Juliette Gréco

When Red Baron was working on his thesis in Munich in the early 1960s, there was a singer he particularly admired.

March 1966 at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands with tulips. What else?
©Ron Kroon/Wikipedia

Juliette Gréco was exactly the kind of woman I was into. Long black hair, striking eyes, and a sexy voice.

That memory came flooding back when I was in Paris last year and discovered the street sign of Place Juliette de Gréco near Café Les Deux Magots, where  during the legendary postwar era the “Muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” had spent so many hours in the company of  the “existentialists” including Albert Camus, Jacques Prévert, and  Jean-Paul Sartre who wrote of Juliette Gréco: “Gréco’s voice is like a warm, gentle light whose spark can ignite the flames of poets.”

Existentialism (©Airair/Wikipedia)

Raymond Queneau, of whom Juliette said, “I owe them everything,” wrote the first chanson for Juliette Gréco at their tables in the Café de Flore. Gréco said, “I owe him everything.” Was it the chanson Si tu t’imagines from 1947?

In 1949, when the American jazz musician Miles Davis performed in Paris, Juliette, not speaking a word of English, and Miles, not knowing any French, lived an amour fou. Wikipedia knows: In 1957, they decided to always be just lovers because their careers were in different countries, and his fear of damaging her career by being in an interracial relationship. They remained lovers and friends until Miles's death in 1991.

That’s why I was absolutely thrilled when, a month ago, the Centre Culturel Français in Freiburg announced a chanson reading, Rendez-vous avec Gréco.

There was no stopping me. I had to fully indulge in nostalgia.

Catherine Le Ray was absolutely top-notch in her interpretation of the Greco-Chansons, not only in French but in English and German too. Just to cite two press reviews, “Catherine Le Ray sings with talent, passion, authenticity, and charm […] her remarkable performance moves the audience—it’s a fireworks display!” - Ouest-France, and “She possesses the grandeur of an opera diva, which she combines with the coquetry of a vaudeville star […] a wonderfully expressive voice […]” - Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. Between songs, Catherine shared with us episodes from the Grecos’ eventful life drawn from the latter's autobiography.

Frédéric Langlais, her companion, is the ultimate expert on the button accordion. He was the French accordion champion in 1993 and became the world champion the following year, the youngest accordion world champion at just 16 years old. He has received numerous awards for his play. On his 30,000 Euro instrument, he perfectly simulated a piano when it became necessary for the interpretation of a chanson.

Juliette in Vienna 2009 (©Manfred Werner/Wikipedia)

There, she certainly performed one of her biggest hits, “Sous le ciel de Paris.”

**

For They Were Servants of Your Sin

The subtitle of Dr. Rüdiger Nolte's lecture was "Johann Sebastian Bach's Art and Contempt for the Jews."

To get straight to the point. There is no hint that Bach was either anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. In fact, at his time, antisemitism, the hate toward Jews because of their race, was unknown. Antisemitism is an "invention" of the late 19th century.

 
Dr. Nolte said it is not even sure that Bach met a Jew in person, because many towns, e.g., Freiburg, had banned Jews from living within their walls. 

 
And yet they were useful, for example, as moneylenders. They were granted access to the city for business during daylight hours and in "Christian" company.   

In Bach's library there was a book: Johannes Müller, Judaismus oder Jüdenthumb, Das ist Außführlicher Bericht von des Jüdischen Volckes Vnglauben, Blindheit und Verstockung (Judaism or Jewry, That is, A Detailed Account of the Unbelief, Blindness, and Obstinacy of the Jewish People), Hamburg 1644.

 
Did Bach read it? While he often wrote marginal notes by hand in other books, Müller's book contains no annotations.

 
Let us walk the painful path of the Jews through history.

In his impressive lecture Why Are the Jews Always to Blame, Professor Sabine Paganini showed that the anti-Judaism of the early Christians began during Paul's mission to the Gentiles, with a conflict between the group of Jewish Christians and that of Gentile Christians.

 
Paul expressed his view in his letter to the Galatians, who were predominantly Gentile Christians: 3:27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

The Jerusalem Christian community was only moderately pleased with this statement, for they insisted that all brothers in faith must follow the Mosaic Law, in particular, circumcision and keeping kosher.

The clash between the two factions of Christians is described in Acts 15:

1 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." 2 This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question ... 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

The reunion, known as the Council of Jerusalem, was presided over by Simon Peter, but the spokesperson for the Jewish Christians was James, the Brother of the Lord.

5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, "The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses." 6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the Gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are." 

12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. "Brothers," he said, "listen to me. 14 Simon (Peter) has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:"

16 'After this, I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it. 17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things' 18 things known from long ago.'

19 "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead, we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. 21 For the Law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

 With this compromise that Gentiles need not bear the yoke of circumcision, James defused the conflict, which nevertheless continued to smolder when Paul insisted in Romans 6:14, "You are not under the Law but under grace." He even warns Gentile Christians that if they accept circumcision, they are putting themselves back under the whole Law - and away from grace.

And, of course, Christians did not celebrate the Sabbath, but sanctified Sunday, the day of the Lord's resurrection; they ate pork and fish on Friday in remembrance of Jesus' crucifixion.

Paul relapses in Romans 10:4, "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." For him, the moral Law is not abolished, but replaced (Romans 13), "8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the Law. 9 The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not covet,' and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Law."

With time, Judaism became "the other," and by the 2nd century, Church fathers spoke of Jews as "stuck in the Law." With all this, we must not forget that both Jesus and Paul were Jews, and the Law has been handed down to us Christians as the Ten Commandments.

Psalm 59:11-12 reads:
11 But do not kill them, Lord our shield,
or my people will forget.
In your might, uproot them
and bring them down.
12 For the sins of their mouths,
for the words of their lips,
let them be caught in their pride.
For the curses and lies they utter.

Enter Augustine. Inspired by the Psalm, he writes in De Civitate Dei, Book 18, ch. 46, "The Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behooved Him to die and rise again, are by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ."

He continues in Contra Faustum XII,23, "The Jews are like servants who carry the books from which Christians learn. Through their enemies, God testifies to the truth of the Church."

The Jews are necessary because they preserve the Holy Scriptures, guaranteeing the authenticity of the promises of the Old Testament, as they are non-Christian witnesses.

As a consequence,  Augustine writes in De Civitate Dei XV,7, "Just as Kain was not allowed to be killed, but was marked with a sign, so the Jews should not be killed, but scattered."

And the Jews continued to be necessary not only religiously but also secularly. When the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 tightened the canonical prohibition on Christians charging interest on loans, the Jews stepped in. 

Emperor Frederick II, in particular, appreciated their usefulness as lenders and, for their protection, declared the Jews as slaves of the royal chamber for all time in 1236. Although "protected" Jews had to pay protection money to their specific rulers, some became quite wealthy, and Christians regarded them with envy.

The plague in 1349, with the Jews suspected of well-poisoning, served as a pretext for deadly pogroms all over Europe. In killing the Jews, Christians were happy to get rid of their debts.

Jews never integrated into medieval societies. On the contrary, they were separated and placed in ghettos. To distinguish themselves, they had to wear special marks.

Enter Martin Luther. The Augustinian Monk writes in keeping with the spirit of his order's founder, "The Jews are of the blood of Christ, are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord, are the greatest race* on earth. Through them, the Holy Spirit has revealed all the books of Holy Scripture to the world. They are the children, we are only guests and strangers. In truth, we should be happy like the woman from Cana, like dogs allowed to eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' tables.
*Here, the word race is not meant in an ethnic sense

In 1523, Luther was in full conflict with the Old Church. So, in his treatise, "That Jesus Christ was born a Jew," he points out in his harsh manner, "For our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks, it is irrelevant that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. Those coarse donkey heads have treated the Jews in such a way that anyone who wanted to be a good Christian would have been better off becoming a Jew. And if I had been a Jew and had seen such fools and idiots ruling and teaching the Christian faith, I would rather have become a sow than a Christian."

"The popes have behaved toward the Jews like a whorehouse madam who teaches a girl to prostitute herself and then accuses her of not behaving like a virgin and then treated the Jews as if they were dogs and not human beings, doing nothing but scolding them and taking their goods ... I hope that if one treats the Jews kindly and teaches them thoroughly from the Holy Scriptures, many of them will become true Christians and return to the faith of their forefathers, the prophets and patriarchs."

"Not papal laws, but Christian charity that should determine our relationship with the Jews. Jews, if they had not heard the Gospel in our time, could become Christians," and he ends his writing with the expectation, "I will leave it at that for now, until I see what I have accomplished."

Luther was convinced that he could turn the Jews into proselytes if he explained to them in his evangelical way that Jesus is the Messiah: "One should treat Jews kindly and preach Christ to them lovingly."

The most symbolic image of the Middle Ages: the triumphant ecclesia stands opposite the blindfolded synagoga. Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. The statues stand in the vestibule of the Freiburg Minster Church, serving as Biblia pauperum for all believers who were unable to read.

But no such luck, the Jews remained stubborn. They stuck to their beliefs. So with age, Luther the Judenversteher (sympathizer of the Jews) became anti-Jewish.

In 1543, in his treatise "On the Jews and Their Lies," Luther takes up the two-hundred-year-old fake news that the Jews spread of the plague: "Such a desperate, evil, poisonous, devilish thing is this about these Jews, who have been the plague, pestilence, and all misfortune since 1400, and still are. In short, we have real devils in them ... There is no human heart ..."

And he continues, "The Jews pray that the Messiah will come and kill and destroy the Christians ... It is also our fault that we did not reckon with the great innocent blood they shed on our Lord and the Christians for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and until now, on children ... We do not punish them, we do not kill them, but instead of all their murders, curses, blasphemies, lies, and desecrations, we let them sit freely among us, protect and shield their schools, houses, bodies, and property, so that we make them lazy and secure, so that they can confidently suck our money and property dry and mock us, 'We, the Jews, do not work, we have good lazy days, the cursed goyim must work for us, but we get their money, so we are their masters, and they are our servants.'"

"What are we Christians to do with these despicable, depraved people, the Jews? It is not easy for us to bear them, knowing that they lie, blaspheme, and curse us ... Prayer books and the Talmudists should be confiscated, and their rabbis should be forbidden, on pain of death, to teach or preach. Money transactions and trade should be forbidden to them, so that, like Adam and Eve after the Fall, they must earn their bread by the sweat of their brow with pitchforks, axes, hoes, spades, and spindles. Their safe conduct must be revoked; indeed, it would be best if the Germans joined the common wisdom of other nations, such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., and made the Jews repay what they have extorted from us, and then expel them from the country forever."

And furiously Luther continues, "We cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of God's wrath, nor convert the Jews. We must practice sharp mercy with prayer and fear of God. This sharp mercy includes setting fire to their synagogues or schools and covering what cannot be burned with earth and rubble so that no one will ever see a stone or slag from them, and breaking and destroying their houses so that they can be put under one roof or in a stable, like the Gypsies, so that they know they are not masters in our land, where they boast, but in misery and captivity ... for everything they have, they have stolen and robbed from us through their usury. Christ our Lord, convert them mercifully!"

In his sermon on the day of his death in Eisleben, Luther speaks his last words on the Jewish question, "If they do not convert, we should not tolerate or suffer them among us. Therefore, away with them, but if they convert and renounce their usury and accept Christ, we will gladly accept them as our brothers."

Converting the Jews was also the aim when, during the Restauration, German territories tried to accommodate them. With the advent of a constitutional monarchy in Baden in 1818, the state parliament debated Jewish emancipation. 

Enter Karl von Rotteck: The deputy from Freiburg made himself the spokesman, demanding that Jews earn their civil rights through increased integration into the Christian community by adopting manners and traditions, i.e., the use of the German language in everyday life and in public. They should abandon special Jewish clothing as an outward sign of distinction and sanctify Sunday instead of the Sabbath. Equal rights, yes - but only if Jews stopped being visibly Jewish.

In a previous blog you read, "Freiburg put up fierce resistance against freedom of movement. For fear of competition, the merchants wanted to retain the prohibition on Jews, the ban that had existed since 1424 and that the city council had once more confirmed in 1809. A petition addressed to the Baden parliament stated, 'Wir werden zum Judennest (We shall become a Jewish nest.)'"

Back to Rüdigere Nolte's lecture. He took the title of his lecture from a Passion sermon of the 16th century in the Wittenberg tradition of Martin Luther's postils:

For the evildoers, the Jews, as God has judged and driven them out, have nevertheless been servants of your sin ... The cryptic statement “your sin” means the sins of Christians, arguing that the Jews were being used by God as an instrument of punishment.

Enter Johann Sebastian Bach and Dr. Nolte posed the question:

Was contempt for Jews so commonplace in the early 18th century that Bach could understand his Passion compositions as purely spiritual and probably also aesthetic commissions?

While Bach adopts the Lutheran translation of the New Testament word for word as the libretto in his Passions, he oversteps in the St. John Passion in the scene in John 19:15: But they shouted, 'Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"

Clos-up of a viola d'amore showing six playable above six sympathetic strings (©Aviad2001/Wikipedia)

Towards the end of his lecture, Dr. Nolte attempted to illustrate the latent antisemitism in large sections of society with the image of a viola d'amore*.

*A viola d'amore usually has six or seven playing strings, which are sounded by drawing a bow across them, just as with a violin. In addition, it has an equal number of sympathetic strings located below the main strings, which are not played directly but vibrate in sympathy with the notes played.

1. The directly anti-Semitic accounts of the evangelists Matthew and John.

2. The Christian functionalization of "Jewishness" as a marker of contrast.

3. The indirect resonance as a fundamentally underlying "dark foil."

Is the comparison between the resonating strings of a "love viola" and the resonating "dark foil" of antisemitism a "good" comparison?

Enter Wilhelm Marr:

©Arkomano/Wikipedia

In his book Victory of Judaism over Germanicism, Marr defines the Jews as "Oriental strangers" of a "Semitic race" and synonymous with "financial power." By describing Jews as Semites*, he reinterpreted a term originally referring to a language family in a racist way, and subsequently, Marr called himself an anti-Semite.

*In Gen 10: "21 Of Sem also, the father of all the children of Heber, the elder brother of Japheth, sons were born. 22 The sons of Sem: Elam and Assur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram."

This was a paradigm shift: religious Judaism turned into ethnic antisemitism. Jews became a non-European race with unchangeable characteristics and traits. They were, in a negative sense, "citizens of the world" with no real homeland and being loyal only to each other. Fabricated propaganda works such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" appeared and fueled fears of a subversive "world Jewry" striving for absolute power.

Jews pursue control of the international capital market (capitalism). They undermine traditional pillars of society through revolutions and new ideologies and decompose existing societies through amorality and hedonism.

Enter Adolf Hitler: At the beginning of the 20th century, Vienna was a stronghold of ethnic antisemitism, which Hitler adopted in Mein Kampf. Jews are unscrupulous materialists in contrast to the selfless heroism of the Aryan. They "degenerate" all forms of art. With their sexual licentiousness, they spread syphilis. In Mein Kampf, Hitler harped a lot on this sexually transmitted disease.

In Hitler's eyes, Judaism represented a hostile, biologically and morally corrosive foreign body that must be isolated and subsequently be ausgemerzt aus dem deutschen Volkskörper (eradicated from the German people). As we all know, Hitler's ideas culminated in the Shoah, the greatest cultural rupture in human history, whose horror is still unimaginable today.

Like Dr. Nolte, I conclude with a choir from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which is depressingly relevant to the present day:

The world has deceived me with lies and fake news, many snares and secret traps. Lord, protect me in this danger, keep me safe from treachery.

**

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Was bedeutet Menschsein? was the title of a musical reading about the exceptional Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla.

Solo artist Cordula Sauter from Freiburg presented this extraordinary man, who always remained true to himself despite enormous resistance, with his accordion solo pieces.

Piazzolla grew up in the Bronx, New York. His life was a constant series of ups and downs, which he drew on and expressed in his music. He developed his Tango Nuevo from the traditional Tango Argentino, incorporating elements of classical music, jazz, and klezmer. In doing so, he shook the foundations of his homeland's musical tradition and only gained recognition there late in life.

American composer John Adams said: "Astor Piazzolla wrote music about the flawed confusion of human beings—music that was steeped in sweat and smoke, as impure as our bodies with their food stains and shame. With its wrinkles, dreams, prophecies, its embellishments of love and hate, stupidity, political convictions, denials, doubts, and affirmations. Music as impure as old clothes that smell of lilies and urine."

Cordula Sauter enriched the one-hour program of Piazzolla's accordion solo pieces with thoughts on being human in literary prose at the time when the respective pieces were written. Food for thought was: "Forgetting," "Freedom/being free," "Heimat," "Dreams," "Aimlessness," "Liveliness," "Fear."

Red Baron has personal difficulties with two of these thought-provoking ideas, while Goethe had his challenges with freedom. In his drama Egmont, the title character asks the Spanish Governor of the occupied Netherlands, Duke Alba, "Who guarantees freedom to the Dutch?" The Duke answers, "Freedom is a beautiful word. Who understands it correctly?"

Rosa Luxemburg thought she understood the "word" when she gave the all-encompassing answer, "Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently."

For Red Baron, freedom is the ability to live my life while living with others.

Cordula's other thought-provoking idea that has always preoccupied Red Baron is "Heimat." The German term is inadequately translated by the English words "home" or "homeland." In German, Heimat means all of the following:

• Place (landscape, city, dialect)
• Time (childhood, memories)
• Relationship (familiarity, recognition)
• Identity ("I am not a stranger here").

Here are two testimonies about Heimat:

Philosopher Martin Heidegger had a deep connection to his Black Forest: "Heimat is the place where language brings the Being into appearance and Being dwells in man."

Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Augstein on their way to Todtnauberg (©Der Spiegel)

I remember that towards the end of his life, Heidegger is said to have remarked that all that remained of his philosophy was his rooted Being in his Heimat, his hut near Todtnauberg.

Martin at the entrance to his hut (©bpk/Digne Meller Marcovicz)

Last Sunday, Red Baron, as a member of the Association supporting the Freiburg Documentation Center on National Socialism, was invited to a pre-tour of the new temporary exhibition Ende der Zeitzeugenschaft (The end of contemporary witnessing).

    

Witnesses who still remember the horrific events of the Third Reich are dying out. This exhibition shows videos of interviews with contemporary eyewitnesses made in the 1990s. 

One of them is Lotte Paepke, who, as a Freiburg resident and Holocaust survivor, recounts her experiences during the Nazi era. When asked about her Heimat, she said that "coming home" to Israel felt good, but when the interviewer continued to cite the final sentence of Ernst Bloch's three-volume work, The Principle of Hope, where "he states that all people are searching for something - and I quote,' which shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: Heimat. 'Is there a Heimat at the end of your life?"

Thinking of her country of birth, Lotte answered:

As a child, Red Baron was displaced throughout Germany during the last war. Afterward, he attended school in Hamburg for 9 years, studied at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Munich, worked at CERN in Geneva for 32 years, and has been retired in Freiburg for 25 years. So, I never had a Heimat.

**

Singing Christmas Carols in Freiburg‘s Minster Church

Red Baron likes to sing, so he went to Freiburg's Minster this afternoon. But when I arrived at a quarter to five, the church was already full to bursting.

I walked with my stick to the front without hoping for a place in one of the pews. However, in row six, a young lady was keeping a few seats free, desperately looking for three latecomers from her family. I counted and said that a thin person would still fit in. So she offered me the seat by one of the church pillars.

Needless to say, only one additional person showed up, and Red Baron eventually had lots of free space and a perfect view into the church choir.

When the event started, I got my fill. Here is the complete list of Christmas Carols I sang out loud with the people around me strangely remaining as mute as a fish.

All the songs you find on YouTube. Some melodies are familiar to my English-speaking readers, so they may like to sing or hum along without an English text. Click on the German titles below.

Tochter Zion freue dich 

Nun freut euch ihr Christen 

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen 

Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier   

Ihr Kinderlein kommet 

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht 

Hört, es singt und klingt mit Schalle

O du fröhliche, o du selige

It is not surprising that the text of most of the songs contains the word "peace," for as Luke 2:14 states, "In the highest heaven, glory to God! And on earth, peace among people of goodwill!"

Let's hope that in 2025, decision-makers in the various regions of our earth will show goodwill for peace and stop the suffering of civil populations.

*

A Dinner Show

Red Baron remembers well the first dinner show he attended in Las Vegas in 1981. The star on stage was Shirley Bassey. At that show, she possibly performed All by Myself, one of her hits then.

42 years later, I went again to a dinner show at Europa Park north of Freiburg. The park is organized like a Disneyland. People come from France and Switzerland with or without kids and sometimes stay for a night at one of the hotels on-site.

This particular annual dinner show is organized by Freiburg’s Münsterbauverein, and attendees are supposed to donate the same amount of money as for the show to support the Minster Church.

You may remember that Red Baron is a Münsterpfleger. So once in my life,  I wanted to attend the special yearly dinner show on the condition that transport between Freiburg and Europa Park was provided.

On the last Wednesday in November, our coach left Freiburg at 15:30 to give us a chance to walk around the winterly installations of the park.

Replicas of buildings from the federal states of Berlin, Bavaria, and Hamburg
line the central alley. They are marked by their respective flags.
In the back, the Nuremberg Christkindle greets the rare visitor (Click to enlarge).

A slimmed-dow copy of Freiburg's Kaufhaus

It was getting dark.
The rape of Europa on the back of Zeus turned into a bull.

In the Roaring 20s, dinner shows were typical in Paris, London, and Berlin, but the show culture was all American.

     

Ouverture

The dinner show at Europa Park was no exception. The songs performed were already in English. Red Baron was delighted to listen to music he remembers well:

Smile though your Heart is Aching

I am Singin’ in the Rain

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

One Moment in Time

Here are some stage photos.

Note the ceiling painting: Europa and the Zeus bull.

Flying high

Out of the bathtub

A strong equilibritist

More dancing and singing

The end is near.

Thank you audience

They placed me at the table already filled with seven members of one family. They were all nice; the conversation flowed, and the dinner was excellent.

Will I be able to re-attend next year?

*

Die Dreigroschenoper

Last Sunday night, Red Baron was at the opera in Freiburg's Municipal Theater.

When Die Dreigroschenoper had its first performance on August 31, 1928, in the theater on Berlin's Schiffbauerdamm, now Bert Brecht Theater, the program leaflet read:

DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER (The Beggar‘s Opera)
A play with music in a prelude and 8 pictures after the English of John Gay.
Translation: Elisabeth Hauptmann
Adaptation: Brecht
Music: Kurt Weill

In fact, later, Bert Brecht was accused of plagiarism by some. So, you may say that the present changes in the text by the director of the play (Regietheater) are tolerable.

A strange scenery invited the spectator to watch the 3G-Oper (G standing for Groschen, which used to be a 10 Pfennig coin).

The Freiburg production had plenty of text omissions and additions. As one critic wrote, "Today's word scrap from Donald Trump's You are Fired to Christian Lindner's Risks are thorny opportunities*."
*Germany's Finance Minister

©Theater Freiburg

However, the staging was instead characterized by the funny performance of the actors clothed as Teletubbies. There was more slapstick than wit.

©Theater Freiburg

So another critic saw the characters "tripping to the music over the walkways and stairs of the blinking house." With this, the play lost some of its biting social criticism, but this further alienation of Brecht's alienation was probably intended.

Red Baron was annoyed by the burlesque acting. Luckily, they cannot change Weill's music, or I say it with Gershwin: "They Can't Take That Away from Me."

So occasionally, I closed my eyes and listened, e.g., to the three powerful ballads performed by opera singers. These songs contain the gist of the Dreigroschenoper.

Ballade über die Frage "Wovon lebt der Mensch" Macheath: Wie ihr es immer dreht, Und wie ihr's immer schiebt: Erst kommt das Fressen, Dann kommt die Moral. Jenny: Denn wovon lebt der Mensch? Macheath: Denn wovon lebt der Mensch Indem er stündlich, den Menschen Peinigt, auszieht, anfällt, abwürgt und frisst. Nur dadurch lebt der Mensch, Vergessen kann, dass er ein Mensch doch ist.

Ballad About the Question, "What Does Man Live On". Macheath: No matter how much you twist it, And how you always push it: First comes food, Then comes the moral. Jenny: For by what does man live? Macheath: For by what does man live That hourly, the human being Tortures, strips, attacks, strangles, and eats Only by this man lives Can he forget that he is a man.

Ballade von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Planens Denn für dieses Leben Ist der Mensch nicht schlau genug. Niemals merkt er eben Diesen Lug und Trug. Ja, mach nur einen Plan! Sei nur ein großes Licht! Und mach dann noch’nen zweiten Plan Gehn tun sie beide nicht. Denn für dieses Leben Ist der Mensch nicht schlecht genug. Doch sein höhres Streben Ist ein schöner Zug.

Ballad about the Uselessness of Man's Ambition Because, for this life, Man is not smart enough He never notices All the tricks and lies. Yes, just make a plan! Just be a great light! And then make another plan; They both won't work. For, in this life, Man is not bad enough But his higher ambitions Are a beautiful trait.

Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit Da ist nun einer schon der Satan selber Der Metzger: er! und alle andern: Kälber! Der frechste Hund! Der schlimmste Hurentreiber! Wer kocht ihn ab, der alle abkocht? Weiber! Das fragt nicht, ob er will - er ist bereit. Das ist die sexuelle Hörigkeit.

Ballad of Sexual Bondage Now, there is one already: Satan himself He is the butcher, and all the others are calves! The cheekiest dog! The worst whoremonger! Who does him in? Who does them all in? Women! Don't ask if he likes it; he's up for it That's sexual bondage.

In the last act, Tiger Brown, London's police chief, is bustling around the stage with a loaded revolver. Ultimately, he shoots Macheath ("Mack the Knife"), his buddy from army days, dead. 

What a reverse ending! 

 In John Gay's Beggar's Opera, there is a Happy End. Macheath is reprieved due to the audience's demand. All are invited to dance and celebrate his wedding to Polly. So early critics blamed Gay for glorifying the "charms of idleness and criminal pleasure."      

 In Brecht's Dreigroschenoper, Tiger Brown arrives as the deus ex machina, announcing that the queen had pardoned Macheath and even granted him a title, a castle, and a pension. So, Weill's final choir demands that wrongdoings are not punished too harshly, as life is harsh enough. 

 In both endings, the evil survives as in real life. Can somebody please explain Macheath's shooting in the present staging to me? 

No curtain. Applause and the actors are bowing …

… and are running again.

Still, Red Baron enjoyed the Freiburg performance of the Dreigroschenoper.

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Bach's Great Passion

My latest Hamburg trip centered on Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. Red Baron often listened to The Great Passion and wrote about it in 2012 and 2016. The present performance was exceptional as

- at the Elbphilharmonie, the audience surrounds the orchestra, choir, and soloists and

©FBO

- we Freiburgers listened to the Freiburger Barock Orchester, i.e., Baden meets Hamburg.

©VL

The Baroque instrumentalists were completed by the Belgian vocal ensemble Vox Luminis.

From the program booklet of the Hamburg performance, we learned that the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion on April 11, 1727, remained uncommented. There were only four other performances in Bach's time.

The main reason for this may have been what an audience member put in 1729 in the following words, "God forbid! It sounds as if one were in an opéra-comédie!" Had the Thomaskantor not made a contractual commitment not to write music that was too operatic for church purposes? And now this.

Bach's St. Matthew's Passion was "lost" for over 100 years. It was the 20-year-old Felix Mendelsohn-Bartholdi who "resurrected" Bach's masterpiece, although in a slimmed-down adaptation in 1829 with the Berlin Singakademie. In the romantic Biedermeier era, the audience's tastes had changed considerably.

And so Felix's older sister Fanny wrote to a friend about the spectacular performance, "What we all dreamed of as a possibility in the background of time is now true and real, the Passion has entered public life and become the property of the mind. The crowded hall looked like a church; the deepest silence, the most solemn devotion prevailed in the assembly; one heard only individual, involuntary expressions of deeply excited feeling, what one so often says with the injustice of undertakings of this kind, one can claim here with the true right that a special spirit, a generally higher interest directed this performance, and that everyone did his duty to the best of his ability, but some did more." What a long sentence!

Mendelsohn's groundbreaking performance of the St. Matthew Passion launched a Bach renaissance that continues to this day. The master rightly leads the three Bs: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, as the conductor Hans von Bülow exaggerated in the 1880s, "I believe in Bach, the Father, Beethoven, the Son, and Brahms, the Holy Ghost of music."

The Hamburg performance made it evident that Bach wrote his Great Passion for two orchestras (Chorus I and II), two choirs, and soloists (Coro Primo and Second). 

 In previous stagings, the performers were primarily crowded together and faced the audience. This time, the two orchestras and choirs were separated, requiring precise cooperation between conductors. Lionel Meunier stood as bass in the right ensemble, and concertmaster Petra Müllejans sat elevated and played the first violin in the left orchestra.

This double constellation created excellent transparency and dynamics, especially when all the singers joined in on some choruses.

With this star cast, the performance was bound to be a success, and the sustained final applause put a smile on the musicians' faces.

Criticism? More intensive acoustic preparation would have been needed in the Elbphilharmonie. For example, the Evangelist sounded strangely softly in the unusual positioning of the musicians, and in my favorite aria, Erbarme dich o Herr, sung by an excellent countertenor, the accompanying violins covered up the sobbing solo violin.

The two and a half hours flew by, especially since this time, Red Baron was listening to the music not in a wooden pew but in a comfortable armchair in the 3rd row of the parterre.

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Der Auswanderer

I did not regret watching the staged performance of "The Emigrant" at the Dilger winery just around the corner from my apartment last Saturday night. The evening before, the two actors from Hamburg, Oliver Hermann, and Markus Voigt, had played to a large crowd, the residents of Pfaffenhofen and their American guests from Jaspers.

The room at the Dilgerschen winery was quite well-filled. The two protagonists sang songs of emigrants and used letter quotes from the crossing and the new homeland as descriptive texts.

While listening, I was painfully reminded of Herbert Schiffels's project of emigrant songs. Due to the pandemic, it had to be postponed several times and finally aborted. Too sad.

In the Der Auswanderer, Hermann and Markus represented several characters with their hopes and fears during embarkation, at sea, and at their arrival in the promised land.  

The applause of the audience was highly deserved.

Scenic representations of historical events are in vogue. Heinz Siebold's play Rapallo also captivated other viewers and me.

When I heard that the two "emigrants" were working on a scenic portrayal of the 1848 events, my ears pricked up. I was beside myself when Oliver Hermann revealed to me over a glass of wine that he would be playing Struve in the play about the 1848 Revolution. I offered the two gentlemen to help themselves to quotes from my website.

Oliver send me more details of the planned Freiheit! 1848, a scenic presentation of the 175th anniversary of the revolution in 2023. The Axensprung theater writes on its homepage about the European dream in three important places:  

Berlin as the seat of the Prussian king and a center of reactionary power

The National Assembly in Frankfurt,  the place of the arduous struggle for democracy and, at the same time, a rapid invention of democratic structures

Baden as an essential focal point of revolutionary uprisings and, finally also, their tragic failure

It is now a must that Freiburg, the stronghold of the revolution of 1848/49, should definitely see the planned scenic representation around Hecker and Struve next year.

Let us not forget that the Struve trial took place at the Basler Hof. At the same place, the invading Prussians ran over the last democratic Baden government.

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