1980

Greetings!

I have no foreign travels to report this year, but perhaps my domestic ones will sound sufficiently foreign to overseas readers.

Looking back over the year, I seem to have spent a good deal of time taking evening or weekend classes, the most noteworthy being one on Wagnerian opera, at the instructor’s house in Berkeley. This culminated in a “Ring Weekend,”wherein from 0800 hours on a Saturday and running straight through till 0630 hours on Sunday, we listened to the best selected recordings of the entire Ring Cycle of operas. We had one-hour intervals between acts and between operas, during which we ate prodigious amounts of food, each participant having brought all sorts of things for the whole group to eat. I managed to stay up till about 1:00 AM, retreating to a back bedroom to sleep awhile, re-emerging at dawn for the end of “Gotterdammerung. Nobody but a real Wagner fan of course would endure such a program. It was MARVELOUS.

I made a weekend trip to Los Angeles at the end of March to see a special exhibition of American Impressionist paintings and to hear a symposium presented on the subject by several top New York experts in the field, which was excellent, and very stimulating. I was pleased to discover a painting in the exhibit by one of my father’s New York teachers, which added a nice feeling of ‘continuity’ for me.

I stayed at the old Ambassador Hotel, which with its spacious grounds, subtropical plants, attractive pool area and terrace bar seems to epitomize what one thinks California ought to be like. When returning to the hotel one evening I discovered a film was being made on the doorstep, literally, so I hung around and watched the proceedings a few hours, with great interest. I’d never seen movie-making before so this was a splendid surprise. The film was the life story of Jayne Mansfield (America’s Diana Dors, of the 1950’s). Not exactly the most urgent subject matter today, but the flamboyant costuming, hair styles, etc. were most amusing, as was the fact that the role of her husband was being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former world champion bodybuilder, whose excessive arm and chest muscle development makes his head appear the size of a pin. I have subsequently seen this film on television (October), and very little of the episode I had watched being made was actually used. But think of all the actor “extras” who managed to work all evening and get paid, even though their part was cut out!

Last year I won a prize at the San Francisco Opera raffle, which was luncheon for four at one of California’s better wineries up in the Napa Valley (north of S.F.). I waited until the warm weather of summer to take advantage of this prize, and went up there in August with three friends who are both opera buffs and wine buffs. We had our own private tour of the winery and private wine tasting on the veranda of a 130-year old house on the grounds, followed by a superb 6- course luncheon (catered by a Continental chef) with appropriate wines for each course. The hostess and the Winemaker were charming, and we had a marvelous day. It was all so gracious it was like something out of Tolstoy-- lunching on one’s country estate.

My principal vacation this year consisted of two weeks on the East Coast (July) spent mainly in seeing friends. (I did  not have to be a tourist, since I’d seen it all before! In any case, the frightful humid heat was so debilitating that really heavy tourism would have been impossible). I was in Baltimore briefly (landing just after a tornado, finding trees and branches lying all over the roads), then spent a few days in Washington, where I went to a very beautiful and “international” wedding (American/Chinese/Belgian, with lots of government/political/diplomatic types), and took in the exhibition of Post-Impressionists at the National Gallery (one which had previously been shown in London).

I spent most of the time in New York, where I saw the Picasso exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (staggering, too much to digest on one afternoon), and also the revival of Richard Burton’s “Camelot.” The play is a load of rubbish to my mind, but I wanted to see him making a comeback in the theatre. I read that he sees this run as a period of getting in training to tackle “King Lear” later on, and I certainly hope he will do that--something much more worthy of his talents.

I made brief forays into Connecticut and Vermont (Burlington), and in the latter, with the help of friends, I found my father’s boyhood home, a Victorian house still in use.

(Other ancient relics such as schools and church, had been demolished and rebuilt.) The day-long bus ride from New York gave a good view of the lovely Vermont countryside, rolling hills and quaint villages which I had thought were either a thing of the past or from imaginary Christmas card illustrations! But they really ARE like that.

I spent a couple of weekends in the Carmel/Monterey area, which is always enjoyable--this is the cold, windswept, leaning-cypress-and-pine-tree aspect of the California coast… very different from the south. A bit too many tourists now, however…

Our San Francisco opera season has been rather disappointing (fewer “big stars” which seems to be needed to generate more excitement into the performances), but as of this writing the season is not yet finished so I’ll hope for better things yet to come.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy NewYear!!