vol. 13: sharing the self, jan. 2023 ed.
A new year for books and breakfasts! Montreal is extremely snowy, which lends the city a kind of magic. Before moving here, I’d always heard how much colder it would be than Toronto (my hometown), but my cousin who grew up here imparted that Montreal has a sort of joie de vivre in the winter. The city excels at snowplowing (apparently McGill hasn't closed due to snow in forty years!), so many people continue biking to work in their protected lanes despite the frozen temps. I’ll often see people with cross-country skis riding the bus to Mont Royal in the middle of the city, and sometimes during my seminars at McGill I can see people skiing down the mountain. Rue Saint-Laurent is lined with twinkle lights and the city’s many parks are particularly scenic when covered with snow. 😍
My new year has been off to a busy start, as I’ve been playing the role of Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel with Opera McGill with the McGill Symphony Orchestra in the beautiful Théâtre Monument-National on Saint-Laurent. Although I’ve worked professionally and sung and covered in many operas over the years, including Juliette in Roméo et Juliette at Aspen and Pamina with Dayton Opera, I’m realizing this is the largest role (with the largest orchestra) I’ve ever actually performed (thank you, pandemic *sigh*). If you’re not familiar with the work, I believe it includes some of the most beautiful operatic music ever written.
(NB: While I learn about how German composers in the 19th-century used folk music to stir up nationalism and religious themes to unify their country, it can be a bit creepy to contemplate how powerful all of this music is… Not to mention the fact that Humperdinck was very close with Wagner and you are the company you keep… but that’s a whole other story…!!)
Here’s a taste of one of my favourite bits, when Gretel describes a magical dream she had to her brother (recorded in orchestra rehearsal the other day so still a work in progress…!):
I’ve also been loving diving into Benjamin Britten’s settings of Arthur Rimbaud, Les illuminations, and my seminars and doctoral research.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a debate that artists in the 19th century had regarding safe-guarding the self for art-making. German artists, particularly Goethe and Schiller, were concerned with Bildung or self-cultivation - an endless aesthetic education in order to develop a profound and virtuous inner life. Writers like Goethe and Schleiermacher debated whether this was cultivated autonomously or within social contexts. Lieder or art song, which I perform regularly, is meant to be shared, but with a profound sense of what the Germans called Innigkeit or inwardness. In popular music terms, I would liken this to Joni Mitchell’s deeply raw and personal Blue album, in which she talks about her daughter who she gave up for adoption (“Little Green”) and the demise of many serious relationships (“A Case of You”) and which she often sings quietly and with a deep sense of interiority.
In 2023, it’s very much the fashion to share as much about yourself online as possible (Substack, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, BeReal, and Instagram exemplify this!). However, do artists lose some of their power when they do so? I think of the wonderful poet Mary Oliver, who was notoriously private about her personal life and created an oeuvre of poems about the natural world to which many people deeply personally relate. In my own artistic practise, I’ve often found that social media can negatively impact my art making. During a recent two-day recording session, I spent my first day casually texting and looking at my phone in between takes, resulting in a sort of nervous, unfocused energy that permeated my singing. For our second day, I worked towards the yogic, Buddhist/Hindu idea of Samadhi - a form of intense concentration achieved through meditation or finding Saucha (internal cleanliness, another one of the yoga niyamas). Our second day of recording was infinitely better than the first.
To those of you who make art: I’m curious. How do you cultivate your own Innigkeit? Does sharing online detract from your inner life? Or help cultivate it? Would love to hear your thoughts.
À la prochaine,
Sara.