natural for the voice.”

Gaby, to a student: “Technique bores me. It’s theater that interests me.” He turned and saw me taking notes. “You can write that down,” he advised me.

Gaby: “Mélodies you can sing by yourself. In opera, you have to find partners, which is a pain in the ass.”

Gaby, to a student singing about Palermo: “I want you to see Palermo. It’s not complicated.”

Gaby: “Don’t sing ‘Ah!’ just as ‘Ah!’ Sing it with the color you see in your mind. Dolorosa, in this case. The ‘Ah’ must express your thought. You could just as well sing ‘Oh,’ but the note is there for a reason.”

Gaby: “Sing with your heart.”

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Festival at Canari, 2010: Listening

Michèle Command, foreground, teaches us how to listen.
Seated to her left: Bernadette Bolognesi, Ange Dolémieux.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

“You hear everything!” a student told Michèle Command during a master class at the Festival International du Chant Lyrique de Canari the other day — and then added, “It’s very annoying.”

For my part, I find it wholly admirable, and one of the signal pleasures of this year’s Festival has been the opportunity to watch Michèle as she listens to the young singers who appear before her, hour after hour. She’s up, she’s down, she’s singing along, she’s dancing, but always completely absorbed in the students’ work. I don’t know how she does it; I’m worn out, mentally, physically, and aesthetically, after only an hour or so, and I have to go out to breathe the fresh Corsican air. But Michèle keeps going, and it’s true: nothing gets past her.

At the 505-year-old Convent of Saint-François
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

When she was a student, Michèle tells me, she was expected to attend all the lessons, not merely the one prior to hers and a few minutes of the one after, while she packed up her music and left the studio. This helps to explain how, even before she began her own career as a singer — and later, as a teacher at the Paris Conservatory — she had developed a thorough knowledge of multiple repertories, in every voice type, from every period and culture. It’s almost impossible to stump her, though a few students do try.

Today, even Michèle’s own students in Paris sometimes are out the door almost as soon as a lesson is over. “I have an appointment across town” or “I have another lesson now,” they say, without seeming to understand that they could learn something from the work of other students.

“You have to listen first,” Michèle told the students here in Canari. “Get the music in your ears before you start to sing. Otherwise, you’ll wear yourself out.” It’s advice she follows when she sings: the other day, she played us a recording of a concert performance of Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne she sang in Amsterdam, with a vast orchestra behind her. I was struck by how natural her expression seemed, whether the song called for her to incarnate a simple shepherdess or a quasi-Wagnerian force of nature. How had she arrived at this ease and (seeming) freedom? Did it just come to her? How long had she worked to prepare these pieces?

“A while,” she said. “I started not just by studying the score, but also by listening to other people’s recordings, not to copy them, but to get the music in my head. When I was ready, I started to sing.”

Students listen, too.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

She’s quite a dainty little thing (but don’t be deceived — she’s tougher than she looks), so the power she deployed really was impressive as she sailed over the orchestra. This wasn’t a studio recording, where microphones are positioned to put the singer’s voice forward; we heard what we’d have heard live in the concert hall. Much of this strength comes from correct respiration, but it’s also a question of personality, of rising to the occasion. (Something Marilyn Horne emphasizes, too, when working with young singers.) “It’s necessary to nourish the sound,” Michèle says.

“You have to have the size [grandeur] as if you were singing with an orchestra,” Michèle said to a young soprano the other day. “Right now, your sound isn’t reaching any further than this.” She gestured about two feet in front of herself. “If you’re singing in an auditorium, you have to reach the audience sitting all the way in the back. This isn’t a studio in the conservatory: you have to be able to sing in big halls and little halls, with different acoustics.”

To another soprano, she said, “You want to sing what? Salome, Elektra? If you keep singing like this, you’ll never get there. You have to start smaller, really work on the fundamentals. It’s like climbing a staircase. You get to one step before you rise to the next.”

I’ve been struck by the widely varying levels of training among these singers (which in turn makes me appreciate American training all the more), and Michèle is alert to this, as well. One reason she dances, she says, is that too many of the young singers don’t seem to feel the rhythm in the music: they’re just hitting the notes. But as she sways, Michèle is also indicating legato, shape, and character.

If she hears a defect in technique, she pounces — literally. She grabs the student, puts her hands where the breath should be coming from, pushes the air out. If that demonstration isn’t sufficient, she places the students’ hands on her own body, then sings. If the flaw is in the articulation, she pokes her fingers in the student’s face. I’ve seldom been more conscious of the physicality of singing: it’s really an athletic exercise, and after a good lesson, the students are energized and glowing.

Michèle’s patience is extraordinary. She’ll listen to a phrase over and over, insisting on repetition until the singer gets it right — then asking for another repeat or two to make sure the phrase is really locked into the singer’s memory.

These ladies really know the score:
Michèle Command & Sylvie Lechevalier-Bartoli with a student.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

Not everybody is an apt pupil. Some simply don’t have the fundamentals yet, and as Michèle says, “Sometimes you have to step back. In two or three, or even seven days, we can’t achieve miracles.” In music as in any other field, some people simply learn better than others do, and I’m finding in Canari that some of the young singers are so deeply invested in their own techniques and interpretations that they block out whatever Michèle and Gabriel Bacquier are trying to tell them. (Sort of makes you wonder why these kids are attending a master class in the first place.)

By contrast, my hero this week is a very young singer who fell in with the wrong teachers and arrived here with dubious technique that seemed designed exclusively to force the kid into the wrong voice type. The results were uncomfortable for singer and for listener: on high notes, the whole body tensed, the shoulders flew up and the chin dropped down, while the voice was directed toward the shoes. But because this kid is willing to learn, I’ve watched phenomenal progress in just a few days, as bad habits fall away and a genuinely attractive voice is liberated.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the kid is on the right track at last, and all because of a terrific attitude: the kid is listening as intently as Gaby and Michèle are. It’s beautiful to see.*

Bacquier got hold of the kid first, and tried to demonstrate how, with correct breathing, even an 86-year-old baritone could sing an aria in the kid’s Fach. (Indeed, another of the great pleasures in Canari is hearing Gaby assail repertoire other than his own: his Despina, in 2006, remains one of the highlights of my career in the audience.) But the kid had too much bad technique for this particular lesson to stick, and Gaby’s emphasis in master classes is interpretation. “Go see Michèle,” he advised the kid. “She’s got the patience for this kind of thing — I don’t!”

Gabriel Bacquier: The master in action,
in the 12th-century Church of Sainte-Marie.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

For her part, Michèle says that generosity, rather than patience, is the key element in teaching. (Certainly Gaby has generosity, too, in abundance.) Teachers have “to give something of themselves,” Michèle told me, “to forget one’s own career and to give of oneself. You have to be able to receive. I hear when the students are going to crack, and I try to stop them [before they embarrass themselves]. I can hear how they’re feeling — even over the telephone. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ ‘But how do you know?’ ‘I hear it in your voice.’”

It’s a spiritual connection, she says, though it may be genetic, too. Her father was a doctor and an excellent diagnostician, and she seems to have inherited his gift.

As I watch her listen, I’m reminded of how great artists can elevate an entire performance just by listening to the others onstage; there are few things more dismal than a singer or actor who engages only when his own mouth is open. What a prodigy Michèle must be onstage!

But there’s a lesson here for other arts, as well, and for life. If I don’t listen to other people, I can’t hear their stories, and so I can’t write them; if I don’t listen to my friends, I’ll never know whether they’re happy or sad, or whether they need me. As I say, I come to Canari to learn, too, and not only about music.

Michèle has been in excellent voice this week, and we’re hoping that she’ll favor us with a few numbers, perhaps at Friday’s concert. In fact, we’ve already picked out (greedily?) the numbers we want to hear: Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. As it happens, Sylvie Lechevalier-Bartoli, who accompanies Michèle’s master classes, has a wonderful feel for these songs. I’m crossing my fingers and making offerings to the gods of music.

Her Command is my wish.
Photo by Rita Scaglia© Used with permission.

*NOTE: I regret to say that I see nothing of myself in this young singer. In writing workshops, I have become absurdly defensive at even the most benign criticism (only later, and privately, to admit the value of the advice I’ve been given). Please permit me to take this opportunity to apologize to the esteemed novelist and teacher Mary Gordon and to promise her that, next time, I’ll try to behave myself better.

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Kazan’s ‘A Face in the Crowd’

I finally got the chance to see Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) several weeks ago, and I’m still reeling. For one thing, I’m hard pressed to find words to describe Andy Griffith’s performance — so I’ll get to that in a minute. But as a whole, the film is a wonderfully cynical indictment of the power of television and radio, and of the people who listen and watch, as well.

Based in part on the early career of Arthur Godfrey, with a dose of Will Rogers for good measure, A Face in the Crowd tells the story of “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drifter who becomes a media superstar. It’s not only because we first see him in a jail cell that the character practically sweats the odor of violence and corruption, and once he arrives in a position of influence, he’s determined to exploit it. He’s well on the way to becoming a demagogue.


The moral center of the movie is Patricia Neal’s character, a radio producer who discovers “Lonesome,” and who follows him from the local station to national television. Early on, she sees his true nature, but she thinks she’s powerless to resist him — and what’s more, she’s in love with him, even when he throws her over for another, much younger and prettier woman (Lee Remick). Also complicit, yet acting more or less as Neal’s loving, fretful conscience, is Walter Matthau’s character, who writes “Lonesome”’s material.

“Lonesome” has charisma to spare, and when he’s singing in the early scenes, he’s like a bluegrass Elvis in his sexual magnetism. Yet it’s only when he stops for a commercial break that we begin to understand how far his charisma extends. In one sequence, we see that it hardly matters what “Lonesome” says about a sponsor’s product: the fact that he says anything at all is enough to get his listeners to buy it. “Lonesome” understands that, and he capitalizes on it.

The next time we see him advertising, he’s pitching Vitajex, with winking sexual references, slicker production values, and combustible energy. If he can sell a pep pill, he can sell a politician — and in his next campaign, that’s exactly what he does. Or tries to do, rather, since passing his cracker-barrel charm along to a stuffed shirt from Washington is more challenging than he realized. The next step, presumably, is for “Lonesome” to go into politics for himself.

Watching the movie today, I’m especially conscious that there’s nothing “Lonesome” can do that Andy Griffith himself couldn’t. Connect on a personal level with a vast national audience? Check. Make us laugh and cry? Check. Sing and tell jokes? Check. Persuade us to buy commercial products? Good cracker.

And so, while we’ll never know whether the American Mayberry Party would have been progressive or conservative, nationalistic or something else altogether, it seems clear that the United States is truly blessed that Griffith chose to use his powers only for good and not for evil.

Yet even having grown up watching Andy Griffith and having come (I hope) to a mature appreciation of his talents, nothing could have prepared me for his performance in A Face in the Crowd. I turn to electricity and volcanoes in search of the right metaphor to describe it; he’s a natural force, certainly. And he’s like an animal, too: raging, raw, more physically alive than in any other role.

Yet that superb intelligence is ever-present, channeled into the character. Griffith’s “Lonesome” is always in on the joke, unable to contain the explosive, terrifying laugh at the other characters’ expense — and ours. Patricia Neal’s character finds it unnerving, the first time she hears it, and all the more so as she comes to understand what the laugh really means.

There’s an element of wistfulness in watching his performance. I defer to no one in my admiration for his television work — and yet how much else he might have achieved! With the path to glory so wide open before him, why did he strike out for Mayberry instead?

For all my misgivings about the politics and moral rationalizations of director Elia Kazan (and those of screenwriter Budd Schulberg, as well), he certainly understood acting. Going into the movie theater, you think, “Could people really have been serious when they called Griffith the next Brando?” (That’s how he was billed in the movie trailer.) But after about ten seconds of Griffith’s performance, I understood, and the reason wasn’t only that Kazan directed both actors in their breakthrough films. He knew electricity when he saw it, and at his best, he knew how to harness it.

Kazan elicits marvelous work from Lee Remick, too, fresh and dewy and poisonous in her first movie; and from the ever-wondrous Patricia Neal, at once sensuous and sane. Perhaps the director saw something of his own political/moral dilemma in that of Neal’s character. The force (“Lonesome” in Neal’s case, the American Communist Party in Kazan’s) has become a threat, and the individual can no longer collaborate or tolerate; s/he must stand up to it, no matter the cost.

The scene plays better, though, when she’s acting it than it did when he lived it.

As a morality play, A Face in the Crowd still packs a punch, though we didn’t seem to learn much from it. All these years later, we’re just as easily led by radio and television “personalities,” and we’re too quick to follow crackpots on the Internet, too. A Google search reveals that plenty of Americans have made a connection between “Lonesome” and Glenn Beck. Yet from the little I’ve seen, Beck hasn’t an iota of Andy Griffith’s talent and charisma — and I’m grateful for that.

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Interview: Renée O’Connor

Again and again over the course of a long weekend in Paris, Renée O’Connor heard the love: “I’ve been waiting 14 years for this moment!” “You’re my favorite actress!” “You changed my life!” Although the fan convention here (which also drew fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and one of that show’s stars, Nicholas Brandon) was billed as “The Musical,” she was surprised and delighted by two fully choreographed musical numbers, in which her audience became the performers. (These kids are going to tumble for Glee, whenever it arrives on European TV.)

For the native Texan, still best-known for her role as Gabrielle on the syndicated television series Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), it was clearly an emotionally gratifying time — in which she was invited into the community that her show created, and in which the fans strove to give back to her something of what they’d received. This was also my introduction to the true nature of the phenomenon that is Xena fandom. (And yes, by weekend’s close, the kids did dress up as their favorite characters, though I missed the costume competition.)

A proud alumna of Houston’s Alley Theatre children’s program and High School for the Performing Arts, Renée now lives primarily in the Los Angeles area, while maintaining a home in New Zealand, where Xena was filmed; she’s the mother of two young children. In addition to her talents as an actress, she’s building a career as a director: her first feature, a romantic comedy entitled Diamonds and Guns, was released in 2008. She paints and writes screenplays — and poetry, too — and with the help of our mutual friend, Michelle Grant, she conducts seminars in Awareness, with a view to leading more creative, open, spiritual lives. (Renée’s next such seminar will be in Toronto, 11 and 12 September.)

Spending time with Renée, I discovered a compassionate, thoughtful woman with a great deal to express, and abundant means to express herself. Our conversations with Michelle, over a couple of dinners and a long walk through Paris, covered a wide range of topics — of which the interview that follows touches on only a few. Suffice to say that I’m a fan now, too, in hearty agreement with those who say, “ROC rocks!”

Renée O’Connor with the organizers of the French fan convention.
Her T-shirt says, “Paris, j’adore.”
Photo by Michelle Grant© Used with permission.

WVM: As I wrote on my blog today, to a true Xena fan, I’m probably the nightmare, because I’ve never seen the show. Now I’m intrigued, and I want to catch up on the series. So tell me: who is Gabrielle? What should I look out for as I watch?

ROC: In the beginning, she is very naïve, with an intense desire to search for who she is. Then she starts to be the counterbalance to Xena’s pragmatic warrior, so she becomes more of the peaceful, compassionate, loving partner to Xena’s person-seeking-redemption. Xena the Warrior Princess is looking for redemption, and Gabrielle is guiding her there in some profound way. I think that if you thought of the whole arc of the series, that’s what you could say. Xena discovers true love in Gabrielle. What else should you look for? In the beginning, she’s one of those people who can get herself out of any situation through fast talking. By the end of the series, she actually gets herself out of situations by using her own physical strength, fighting alongside Xena.

WVM: She’s also a bard. What does that mean, in Xena terms?

ROC: Gabrielle is a great storyteller. She loves to meet the poets along the way. Even at the end of the series — she admires Sappho’s poetry, and so Xena gives her this gift, a poem to her from Sappho. Gabrielle is the person who writes down and archives the adventures of Xena all along the way. Then she puts them in these scrolls, which are her prized possessions, and she carries them on all their journeys. So one great piece of humor is when Xena discovers that she can’t find any paper in the forest, so she uses one of the scrolls, rips off a piece of one.

WVM: That kind of paper? Toilet paper?

ROC: Yes! There was a wonderful lightness in the series. There were feminist themes, anti-war themes. But also humor. I still remember that scene: “Scrolls? You used my scrolls?”

It’s still the ultimate buddy movie, too. [Gabrielle and Xena] could always rely on each other. We always loved each other, too, so whenever a tragic flaw came over one of us, we always came through to the other side still loving each other.

WVM: But it’s my understanding that they were never depicted as lovers outright.

ROC: That was asked today. Someone said, “Do you think they ever basically made love,” is what the question was. That’s been the question of subtext for all these years. There was an incredible intimacy between Xena and Gabrielle. I don’t know if I said, “Yes” or “Probably.” If so, Lucy [Lawless, who played Xena] and I never defined that in playing the characters.

It’s a relationship I don’t think I’ve ever had: it’s best friends, it’s maternal, it’s combative — such as in warfare when you have to rely on your partner to think quickly.

WVM: There’s also an element of big sister/ little sister, isn’t there?

ROC: Yeah, and yet I felt Xena was quite maternal, too. Xena defended Gabrielle. I don’t know if she sacrificed herself. It’s more than just a sexual intimacy. But that’s what people saw, so that’s what they could resonate with the most.

WVM: We don’t often get to see women’s friendship treated in this kind of depth. Usually the depictions are pretty superficial, or they don’t take up much screen time. And men — myself included — are always certain that there’s more going on and much more said between women when we’re not in the room.

ROC: Interesting. That’s the mind of a man!

Renée recalled a scene between Xena and Gabrielle that demonstrated the characters’ closeness.

ROC: We were around the campfire talking about a recap of what happened in the episode, some sort of change in the character had happened, and it was an intimate, vulnerable moment, and it happened around the campfire. I think there’s a moment of intimacy when people are vulnerable and open and loving, and I guess that’s where the “dot dot dot” comes in.

It’s funny you say that [about women’s friendships], because I think women are probably more threatened [than men] by seeing someone they love in an intimate relationship with someone else. Women feel that way. As opposed to something that looks — something that might just be a lustful projection. Isn’t that true?

WVM: I think guys tend to congratulate each other, rather than feel threatened. Maybe they’re hurt when feeling left out, like “I can’t hang out with my buddy because he’s out with his girflriend.”

While Renée reflected on this, I observed that, at the convention, it was clear that a number of the women present at the convention considered Xena and Gabrielle as models for their own loving relationships with other women. Renée cautioned that her perspective shouldn’t be taken as authoritative, merely because she played one of the characters, but she does understand the interpretation.

ROC: I have to embrace that, because truly the lesbian community is still our most loyal following, definitely, after all these years. So if that’s what they want to see, absolutely, go for it, sure.

WVM: Is it flattering to be viewed this way by a community, that you’re telling their stories?

ROC: You know, I come at it from the other angle. I’m almost worried — and I’m not a worrisome person — but I worry about misrepresenting the community, because I don’t expect to be iconic. I can’t represent them in a way that is truly truthful, and so I don’t know that I should be the spokesperson. [That is to say, because she’s a straight woman in real life.]

I think people resonate with me personally because of the person I am. I care about the fans, I really do. I want them to be happy. I want them to feel like they can stand up and say, “I’m gay,” and be fulfilled in so many ways and never be discriminated against. That’s what’s important in what they see in me. I don’t want them to feel isolated or feel like they have to hide or feel ashamed. And I think the young girls feel that way because they don’t have anyone to talk to and they don’t know what to do. I have felt that in my life, and so I feel like I want to say to them, “You don’t have to do that, you can stand up and be who you are.”

Michelle Grant, WVM, and Renée O’Connor

WVM: A lot of people identify very closely with Gabrielle’s spiritual journey.

ROC: I don’t know that she meant it to be a spiritual journey. I think she was trying to search for her individual way. There was an element to the spiritual quest there, but I don’t think it was isolated around spirituality. You know, there are just some people who feel incongruent, they have different aspects and they don’t line up. They feel conflicted. [Gabrielle] was in love with someone who was a warrior and was killing people, and yet Gabrielle wanted the life of a compassionate pacifist. So how does she do that? That was how I came at it.

WVM: I should probably use the word “meaning” rather than “spirituality.”

ROC: Yes, yes, looking for meaning, sure.

WVM: The audience really seems open to Gabrielle and her experience, but also open to you. In turn, you’ve been able to share with them some of the wisdom that you’ve picked up along the way, and several of the people at the convention had attended your Awareness seminar in London.

ROC: What was important for me was for people to really see who I am, the person beyond playing a character on television, and to benefit from the gifts that I’ve been given, and learned from my last five years of studying one road toward self-awareness. I think that the great gift of the Awareness seminars is that I’m able to pass something on to them and facilitate these teachings that they can use in their own lives, and they can then move on. Awareness is about asking inductive questions, and we get to find out about their own experiences. What love feels like, what joy feels like, or asking inductive questions to get their answers to what the ego feels like, what patterns — like behavioral patterns — might look like for them. When I’m facilitating the seminar, I’m not teaching as much as I’m asking for their own awareness to speak up and teach themselves.

Traveling in new directions

WVM: And it’s something you can do in a number of places.

ROC: I will be traveling around the world, teaching an introduction to Awareness. It’s based on one book, the book is called The Ring around the Mind, by Mary Rocamora. For instance, “the ring around the mind” is literally the idea of the ego that we keep in our mind, such as a running commentary that takes us through the day, our personal critic, the judge, the ring that keeps us feeling separate from the rest of humanity on a large scale, keeps us separate from our own higher self.

WVM: What do you do when you identify it?

ROC: The next step is to try to lose the ego altogether and move to a place that is much more free, which I believe personally is the self that was intended all along, the reason we were born. Whatever that may look like, the people who are in your life for that reason, [who] match that. So the seminars, yes I have taught one in London and one in New Jersey, I’m about to teach one in Toronto. Michelle [Grant] and I will be taking the seminar to different places, I don’t know where yet. My idea is to take it somewhere and introduce the concept of it — which is ironic, because the whole seminar is about getting away from concepts and experiencing what’s real. But I want to introduce them to Awareness, and then, if people want to continue to study, they can go to Mary Rocamora.

She never solicited me on any of this. It’s just that my life changed so much that when people ask why I seem different, I want to be able to tell them why, and maybe they’ll find it useful, as well. I think there are many, many roads to people’s finding their own peace and enlightenment, and this just happens to work for me.

WVM: You’re taking your career down a different road, too. Why directing?

ROC: I don’t think it’s so much a “why” as — because I’ve been directing since I was a kid. I’ve been playing with a camera and directing my friends in plays and scenes since I was in grade school. During Xena, I was always curious about the bigger picture, where the characters were going, if the story arc made sense, if the beats in the scene were true and then had a shift at the end and carried on to the next scene. I was always fascinated by these elements, so it was a natural segue to directing. I feel I have more creative control, the opportunity to play in all the different departments. After six years of working on Xena, I understand camera angles and shots, and how to make things look dynamic. I appreciate compositions to the shots.

The poster for Words Unspoken, a recent film by Renée.
For more information on all of Renée’s directing projects,
consult her production company’s website:
rocpictures.com

I happen to love working with actors, I appreciate their techniques, and I value their effort. And then I’m able to raise their bar and push them a little bit further, if necessary, to try to stretch them, to see if they can learn something as well. When I say, “learn something,” I mean maybe an inner wisdom that pops because of the experience or maybe a technical issue. You know, that doesn’t always happen, and you have to know when people aren’t willing to do anything and [they] just show up and work for a paycheck and go home. That’s okay, but I prefer to work with people that have a higher interest in being there, if possible.

WVM: Where are your next opportunities to direct going to be?

ROC: I actually don’t know yet. I’m looking for financed independent films to direct. A lot of people come to me with ideas and stories, but then they want financing. I am looking for financed projects to direct.

Photo by Michelle Grant© Used with permission.

During the convention, Renée had talked about the impact that playing Gabrielle had on her personally: first in giving her confidence, and then, after the series ended, launching her on her own spiritual journey. (Which, as opposed to Gabrielle’s journey, Renée does describe as spiritual.) I suggested that, through her directing experiences, and in one case by getting involved (successfully) with financing a picture, she was mirroring the Gabrielle experience, and gaining confidence.

ROC: Yes, I learned the confidence during the two episodes that I directed on Xena. I felt very confident as a director — maybe naïvely — but now every time that I’m not directing but I’m acting for myself, I see that I have more knowledge than I expect of myself. I think it’s just there, and it comes from absorbing the knowledge from the talented directors that were around me for all those years. I have always been inquisitive, I’m sure you could ask any of those directors, and the ones that I respected, I was always right by their side, asking questions. Fortunately, they were always very forthcoming with sharing — sharing with me and not getting too frustrated!

The problem with this business is, if you have not directed a feature film, it’s difficult to get a large budget behind you and get sent off for your first feature film. That’s been a struggle, and yet I don’t think it’s a dead end. It’s just a detour.

WVM: I’ve already heard from readers who are Xena fans, but there are probably going to be people reading this who know as little as I do. What do you want people to know? How do you want to say goodbye to us tonight?

ROC: I am always fascinated at how we are all connected, and how similar we all are. What about the people who follow Gabrielle are similar to the people who follow your opera? Do they both feel extremely passionate about the feelings they get from watching Xena or being in the opera? Why are we so similar? If music or a television show can makes us open in our lives, how can we take that feeling and translate it into our daily lives? That would be my parting words, is to put it back to them. How interesting, to cross the gap.

I would think that someone who would prefer to sit in an opera probably wouldn’t be picking up a Xena DVD. I don’t know. So if not, then can he or she listen to how passionate someone feels about a TV character and respect that that’s that person’s model of their world, and yet their feelings are exactly the same as [those of] the person who sat and listened to the resonating finale of an opera star. But gosh, operas are just so powerful! And yet some people today were telling me how much Gabrielle changed their lives. I’m not suggesting they [opera and Xena] are the same, but they’re more similar than we realize.

NOTE: After the more-or-less formal conclusion of our interview, I observed that the final scenes of Xena are borderline Wagnerian, with a heroic death and transfiguration, as the lone surviving lover sails off into the unknown. Renée replied that Robert Tapert, the show’s creator (and Lucy Lawless’ husband) is an opera fan who often incorporated operatic themes into the show’s scripts — and who encouraged Renée to attend the opera, too. If she can cross over, can the rest of us do any less?

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Perpignan: 22ème Visa pour l’Image

The Castillet, gateway to the old town of Perpignan,
where most of the Festival’s events take place.

The town of Perpignan, a Catalonian mini-capital within France, is not without its mostly dusty, decrepit charms. But as a tourist attraction, it didn’t have much going for it: it served mostly as a pit stop on the way to Barcelona. This sad state of affairs began to change 22 years ago, when Perpignan was chosen as the site of “Visa pour l’image,” the International Photojournalism Festival. For a few days at the end of every summer, photographers, editors, and agents from around the world could be sure to turn up here.

This year, I attended the Festival for the fourth time — the first without press accreditation.* When I first came here, photojournalism seemed to be at its peak of power on the world stage. The sun-baked streets of Perpignan were choked with fans, as well as with professionals, all of whom considered attendance mandatory. The line for admission to the projections formed early each night and took on the proportions of an intellectually pretentious mob as we waited to grab our seats in the Campo Santo. There, we were treated to a 90-minute onslaught of horrors, images from the year past, at a rate of two months per night.

We saw war zones distinguishable mainly by the color of the combatants’ skins, and ceaseless natural and ecological disasters. As a rule, the malefactors in these images were, in descending order, Israel, the United States, and God; capitalism also made a strong showing. Our hosts railed against press restrictions (for example, the French laws enacted after the death of Princess Diana) and the thugs who kill journalists, until we really began to believe that we wielded influence sufficient to bring about change.

Festival director Jean-François Leroy, who narrates the slide shows
in a mellow, thoroughly disdainful baritone voice.

Human nature being what it is, the subject matter of the slide shows hasn’t changed, but much else has: I feel as if I’ve witnessed an evolutionary transition in photojournalism, whose race used to number the kings of the forest, but now count mostly dinosaurs. The crappy economy, allied with technological innovations, meant that there would be fewer of us at the Festival. Agencies have closed; magazines and newspapers have ceased production. Any clod with a cellphone is a de facto photojournalist now, though it’s harder to tell reportage from invention.

And we’re walking, and we’re looking:
A Festival exhibition.

Alarmingly, the extinction of so many agencies, and the inability of the survivors to archive, catalogue, digitize and preserve their collections, means that vast documentary resources are at risk of being lost forever. France’s Minister for Culture and Communication, Frédéric Mitterrand, is taking steps to rescue these photos, as is the newly created Centre International du Photojournalisme Roger Thérond here in Perpignan.

Declaring that Perpignan has become the world’s capital of photojournalism, and boasting surprisingly high attendance figures from last year, the Festival’s organizers are trying to remain optimistic. That said, as I wandered among the exhibitions, I didn’t see very many familiar faces; a great many people can no longer justify the expense of coming here. The pictures, however, were remarkable.

Generally, these can be grouped into two categories: breaking news (depressing without exception) and features (occasionally cheerful but mostly depressing, too). I tend to dismiss complaints that “there isn’t enough good news” in journalism, but when it’s all laid out this way before me, I do understand the feeling.

Sometimes retrospective exhibitions, such as this year’s celebration of William Klein, do help to relieve the miserable mood; during slide shows, I’m almost grateful for the occasional obituary tribute: “Oh, good, Dennis Hopper died. Let’s see some pretty pictures from Blue Velvet now, shall we?”

“Four Faces”: New Yorkers as seen by Klein, 1954.
Displayed at the Perpignan Festival.

During the day, one goes from exhibition to exhibition, before taking a break for cocktails and returning for the slide show in the evening. The danger is always that one will see so many images of human suffering that one’s senses will be dulled. After a while, my brain and my eyes are quite simply overloaded, and I can barely tell one picture from another, much less come up with any appropriate emotional or intellectual response to the content.

The best photo essays and exhibits shed light on important but somewhat neglected news stories. This year’s Festival included a great many pictures from the Red Shirt uprising in Thailand, last May. It was a story I hadn’t followed in detail at the time; now I found it extraordinarily compelling, particularly in the images by Athit Perawongmetha, which found beauty and poetry even amid the violence.

Photo by Athit Perawongmetha, displayed at the Perpignan Festival.

“Personally, never had I imagined that I would have to wear a bullet-proof vest and steel helmet to take pictures in my own country,” Perawongmetha writes. “…I do not want to see any more death or injuries, no matter who the people are and what they believe in, whether they are red shirts, soldiers or police. We are all Thais. No matter who wins this game, victory comes at a loss for Thailand.”

Photo by Athit Perawongmetha, from the Perpignan Festival.

This year, without the badge to get me into the Campo Santo, I settled for a table at a restaurant on the Place de la République, where unaccredited, overflow crowds can watch a simulcast of the slide show. Eating a good meal in comfort is a better way to look at the pictures, yet ultimately the usual overload did set in.

That’s a shame, because I really want to keep my focus not only on the stories the pictures tell but also on the valiant work of the people like Perawongmetha who take the pictures. I am better informed — and more free — because of the risks they take.

Red shirts comfort a wounded protester. Bangkok, May 2010.
Photo by Athit Perawongmetha, from the Perpignan Festival.

*NOTE: Lack of accreditation denied me access to certain professional meetings and cocktail parties: sadly, this blog is not viewed with the same respect as is CBS News, or even Opera News, the organizations I represented here in years past.

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