Posted on by Victoria Moul

Verses and translations by Victoria Moul

VICTORIA MOUL is a critic, poet and translator living in Paris. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PNReview, bad lilies, Black Iris, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Dark Horse and Ancient Exchanges. She reviews regularly for The Friday Poem and the TLS. She writes a weekly substack on poetry and translation, Horace & friends (https://vamoul.substack.com/)

Seta and Sporophyte

If this were Ovid, Seta would have been

A slim bright girl, whose bead of blood

One day ran down her inner thigh, a seed

Threaded across the warp of veins

Vermilion on cream and blue. He took

Such pleasure in the colour that he slew

Her just to satisfy himself and draw the skein

Of red from her rotting body; a damp, fine

And part translucent sort of stem, though not

To bear a flower, but his tensed pouch, the Sporophyte.

(Seta and sporophyte are terms referring to parts of moss. I had in mind particularly a common moss in which the sporophyte – spore-bearing structure – is formed of a stem-like seta, bright red and standing straight up from the main body of the moss, bearing dark red capsules. None of the transformations in Ovid’s Metamorphoses refer to moss, but I was struck by the coincidence of the technical term Seta and the Sita of Indian mythology.)

Three poems from The Sanskrit

The Subhasitaratnakosha is a huge 11th century anthology of Sanskrit verse and verse quotations. It was compiled by a Buddhist monk but most of the contents are not (or not obviously) Buddhist, and date from several centuries earlier. It includes some poetry attributed to women.

Subhasitaratnakosha no. 999

As the grime and caustic iron

Of North Sea water, somehow laid

Precisely in the spotless scoop

Of shell is filtered by a cloud

And turns to pearl as sweet and clear

As April rain: so can you raise

The warm and grubby coins of envy

To the gold of praise.

no. 998

Your glory in this world and the next, it is

The ribcage of that royal bird, the soul:

The waters of the seven seas

Fill, like a skull, his little drinking bowl.

Lokāloka is the name of a mountain which is both in and out of the world (loka and aloka), marking the boundary between death and life. The Raghuvamsha by Kālidāsa is a long Sanskrit poem about the lineage of Raghu, and at this point in the poem it is concerned with a difficulty in conceiving a child. Kālidāsa is often considered to have been the greatest poet and playwright of ancient India.

Lokāloka (Raghuvamsha 1.68)

The clouds in Calvi steam on the mountain top:

From the pool we watch them teeter, stir, disperse.

My father has just died

But unbeknownst to me somewhere inside

Dividing cells will in a few months reassemble

His closed eyes.

Two versions of Horace

After Horace, Odes 1.30 O Venus, regina Cnidi Paphique

Mary, queen of Walsingham, forget

Your darling Norfolk; turn to hear

In Lowestoft and Dartmouth Park, the thrum

            Of womens’ prayer.

Come with a child, the blazing boy, and bring

The Muses, skirts up to dance; allow

Also the elderly to attend your train;

            And Christ your son.

After Horace, Odes 3.22

The only baby in all of Horace (Odes 3.22)

Lady of the hills and woods

Hear me when my time is come

Preserve me from all dangers and

            Heed too your son.

Above my house a pine-tree looms

And every day that passes I

Pray that one day my baby shall

            Stand as high.

Spare me then the staggered blows

Of a slow labour, or

A dead child. Bring us torn but

            Safe to shore.

Two Translations of Casimir Sarbiewski

Casimir Sarbiewski (1595-1640) was a Polish Jesuit poet who wrote in Latin. His poetry was an enormous success across Europe in the seventeenth century, with a particularly enthusiastic readership in England.

After Sarbiewski – ‘De divino amore’

Last week I watched Love mending his nets

 (Very dextrous he is too)

His gear was all gold: hooks and line

            The bait, the flies, even the worm.

He was golden himself: but for all his gleam he could find

            No waters to fish in. He asked

“Where then can I cast?”

Pass your nets, boy, to the fisher of men:

In his sea

Packed and wriggling you’ll catch

Men and women like me.

De puero Iesu nato

— Is anything more precious than this child of mine?

Whose mouth with running honey wells and fills again,

As balsam flows unstained in streams that do not fail,

And nectar runs in rivers, free and unconstrained.

In his still curls the stars themselves are bound and borne

And on his nape the locks of heaven turn in light.

Could any mother comb such dazzling weight by hand,

Of he who has been born from shiver of starlight?

— His birth is of the royal line, but royalty is obsolete;

And soonest born he’s lain in filth of foreign town,

His right hand grasps at straw, and clings to scraps of hay,

A baby swaddled only by the chill of snow.

Is anything worth less to us than such a child today?

Posted on by Liam Guilar

Three translations from Culhwch ac Owen

LIAM GUILAR is the poetry editor of The Brazen Head. These are three of his translations from the medieval Welsh prose tale, Culhwch ac Olwen (i.m. Michael Alexander)

Translating Culhwch ac Olwen

In popular films the sexy treasure hunter/archaeologist

(they conflate the two, much to my trowel wielding friends’ dismay)

who’s fluent in every lost forgotten ancient language,

confronting the inscription on the recently uncovered wall,

or gazing at the long lost rediscovered legendary text,

looks, then translates, without a pause, the symbols

into fluent, idiomatic, contemporary American.

The reality goes more like this:

Kilyd son of Kledon Wledic

Wanted a wife as noble as himself.

Here is the woman he wanted.

Goleudyt daughter of Anlawd Wledic.

So far so good.

After they stayed together What? Gwest Ah, see note.

They spent the night together. Is that too direct?

The verb’s related to the one for copulation.

They came together. After they were married

….bland. After they slept together,

no, the story teller could have used kysgu gan.

The cruder options? No. Not here. What follows?

The country went to pray they ?might have? offspring

And they got a child/boy through the prayers of the country.

And from the hour she captured, caught?

The next word’s definitely ‘pregnant’. Another note.

‘Became pregnant’ though literally ‘caught pregnancy’.

As though it were an illness, perhaps better than ‘fell pregnant’

which evokes abrupt decline, or woman, falling?

Then she went wild/feral. Another note.

‘She went mad’. Mad or wild is somewhere you go to

in this case beyond the civilised boundaries.

She’s gone mad and won’t go near a building.

Wouldn’t enter a building?

And from the time that she was pregnant,

She went wild and wouldn’t enter any building.

And when her time came, she came to her good sense.

You go mad but come to your senses. The payoff’s here, 

the sudden twist estranging your own language.

You go out of your mind as though it were a car,

and you could leave in the car park to return to

when finished being mad and needed it again. Anyway,

what’s next? Pigs!? What? We’re up to line 7, only

one thousand two hundred and thirty eight to go.

May I marry your daughter?

(The giant Ysbaddaden Pencawr knows he will die when Olwen, his beautiful daughter, marries. Understandably, he doesn’t welcome her suitors. But Culhwch has been told that if he doesn’t marry Olwen, he will never marry anyone. He and his six companions set out to ask the giant for her hand in marriage. What isn’t stated but becomes obvious is that the giant can’t be killed until his daughter is married.)

They killed the nine gatekeepers,

and not a man cried out.

They killed their nine huge mastiffs;

not one so much as squealed.

And so they came into the hall.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr! Greetings

in the name of God and man!’

‘You, where are you going?’

‘We seek your daughter, Olwen,

for Culhwch son of Kilyd.’

‘Where are those rascal servants?

Where are those ruffians of mine?

Raise up the forks under my eyelids

so I can see my future son in law.’

This they did. ‘Come back tomorrow

I’ll have an answer for you then.’

He had three stone spears beside him,

each tipped with poison.

As they turned to go he seized one

and flung it after them.

Bedwyr caught it and hurled it back,

piercing the giant through his knee cap.

‘Cursed savage son in law!

It will be worse for me when I go downhill.

Like the sting of a gadfly,

the poisoned iron has hurt me.

Cursed be the smith who made it

and the anvil on which it was forged.‘              

They stayed that night at Custennin’s house.

And on the second day, they set out to the hall,

in majesty, with fine combs in their hair.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr,

give us your daughter.

In return for her dowry and marriage fee

to you and her two kinswomen.

And if we don’t get her from you;

you’ll get your death from us.’

‘Her four great-grandmothers

and her four great-grandfathers

are still alive. I must consult them.’

‘You do that. We’ll go eat.’

He took the second spear

and hurled it after them.

Menw mab Teirgwaedd

caught it and threw it back.

It pierced the centre of his chest

and sprung out the small of his back.

‘Cursed savage son in law.

The pain of this hard iron

is like the sting of a horse-leech.

Cursed be the forge wherein it was heated.

Now, when I go uphill,

there will be a tightness in my chest,

stomach aches and frequent nausea.’ 

They went to their food.

On the third day they came to the court.

‘Ysbaddaden Pencawr,

stop throwing spears at us.

Do not wish hurt and harm

and death upon yourself.’

‘My eyelids have fallen over my eyeballs –

Where are my servants, raise up the forks

so I may look on my future son in law.’

They arose, and as they rose,

he took the third spear

and hurled it at them. This time,

Culhwch caught it and threw it back,

and as he wished, it pierced the eyeball

went through and out the back of his neck.

‘Cursed savage son in law.

As long as I live the sight in one eye

will be worse than the other.

Whenever I walk in the wind it will water.

I’ll have headaches and giddiness

at the start of each moon.

Cursed be the forge that heated it.

Worse than the bite of a mad dog

is the sting of its poisoned iron.’

Next day they came to the court.

‘Don’t attack us anymore.

You’ll bring hurt and harm

and martyrdom to yourself.

Give us your daughter.’

‘Which one of you was told to seek her?’

‘Me, Culhwch, son of Kilyd.’

‘Come here so I can see you.’

A chair was placed under him,

so they could be face to face.

‘Is it you who seeks my daughter?’

‘I do.’ ‘Give me your word

that you’ll be just?’ ‘I give it.’

‘When you give me what I name,

then you will have my daughter.’

‘Name what you want.’

The Lame Ant

(Ysbaddaden gives Culhwch forty impossible tasks. This poem tells how one of them is achieved. Gwythyr is one of Culhwch’s companions.)

As Gwythyr mab Greidawl

was crossing a mountain,

he heard lamentations:

a most bitter wailing.

Dreadful this noise.

He rushed towards it

drawing his sword,

cutting the anthill

off at the ground

saving the ants from

the blistering flames.

‘God’s blessing and ours upon you,’

they said to him.

‘And that which no man can recover

we will recover for thee.’

These were the ants

who collected the flax,

all the nine hestors

Ysbaddaden demanded.

But one seed was missing.

Until just before sunset.

it was finally brought in

by the last, limping ant.

Posted on by Clarence Caddell

Two poems by Clarence Caddell

CLARENCE CADDELL lives on sheep and cattle country in Victoria’s Western District, where he teaches high school English and humanities. He edits The Borough (theboroughpoetry.com), a journal scheduled for launch in September. The poems published here will be collected into the manuscript to be entitled ‘Broken Words,’ a narrative of marital conflict and eventual divorce.  

Digital Memories

I think we are immovable by now.

   Or what might happen?—What and how

Exactly? Rather, when will it fall, our last

   Embrace before the endless fast?

I wonder too if in succeeding time

   Nostalgia for our distant prime

Will see me find again and contemplate

   Hot selfies you once sent as bait.

Home Is Not Sad

What happened to us was unthinkable 

As matter in itself, of how our house

Kept standing in our absence like a fool,

So lacking in the least panpsychic nous

That when I first came back here without you,

Without our children, here was a cliché

It must have meant for a symbolic coup:

A pile of hearth ash by the door as grey

As were the clouds. If I had an idea

Of what it would be like, it was as far 

From this as noumenon from all these mere

Phenomena. My idiotic car

Behind, beneath that senile portico,

The lock and key spoke: ‘What we know, we know’.

Posted on by Steven Knepper

Two poems by Steven Knepper

STEVEN KNEPPER is Bruce C. Gottwald, Jr. ’81 Chair for Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute and editor of New Verse Review. His poems have appeared in Alabama Literary Review, First Things, Autumn Sky Poetry, Pembroke Magazine, The William and Mary Review, Pennsylvania English, Ekstasis, Grim & Gilded, and other journals.

Abandoned Well Filled In With Stones

My daughters find it in the weeds,

each mounded stone a chalky skull

hand plucked from dirt and millipedes

and loaded on a cart to haul

down to the open maw they feed—

a task to fill a fear inside,

children that leaned, and fell, and died.

With the Boys at the Shade Gap Picnic

A Summer in the 90s

All pray in earnest for clear skies, good weather,

no t-storms, Lord, we’re finally together,

the scattered Gap boys, late summer vacation,

to rove and roughhouse in sugared elation.

We toss rings for machetes, switchblade knives.

The winner’s mom will skin that boy alive.

Class jester Jake takes a five-dollar bet

to slurp a goldfish, wriggling and wet,

while we shoot down the slide on burlap sacks,

consume a stomach’s ache of picnic snacks:

grapenut ice cream, pizza by the slice,

pie, funnel cake, french fries, and cans of ice

cold Mountain Don’t. “B-12,” the bingo call

sings out. The barkers in each stacked-deck stall

cajole, sweet talk, and dare—cacophanize.

The tank-topped carney with the mismatched eyes

is telling us an edifying tale,

R-rated, shows us centerfolds for sale.

The ancient Ferris Wheel grinds past the stars

while lighters flare, joints glow among the cars

where grunge high-schoolers loiter. One girl flirts

with lead guitar in flannel Pearl Jam shirt.

She’s heard his demo tape. I see my crush

leave with her dad to beat the closing rush.

Exploding fireworks gleam on her hair.

Ignoring the red rain of sparks, I stare

at the spangled ponytail, a memory

to savor August weeks until I see

her on eighth grade’s first day. The evening’s slipped

away.  It’s picnic’s end. Tomorrow ripped

ride wristbands drift, all-access turned to trash.

Spent firework tubes wind-rock in beds of ash.

Posted on by Louis Hunt

Poems from Bhartrihari’s Shatakatraya (‘The Three Hundreds’)

LOUIS HUNT is a retired professor of political theory from James Madison College, Michigan State University. In addition to his work as a political theorist, he has studied Sanskrit and classical Tibetan. In Fall 2008, he lectured on politics and studied classical Tibetan at the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India. He has published poems and translations from Sanskrit in The Rotary Dial, Autumn Sky, The Road Not Taken, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, Metamorphoses and Ezra. He is currently working on a volume of translations from the Sanskrit of Kalidasa, Bhartrihari and Nilakantha Dikshita.

Bhartrihari (circa 4th-5th centuries CE) was an Indian poet writing in Sanskrit about whom nothing certain is known. Some traditional sources suggest he was a Buddhist monk, others that he was a king who abandoned his throne for the life of a renunciant. The editor of the 1948 critical edition of the poems, D. D. Kosambi, called Bhartrihari, on the basis of the poems themselves, “a hungry Brahmin in distress.” He is the author of the Shatakatraya (The Three Hundreds), a collection of three thematically focused “centuries” of epigrammatic verses treating worldly wisdom, erotic love and renunciation respectively. Some of the poems traditionally ascribed to Bhartrihari may be later accretions, but the core of the Shatakatraya reveals a poet with a unique voice that is sometimes at odds with the traditional poetic conventions of classical Sanskrit literature.

Bhartrihari writes in the tradition of what is called muktaka (single-stanza) poetry. Depending on the meter employed, a single-stanza poem can range in size from 32 to 84 syllables. (There are even longer forms but none are represented in the verse chosen for these translations.) The easiest way to analyze the meter of a poem in Sanskrit is to divide it into quarter lines. These lines are generally of equal length and organized in terms of a fixed pattern of short and long syllables. Like Greek and Latin meter, Sanskrit meter depends on the balance between short and long syllables rather than the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables familiar from English. It is impossible to reproduce these complex metrical forms in English. I have chosen instead to employ a “loose iambic” meter which attempts to reproduce the phrasing of the poems. My line breaks generally coincide with metrical pauses in the original Sanskrit. Classical Sanskrit poetry does not use end rhyme but it makes free use of various sonic patterns within the poems such as consonance and assonance, alliteration, and the repetition of the same or similar sounding words. I have used similar devices in my translations. One particularly difficult feature of translating Sanskrit poetry is the prevalence of sometimes lengthy nominal compounds. The grammar of these compounds must be unraveled and there is often more than one way to resolve them. Since it is possible to form nominal compounds freely, this feature of the Sanskrit language makes it possible to create a wide variety of synonyms for things. Such variation is impossible to reproduce in English.  Despite these linguistic and stylistic obstacles, I have tried in these translations to come up with a poetic diction that reproduces as much as possible Bhartrihari’s own.

The numbers in parentheses refer to the poem numbers in the critical edition of D.D. Kosambi, The Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrihari.

Poems from Bhartrihari’s Shatakatraya (‘The Three Hundreds’)

(64)

The sun lends its luster to the lotus pond,

the white lotus blooms by the moon’s grace,

unasked the heavy cloud bestows its rain,

the good help others of their own accord.

(13)

Only a stupid king would let these poets,

famed for the eloquent learning

they impart to the young, languish in poverty.

But, even without wealth, the wise are lords.

Jewels do not lose their luster because a fool

cannot judge their worth.

(105)

A rain cloud nurturing passion’s tree,

a welling stream of sensuous play,

the love-god’s cherished kin,

an ocean brimming with brilliant pearls,

the eyes of slender girls drunk on moonlight,

a treasure house of splendid good fortune –

The happy man will always welcome

the arrival of his tumultuous youth.

(257)

Give to the forest deer this sacred grass,

splendid as bamboo cut by a jeweled knife.

And give to the bride this betel leaf,

pale as the skin on a young girl’s cheek,

torn from its stem by her sharp, red nails.

(7)

A splendid palace, amorous girls,

a king’s brilliant white parasol –

Happiness like this is only found

when good deeds are strung together.

But when the thread snaps, see how everything scatters

like a string of pearls broken in a lovers’ quarrel.

(87)

The massing rain clouds fill the sky,

peacocks dance in the surrounding hills,

brilliant white blossoms litter the ground –

Where should the traveler turn his gaze?

(89)

A passing frown, a bashful glance,

a tremor of fright, a lover’s jest –

These young girls with their lovely faces

and darting eyes are scattered everywhere

like lotus blossoms coming into bloom.

Posted on by Richard Dove

Mark Elder – statesman of music

RICHARD DOVE watches an eminent conductor bow out

The pause was exquisite. The silence seemed to embrace the sold-out Royal Albert Hall. The conductor was momentarily lost in a sound world of his own. He sighed and slowly exhaled. And then the eruption of applause broke the reverie.

This was Sir Mark Elder’s last performance with the Hallé Orchestra: Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. I watched as he smiled and joyously relaxed, gesturing to the orchestra. In his valedictory speech, he reminded us that he had been leading the Hallé for 25 years from its base in Manchester. “Some of you may not know where Manchester is. Well, you get the train to Crewe and keep going.”

Sir Mark Elder is now 77 and whilst stepping down as Music Director, he will still be conducting around the world.

He introduced me to opera. I read an interview with him and David Poultney on their plans for the ENO in 1979. They wanted to create a stir and bring opera to new audiences. I gave it a go, and have been giving it as go ever since.

The triumph and tragedy, exasperation and exuberance of Mahler’s Fifth seemed an entirely appropriate swan-song; an unconventional composer and an unconventional conductor. Elder liked to do things differently and was not afraid to speak out. He abandoned evening dress for the Hallé and called into question the latent jingoism of the Last Night of the Proms at the time of the Gulf War. He lost the conducting gig as a result. He was a very talented bassoonist and keyboard player who found his métier in leading and conducting. He is a fervent advocate of music in schools and reminded us in his finale speech of the importance of music in the cultural life of this country and, indeed, our own lives. He also urged us to protect and nurture the Proms Festival and not to take its continued existence for granted. It was absolutely appropriate that someone who has never been afraid to speak out and challenge orthodoxy should issue not bland platitudes about his career (“Let’s not get too sentimental”) but warn us to be on our guard and ensure that “this unique festival of music” has a future.

Sir Mark should have the last word:

I’ve tried to make the Hallé so much a part of the fabric of the city that even people who don’t appreciate the music we produce at least recognise that Manchester would be a poorer place if the Hallé did not exist. We need different sorts of music. If you can show a five years-old child a concert orchestra, they may not need that music until they are 45, but they try that and remember these people who came to school. Music is a spiritual food. We need it as much as we need fresh air and companionship, a social life or sports. Music is something to share with others. It has to have an open door.

Happy retirement.

Posted on by Richard Dove

From the Cape to Cairo by keyboard

Olatunji Akin Euba (1935 – 2020), founder of African pianism

RICHARD DOVE enjoys African-European intercultural excellence

I still remember when I first heard the unusual rhythms and bell-like tones of the Ethiopian pianist and composer Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou.  The smell of burnt toast brought me out of a musical reverie.  I could hear the patterns of African percussion in her playing even though I had no clue as to whom I was listening to.  Emahoy was a reclusive nun who rarely gave performances.  She died last year, prompting a reissuing of her sparse recordings.

She remained my main introduction to piano composition in Africa until the arrival of a new CD – African Pianism by Rebeca Omordia – where the work of seven contemporary African composers are featured, as well Chicago-born Florence Price who was the first black female composer to have a symphony premiered in that city in 1933.

There is much to enjoy, from the Arabic timbres of Algerian composer Salim Dada and Morocco’s Nabil Benabdeljalil to the polyrhythms of Soweto-born Mokale Koapeng, who explains that in his Prelude in D he “infuses the dance elements I grew up listening to and witnessing in various townships.” 

South Africa’s Grant McLachlan composed his Sonatina for Double Bass and Piano in 2016 and the third movement, Senzeni Na? (‘What have we done?’) remains hugely popular across the country. He says, “It is a recreation for piano of an anti-apartheid protest song often sung at funerals and demonstrations…inextricably linked to the struggle for freedom and democracy.”  The piece is slow and gentle, but with a quiet rage; it is easy to imagine it being played at sombre funerals.

In contrast, Fela Sowande’s Two Preludes on Yoruba Sacred Folk Melodies is a joyful, original and, as the excellent accompanying sleeve notes by Robert Matthew-Walker reveal, “a profoundly African print with a descending quasi-scalic theme in which seconds and thirds unfurl as leaves of a flowering plant.”

Akin Euba, who died in 2020 was regarded as the most distinguished Nigerian composer, musicologist and pianist of his generation.  He was the originator of “African Pianism” which he described as a style of composition aiming to join the inherent musical syntax of Nigerian Yoruba music to the European keyboard with connotations of fundamental harmony.   Euba was a siren voice for interculturalism in composition, pointing out the similarities between the piano as a Western instrument and several Nigerian traditional instruments. Wakar Duru is Euba’s arrangement of three of Nigeria’s most popular Yoruba songs. One can imagine the piece being played in a concert hall or in a rural village church with feet tapping or bodies swaying depending on location.

This recording is volume 2 of Rebeca Omordia’s exploration of the rich diversity of African piano compositions on the innovative Somm Recordings label.  It is a constantly surprising feast of sounds, moods and emotions. Born in Romania to a Romanian mother and Nigerian father, she is hailed as an African classical music pioneer and is the artistic director of the world’s first ever African Concert Series at the Wigmore Hall in London. This is a perfect starting point for intercultural musical exploration, east, west and all points north and south. 

African Pianism Vol. 2 by Rebeca Omordia.  Somm Recordings.  SOMMCD 0688

Posted on by Stuart Millson

All eyes on Opera Rara…

STUART MILLSON enjoys hearing Donizetti’s bel canto legacy honoured

At this year’s prestigious OPUS KLASSIK Awards, the Opera Rara recording label took centre-stage. Its success in winning the plaudits of the judges with a handsome CD set of a little-known opera by Offenbach, La Princesse de Trebizonde, has very much put the spotlight on a discerning recording initiative. Their latest release, Donizetti’s equally rare (1828) L’esule di Roma – ‘the exile from Rome’ – brings the work of opera conductor, Carlo Rizzi, to the fore, once again, as well as reminding us that 225 years have passed since Donizetti’s birth.

Rizzi, for many years associated with Welsh National Opera, has a rich and varied repertoire and endeared himself very much to audiences at the New Theatre, Cardiff, home of WNO, during the heyday of his tenure. The maestro’s Italianate ‘light touch’ – as opposed to the Teutonic heft of mid- to late-19th century opera – is put to great use in the bel canto genre of Donizetti. Yet this particular piece has many of the hallmarks of ‘heroic opera’, set as it is in the reign of Tiberius – whose opponents have been vanquished by General Publius, an outcome hailed by all it seems, except the Senator Murena, father of the beautiful Argelia, who has mysteriously disappeared… The reason: the ardent Septimus (the son of a man exiled by Murena) has returned to win Argelia’s heart – freely given – a situation which leads to his imprisonment. There is the unnerving unravelling of a political conspiracy, and the mental breakdown of Murena, who has condemned Septimus to death – but then, the eventual pardon and reuniting with Argelia – a typically joyful end for an opera of this era. 

Bass-baritone Nicola Alaimo, bel canto soprano Albina Shagimuratova, and tenor Sergey Romanovsky in the title role, lead the cast – supported by that orchestral precision-instrument, Britten Sinfonia, whose ensemble size as a chamber orchestra make it perfect for those intense moments for the romantic duo at the heart of this Roman epic – and yet also capable of the grand moment (a prelude, perhaps, to the age of Verdi). And what a combination the leading stars make: each scene and aria outshining the previous, giving the opera a sense of unrelenting drama, with no feeling of drift or dullness, just an immersion into the fate of the exile, and the pain of internal exile, in the stifling atmosphere of Tiberius’s citadel.

With an excellent CD booklet (synopsis, artist profiles etc.) the new discs are a firm recommendation for those who relish front-rank operatic performance, the intrigue and passion of Ancient Rome, and recordings capable of evoking the radiant, searing sounds of the opera house.

CD details: Donizetti, L’esule di Roma, Opera Rara, (ORC64)

Posted on by Stuart Millson · 3 Comments

Looming Labour pains

Image: Wikimedia Commons
STUART MILLSON says the almost guaranteed Starmer government will need to be realistic

Staring into the political abyss, in this, the last fortnight of the General Election campaign, the British Conservative Party is probably asking itself: how has it come to this? The impressive majority won by Boris Johnson in the 2019 Brexit election across large areas of the midlands and northern England where Labour once reigned unchallenged, has dissolved into nothingness. The allegiance of those former Labour voters (the result of Labour abandoning the real workers in favour of a ‘smarter’ internationalism forged in the salons of central London) has boomeranged back to the party of prices-and-incomes policies and trades unionism. 

Reinventing Labour as an electable, reassuringly mainstream force for common-sense, whose delegates sing God Save The King at their conference and vote for increased defence spending, Sir Keir Starmer’s determination to pull his members away from the Corbyn years of grievance-Socialism (and from the Blairite legacy of free migration and easy credit) has pulled the rug from under his Tory opponents.

Combined with the catastrophic mistakes made by the Conservatives – shindigs in Downing Street during lockdown, a Liz Truss economic gamble that succeeded in doubling everybody’s mortgage payments, the present scandal about election-date gambling by senior Conservatives – Starmer has emerged to raise again the tattered and tarnished banner of trust – in politicians, and in the reliability of government. Curiously enough for an Opposition leader who mocked Truss’s ideology of growth-at-all-costs, Starmer has placed at the top of his agenda the very idea of those denounced free-marketeers – that the only possibility of clambering out of the United Kingdom’s slurry pit of debt and billion-of-pounds social spending is to shore up the real, productive economy. 

Yet can he ever achieve his growth-to-fuel-the-welfare-state objective? With the industries that Labour so relied upon from 1945 to 1979 now either pruned to their thinnest-possible capacity, or completely non-existent, can a Starmer Government ever hope to re-seed industry? After the 5th July, will the new ministers subsidise, nationalise Port Talbot steelworks, protect British jobs, rescue us from privatised price-rises in the (Tory-created) deregulated energy market by establishing a new Great British energy company? Economic experts such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies fear that no new government will have much chance to address Britain’s ever-growing state borrowing. 

There seems little doubt that Starmer will partially ramp up Britain’s defences, say the right things that will appeal to Middle England and the old Red Wall/Brexit seats of the North, and within the precincts of government will pay little attention to ‘woke’ – one of our few remaining growth industries. He will see planning regulations as being against growth – a curious similarity with Truss – yet will make the mistake of viewing housing development and wind farms as generators of wealth. He will pay little attention to countryside matters or rural voters’ concerns: he is, after all (like Jeremy Corbyn) a London politician, through and through.

Sir Keir also promises a new Border Command, to tackle the mass-migrant arrivals on the Kent coast – but just what does that mean? Just a renaming of the existing messy, ineffectual Border Force? His undoubted successes in Scotland will relegate the SNP, and that alone is a good thing for the Union of the Kingdom – so his victory will be a mixed bag. It will usher in, however, a long period of further detachment from politics: he and his team look technocratic and too-serious, even when they remove their ties at those irritating ‘let-me-level-with-you’ moments. And a year from now, everyone who voted for the Labour landslide is likely to be complaining about electricity prices, too-high mortgages, ‘Labour dictatorship’….

Starmer is in the real world – a world away from Corbyn and the recent Labour past – and he and his inner circle know that they will have to deal with Meloni and Le Pen, Russia and China. So his government – tested by world events – may reflect a new managerialism, not an old ideology. We drift into new waters, new times…

Posted on by Stuart Millson

A Hispanic and Germanic journey

STUART MILLSON travels from Moorish Spain to Beethoven’s more-ish Mass

Newly minted by the imaginative Meridian CD label comes a recording which is best played, late in the evening – on a warm night – with a glass of Rioja to hand and candlelight flickering in the corner of your room. In the absence of real Iberian surroundings, the disc – From Al Andalus to the Americas – takes the listener from the times of the Moorish domination of Spain from the eighth century, to the fall of Granada in 1492 to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and eventually the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the era of composers Granados, Turina and the Argentinian, Ginastera. 

The motivating force for and on the recording is the acclaimed American soprano, Christine Moore Vassallo, whose mother, of Arab-Levantine ancestry, inspired the singer to delve into the richly-textured, heady, overlapping mix of Muslim, Spanish, folk, religious, pastoral music and lamentations – fanned, like seeds in the air, to the New World, but rooted in the hills and gardens of Al-Andalus (the name for Spain during Umayyad rule). For this Meridian recording, Christine’s collaborators are Philip Arditti – an expert in Sephardi culture and an exponent of Darbuka, Riqq and Frame drums, Rachel Beckles Wilson, a writer and composer who is one of the West’s foremost authorities on the music of the oud, the guitar virtuoso, Pablo Gimenez, flautist Anthony Robb, and the Spanish pianist, Jorge Robaina. Each musician contributes to this fascinating hour-long time-travel through the history of the Iberian peninsula.

An anonymous pre-15th century piece begins the journey – Lamma bada yatathanna – from a poetic genre of the Arab language which appeared in the tenth century. The song, though, is ageless, describing a gentleman’s interest in the ‘swaying hips’ of a woman, and bemoaning his malady of love. Sephardic songs then follow (arranged in 1975 by Manuel Valls), leading on to three anonymous 15th to 17th century items, collected by the poet, Lorca (1898-1936) Canciones antiguas espanoles; the first ballad, Las morillas de Jaen, telling the tale of three Moorish girls, converts to Christianity, gathering olives and apples on dusty terraces, but earning, too, admiring glances from a nearby farmer. The Iberian climate clearly inspires ‘youth, mirth and warm desire’…

In Canciones del Jardin Secreto, a composer of modern times, Anton Garcia Abril (1933-2021) sets old Arab texts, including the lament of Boabdil (or Abdullah, the last Moorish king) for his lost fortress of Alhambra:

‘Longed-for Alhambra, your castles are weeping

About what happened to me, Lord Abu-Abdullah

Give me my stallion and white blade

And let us go and take back the Alhambra…’

The collection ends with the colours and magic of Ginastera’s Five popular Argentinian songs; taking us to the New World; to the frontiers of the Latin civilisation founded by trade, exploration, conquest, yet tinged and underpinned by the cadences of a culture – that of Islam and the Moors – which itself formed one of the world’s mighty empires.

Gustav Blaeser’s 1840 model for a never-made monument to Beethoven

Finally, by way of complete contrast, we travel to a mediaeval church in the ancient kingdom of Kent (the land now criss-crossed by motorways, the pilgrims in shorter supply) to a performance of Beethoven’s Mass in C major, given by the powerful forces of the 70-strong East Malling Singers – Kent’s large-in-scale, large-in-ambition ‘amateur’ choral society. Able to attract exceptionally fine instrumental accompanists and accomplished soloists, the Singers (conducted by Ciara Considine, with organist, Nick Bland) patiently rehearse their repertoire for many gruelling weeks – a repertoire that typically includes Masses by Haydn, the occasional Handel oratorio, uplifting anthems and hymns by Parry and Vaughan Williams. 

At first, the regular concertgoer and buyer of CDs might pause before considering a non-professional performance of a Beethoven Mass. But such reticence would be a mistake, because here – like an amateur orchestra tackling Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony – we enjoy the pleasure of hearing the rush of adrenaline of aspiring artists, our fellow human beings, activating every sinew in the cause of doing their very best. And in the wide acoustic of the Church of St. James the Great, the rising swell of sound in Beethoven’s opening Kyrie is just as satisfying for any true music-lover, as if you had just ventured into a Deutsche Grammophon recording studio. With a reverential Bruckner motet as an extra item on the CD, how could you resist?

CD details: From Al-Andalus to the Americas, Meridian, CDE 84647

Beethoven, Mass in C Major. A private recording, but for further details contact Mrs. Elaine Gordon of East Malling Singers,www.eastmallingsingers.co.uk