Reinbert de Leeuw, 1938-2020

The world is a less vibrant place today.

The last time I saw Reinbert was nearly a year ago, spring, a jump-in—Berg and Zemlinsky songs in gorgeous chamber arrangements he had made. I had enough notice that I could go to his house in Amsterdam on a sunny April day to go through the music. I had been cramming at home and was quaking in my boots when I arrived, because I was barely past the sight-reading stage with some of the songs, and how could I hope to please him, who knew so much more than I did?

I should have known better, but then I only worked with him a few times. He welcomed me in, made me a coffee, sat in his favorite chair in the sun, and then we didn’t rehearse at all—he talked about the music and the texts for an hour or two with such love, such depth of understanding, and such wonder and humor. He played me recordings and hummed and conducted along, his eyes sparkling at particularly beautiful harmonic shifts. He told me stories. He could not have been more generous. It wasn’t only generosity—this was also of course the most useful preparation together, because everything started from his fierce, uncompromising, entirely romantic commitment to the material, and this was what he cared that I absorb in our short time together, more than musical details, which I could manage on my own. I won’t ever forget that concert, or his spirit, although so many knew him much more deeply and longer than I did.

Rest well, Maestro.

thoughts on an itinerant Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from me, an immigrant.

Or am I an expat? There’s a huge difference in connotation between those two words. The word “expat” usually implies a temporary state: a state of privileged displacement for a period of months or years, a chosen state of non-integration. Expats might have gone abroad for an interesting job; expats don’t always bother to learn the local language; expats only hang out with other expats. Some people start off thinking of themselves as expats but stay long-term. Some who thought they were moving permanently actually find the transition to a new place too difficult, and return. The word “immigrant” is often used negatively, unfortunately, to otherize people who flee dangerous or hopeless circumstances and try to improve their lives somewhere else.

I’ve lived in the Netherlands for more than seven years, and I’ve gone through multiple bureaucratic processes at the IND (Immigratie- en Naturalisatie-Dienst, the Dutch agency that processes foreigners trying to settle in the Netherlands). I’m an immigrant in the eyes of the law. I wasn’t forced out of my home country by oppression or war or danger, thank goodness, but I am originally American, and now I live in the Netherlands, and I plan to stay. I applied for dual citizenship when that became possible, and now I am “Dutch-American soprano Katharine Dain,” a phrase I put at the beginning of my bio to indicate both my hireability throughout the EU as well as an aspect of my identity. Artists are sometimes put idealistically in a different category—citizens of the world, drawing inspiration from everywhere, etc.—but whether we study abroad (as I did in London from 2004-06) or permanently relocate (as I now have), we’re still immigrants, or expats. We still submit our paperwork at the IND like every asylum seeker. We still grapple with feelings of cultural displacement, loss, and loneliness, and never more so than around the holidays.READ MORE

astride a comet

We’ve all read Khatia Buniatshvili’s bio, right? If you haven’t, treat yourself. She’s a pianist (apparently a good one—I’ve never heard her), and her bio is riveting. It lends itself well to dramatic recitations over dinner; it could be a drinking game. The last paragraph is particularly great: “Khatia Buniatishvili, shining pianist at the height of her abilities, came into this world in a shower of light during the summer solstice. On a human level, she is attracted more to equinoxes, being smitten by justice and seeking day and night in equal share.  By lifting one’s eyes skywards one might notice her playing hide-and-seek with either Venus or Mercury. The cosmos is her garden and it is in its movement that she feels alive, astride a comet.”

Maybe we should all rewrite our bios! The thing is, hers is working on some level—I’m talking about her. Although they’re necessary, bios are generally the worst, somehow both boring and irritating. I’ve been a professional performer with a bio (written by me, about myself) for about fifteen years, and the genre still makes me cringey and self-conscious; either it’s too detailed and list-like, which is dry, or too descriptive, which is braggy and subjective and easily veers toward the ridiculous.

Look at Khatia, though. What if we stopped worrying and embraced the epic? What if we pulled a Spaceman Spiff, a Stupendous Man, and channeled our inner hyperactive six-year-old as we talk about ourselves in the third person? This industry thrives on individual responses to individual work. It’d be one thing if there were objective, peer-reviewed, double-blind, clinically-tested measures of quality in performance, but there just aren’t. We’re all flailing about in the emotive soup together, seeking day and night in equal share, playing hide-and-seek with Venus or Mercury. (Has Khatia played Vivier or read Calvin and Hobbes??) Maybe we should all be taking more risks, in our bios, in our repertoire, in our lives!

On that note, happy Equinox, everyone. Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to write a new bio that begins “we join the fearless SPACEMAN SPIFF, interplanetary explorer extraordinaire, out at the farthest reaches of the galaxy…”READ MORE

breathe

Hi from France.

At the end of summer 2018, my partner and I planned six days of hiking in Germany as our only real vacation of the year, which had been very stressful. Four days in, I got an urgent message about a jump-in, and after some discussion, sadness, and a final lovely evening together, I left early to take the job. Ever since, I’ve felt I owed my partner a real vacation.

I didn’t realize how much I also owed myself one. Now, a year later, after ten days of hiking in the Pyrenees and a week at a yoga retreat in the countryside near the mountains, I finally remember what it’s like to not feel close to burnout. It’s the first time in ages. I almost don’t recognize myself.READ MORE

on ambiguity, Donna Anna, and growing up

Sometimes, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I’d walk through campus on a brooding overcast day and spot the towering steeple of Memorial Church (usually quite imposing, a striking white spire against the brilliant blue of a New England sky) receding into the muted light, its sharp contours softened and made less visible by the texture of the clouds behind. For some reason, I’d feel an unexplainable pang of satisfaction whenever the steeple was the same color as the sky.

What was it about that image of the gently receding spire that I liked so much? I’m still not sure. It’s a lofty wooden affair that always looks like it’s just gotten a fresh coat of white paint. The church itself is brick, dignified and columned and grand, and it anchors one of Harvard’s grassy quads. I’m looking at the church now as I sit on the massive stone steps of Widener library opposite. It’s a windy spring afternoon, and several banks of clouds have already scuttled across the sky; in a short period of watching, I’ve seen the steeple change moods several times according to its backdrop.

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coming to light

… as heimlich [familiar, homelike, or surreptitious, secret] progresses through its shades of meaning, it eventually coincides with its opposite, unheimlich, which the German writer Schelling defined as “the name for everything that ought to have remained … hidden and secret, and has become visible.” … In the annals of etymology, where heimlich and unheimlich reveal themselves as one and the same, we find the secret to this very particular kind of anxiety, Freud tells us, which arises from the encounter not after all with something new and foreign but rather with something familiar and old from which the mind has been estranged by the process of repression. Something that ought to have been kept concealed, but that has nevertheless come to light.

-Nicole Krauss, Forest Dark

Y’all, it’s been a WINTER: ten weeks of intensity, of newness and of return, of hibernating and of shedding—of things long concealed or suppressed that have nevertheless come to light. I’ll elaborate, but first, here’s a summary of how that’s manifested in my work since the beginning of the year.

Right after the start of 2019, I went back to France—Reims, this time—for the last Konstanzes of the Clermont-Ferrand production of Entführung. It was so wonderful and so sad. I performed the opera both better (I can really sing the role now) and worse (as old habits clashed with new ideas and upswellings of feeling) than ever before. It was the end of many stories, the beginning of others, both a celebration of what the team has made and experienced together over the last year and a vulnerable bringing to light of new aspects. I’m deeply mourning it, and I’m also happy to take everything it’s given me into new projects, to move on.READ MORE

Entführung diaries: Memories

My year of Konstanze has ended. I’m sure I’ll revisit the role, but saying goodbye to her now, and to this unforgettable team and production, was so hard. I have spilled so much (virtual) ink here talking about the process, so I won’t do that any more; I’ll just leave some images here of one of the most absorbing, beautiful, challenging projects I’ve ever done, with thanks and kisses to everyone involved (including many not pictured) for the memories, the laughs, the wine, the probing moments, the hard questions, the gâteaux des rois, the walks, the hugs backstage, and the chance to grow so much–together and individually.

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in which my brain bids 2018 a relieved goodbye

Happy end of 2018, friends.

It’s been a hard one for many of us. For me and my work, there have been moments of almost unbearable intensity, both good and bad, and stretches that were entirely business-as-usual. Typically, the latter periods bring stability and groundedness, but sometimes this year they did the opposite, which was to wind me up so much with feelings of banality and wheel-spinning that I occasionally wanted to quit everything and hide under the bedcovers for a month or two and emerge only when I had cried out all the feelings and knew what I wanted—which, needless to say, never happened; so I kept going, didn’t quit, cried on the train sometimes, and always did my job creditably, I think, even when I was seething inside. Finally, I’ve had a week or two over the holidays to hide out in the house and truly rest, taking a real break from work for the first time in a year or more—knitting, watching movies, listening to podcasts, cooking, enjoying the company of a few close people, and finally, remarkably, enjoying my own company—and that, simply, turns out to have been the main thing I needed. I’ve been sleeping through the nights instead of awake for hours with anxiety or disorientation. Early this morning, I excitedly texted a menu idea to a friend with whom I’m celebrating tonight, and got back the following response: “I’m glad that after having a turbulent year, the thing you’re thinking about lying awake at night is food and friends.”

A year ago today, the above photo was taken in France. I was a few weeks into the life-changing time in Clermont-Ferrand, the production that has most defined the year for me and shown me the direction I want to go. (Even though I don’t completely know what I want, I’ve learned that I want at least this: doing a lower volume of work at a higher level, not burning out, and being paid better for higher-quality preparation.) The photo looks idyllic, doesn’t it? It was a gorgeous, sunny New Year’s Eve with recent snow, my husband was visiting, and a generous member of the opera chorus took us up to hike the Puy de Dome. It was spectacular. When the photo popped back into my feed this morning, my first feeling was nostalgia for that moment, for those weeks. It seemed like a simpler, less confusing time.

But then I began to remember some of the feelings from that time that I’d forgotten about, or pushed away. READ MORE