The Write Thing

In 1968, the world of entertainment became mesmerized with a skinny young girl with a prominent nose who sang her way through the bittersweet life of theater and film actress Fanny Brice in the box office hit (both in theater and film) Funny Girl.

My admiration for Ms. Streisand goes back in time numerous years, to those darker moments of my youth when English was becoming a language of fate and a permanent shelter, without my knowing it. In the movie, there is a climactic scene where she rushes to catch a tugboat at the New York harbor, shortly after finding love in the arms of bon vivant Nicky Arnstein (played by Omar Sharif). Much as I would like to linger in my praise of Barbra as a consummate actress and singer, injecting pathos and passion in a character that to some extent ended up reflecting her quite a lot at some stages in her life, I will refrain from doing so.

The tugboat scene unfolds with the backdrop of a hurried Miss Brice trying to convince her entourage that her decision to live life beyond her success as a comedienne with the Ziegfeld Follies is final. She does this with a song, while everybody begs her to reconsider. However, she is adamant and will follow Nick to write the first act of a love whose epilogue will be a dark naked stage where La Streisand will render perhaps the best version of My Man ever recorded. But right now, if you can hold your breath enough to accompany the singer through the end of a belted note that grows above a mid-size orchestra, there is still a world to hope for.

The tugboat slides on a foamy sea, leaving a trail leading back to the harbor of departure. From a distance, it seems as if she could choose to go back and put such a preposterous idea of love well behind her. Curiously, the novelty here is that in the wildest act of love in the movie, the heroine does not sing of love, but of possibility….and perhaps that is what love is all about.

I’m gonna live and live NOW!
Get what I want, I know how!
One roll for the whole shebang!
One throw that bell will go clang,
Eye on the target and wham,
One shot, one gun shot and bam!
Hey, Mr. Arnstein, here I am …

I’ll march my band out, I will beat my drum,
And if I’m fanned out, your turn at bat, sir,
At least I didn’t fake it, hat, sir,
I guess I didn’t make it
Get ready for me love, ’cause I’m a “comer”
I simply gotta march, my heart’s a drummer
Nobody, no, nobody, is gonna rain on my parade!

Buenos Aires, Saturday afternoon, 6.00 pm:
La Giralda. Came downtown for a good walking exercise and a tour of bookshops along Corrientes Avenue. Nothing to die for, so far. Got hold of a copy of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on DVD as a debt I had with the Swedish master. Stopped here, for a quick “cortado” at a cafe that seems to be one of the few traditional things still standing in this city where progress equals monumental tower buildings and sterilized glass-clad coffee shops. La Giralda is still one of the few places in town where you’ll pay five pesos for a sizable cup of white coffee…yes, perhaps I should have gone for the submarino con churros, a classic here.

There are quite a few people at the bar. A threesome at the table next to mine are engaged in passionate platitudes, and make a raucous scene once every five minutes, startling my pen off the lined pages of my Moleskine…I can even smell the salami of the sandwich the bulky boy next to my chair is having. But that’s part of the deal in this place, so I find it somewhat charming.
The book tour so far is proving hard. I walked similar streets to those I prowled over ten years ago. Zivals is now a tango store as well, and the classical jewels I used to marvel about in the old nineties are now dusty leftovers of those days, when you could choose between at least two different versions of Wagner’s Der Ring. Unknown singers now beckon from their dim-lit racks, offering exciting — and challenging — renderings of Schumann’s lieder.
I crave for rarity. Where is that book that will bring me a glimpse of the odd, magical city where you could find the weirdest things, like a postcard of Patty Duke’s 1960 TV show? Where is the city in which Bolshevik-oriented youngsters would flock to see Streisand’s On a Clear Day instead of a Fassbinder’s retrospective that played in the next room? Where is the all-encompassing Buenos Aires, apocalyptic but shining with the charm of rare movies? Where is the unexpected pleasure, the purpose of the quest? It seems I belong now to the small group of outcasts left to ponder and waltz around our own thirst for more.

One more hour is left to my wanderlust to see a hopeful outcome. I have the hunger inside. The hunt will go on.

I have always thought that music other than classical or opera sounds better in studio recordings. In fact, it has often been incredibly annoying to me to be forced to witness a totally different version of a song — where sharp Cs suddenly go flat or lower. It is the closest experience to fraud. Another factor that goes against live sessions in pop or rock music, for example, is that singers’ voices tend to be a disappointment. Phil Collins’ voice is one case that comes to mind. The velvet-like substance of his sound in studio albums of the 1990s or later cannot compare at all with the scratchy, sometimes flat metallic ring that he has when he’s performing live.
As a matter of fact, very few people can boast a really good and rich voice when they go live, and avoid undermining their own studio reputations. Paul McCartney is an example of those who can in the world of male singers, and Barbra Streisand is his counterpart among women.
However, in the realm of opera, the live-studio conundrum can only be resolved in favor of the live performance. Live is where the passion is. Opera is one of the most complete forms of artistic expression. Music, acting and dancing converge in a unique synthesis of perfection — when it is done well, of course. Live in opera might mean Callas singing the E flat to close the Triumphal scene at the end of the second act of Aida in the Mexico 1951 version (yes, a magnificent moment of ecstasy for the ear, soul and mind), or Caballé extending her pianissimo beyond the humanly possible at the end of “Signore ascolta”. It can mean standing ovations that would beat the delirious paroxysm of the hooligans in a regular World Cup Final. These are but a few of the examples of why opera should, above all, be live…Centuries later, it breathes as much passion in as it lets out.