For those of you in my small but loyal group of fans who may not know, I am currently in Praque, Czech Republic at the American Yaro Music Festival. Arrived with six vocalists from Texas on May 24th and we'll be here until June 6th performing a cpncert version of an obscure Viennese operetta called Polenblut and giving a duo recital of Classic American Theater Songs. The operetta performances will be in various cities around the Czech Republic and we are based in Prague. We were met at the airport on monday by one of the Festival's accompanists. She took us by taxi to the church hostel where we're staying. It's very spartan with simple furniture and very, hard, army-cot-like beds. The day we arrived the hot water stopped flowing but that was fixed within 24 hours and all is well now. We have full kitchen privledges and there is a very nice grocery store nearby which happens to be in the same building as the metro stop.
The hostel doesn't have internet service but we were told by our Fearful Leader that "there are internet cafes on every corner.
HA! SHE LIED!!!!
Yesterday my colleague and I wandered around the Old Town look for these seeminly ubiquitous (sp?) internet cafes. There were none to be found! ANYWHERE! We searched high! we searched low! Finally, we spied one across the street from the Estates Theater where Don Giovanni was premiered in 1787. The front half is, indeed, a cafe but the decore is about two or three decades old and clearly hasn't been refurbished since. The computers are housed in a harshly lit back room. It is "no frills" written all over it and the faint smell of B.O. makes my eyes water but what can you do? I'm convinced this place is one of the last vestiges of communist Czechoslovakia. I'm sure it's riddled with hidden microphones and cameras! If I say or do the wrong thing I'll be whisked away and never seen again!
By the looks of things western capitolism is alive and well as represented by MacDonalds, KFC and Starbucks. The buildings and streets are beautiful in spite of western popular culture. Prague wasn't bombed during World War II so all the art nouveax buildings survived, but just barely. I have read that pre-1989, large beams were wedged between the buildings to keep them from falling in on one another. The buildings were black with soot and the general mood was very dark and depressing. Not so today! Everything has been cleaned up and repaired and the tourist industry appears to be booming.
There are a few buildings that give an idea of what things looked like before the Velvet Revolution. The National Museum is still rather black and you can see where the plaster has crumbled away and the National Theater is also black with soot. I hazzard to guess that it is also very run down inside. It presents Operas, ballet and plays and has the largest state subsidy of all the Nationally supported arts organizations. (Interesting side note: I noticed that Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County is playing right now...in Czech!)
In my wanderings I happened across the Czech State Opera House so I bought a ticket for about 35 dollars for Tosca tonight night. The exchange rate is amazing. About 19 or 20 crowns for every dollar so a 700 crown ticket is about 35 dollars for a really good seat. (I assume since it's the National Opera the singers will be Czech and I wouldn't be surprised if the opera is sung in Czech.) The exchange rate also makes food very inexpensive. a 200 crown bill is, what, 10 dollars? Not bad!
Yesterday, we had our first rehearsal with the conductor in a church in central Prague. I can't figure out what kind of church it is. Something about the Sacred Brethren? from what I can gather the Catholic faith has had a hard time here so it may be protestant. The sanctuary is square with a wrap around balcony and an organ on the second level. it is painted in shades of yellow and white and is equipped with very old wooden pews that are all scratched up and even have initials carved in them. The rehearsal went well. The conductor played the piano for the rehearsal and knows the Viennese operetta style very well. It's hard to explain what he was doing. Basically he was swinging the waltz beat, shortening the first beat of the measure and adding time to the second. We would probably refer to it as a jazz rhythm but I'm sure it's typical to the Viennese operetta style. this method gave the music a lilt and an elegance they don't even begin to teach us about in the States. I suspect our Flerdermaus's and Merry Widows are pretty sub-standard.
Today we rehearsed for our duo recital. Our accompanist met us at the hostel, she is a very attractive brunette who speaks very good english, and she took us to the appartment of a pianist friend of hers. It was located in a typical modern neighborhood off of a main street with a street car line. We went up a very dark, very institutional-looking stairway to the second floor and I'm not lying when I say I wondered if we'd been lead astray and were about ot be sold into white slavery! We were shown into what seemed to be a two room flat with a central vestibule. I wasn't sure where the kitchen was but it seemed the vestibule might also be the kitchen although I didn't see a refridgerator or a stove. There were shelves on two walls that heald dishes, a tea service dish towels. The piano was a very old Steinway that hadn't been tuned in donkey's years. In general the decor was VERY spartan and the whole place smelled very musty and old.
After the rehearsal I had intended to go tour Prague Castel but owing to my lingering jet lag and a blistering headache I got on the wrong tram! It was some time before I realized I was going AWAY from the castle and not TOWARD it. I finally change trams and came back down into old town but at that point I was EXTRA tired and my feet hurt so I found a starbucks and drank a latte. Sidebar: the barista give me a hard time because I gave her a thousand crown note which was all I had after my visit to the bankomat. Cashiers are famous here for giving you a hard time about almost everything. I just smiled great big and said, "SORRY!" I got a dirty look.
I'm going to try for the castle again tomorrow and also the Jewish Quarter which is on the north side of the Old Town. That's a saga unto itself so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about.
Talk to you, my small but loyal followers, soon!
P.S. I'm posting this without editing it. My appologies for typos and odd sentence structure.
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