Chaz wanted to go. Partly because he sings with Victoria in the choral group Resmiranda where they show support for each other. Partly from interest in all things music. Partly because he himself sings beautifully so he knows what it’s all about.

I wanted to go, partly as a show of support, but more because I love quality singing, especially the French songs comprising the program which I have loved for so many years that it seems like forever.

Kristina would have come, but she wore herself out driving back from Altadena and needed rest, and also because her love of this music, though genuine, is not as rabid or overwhelming as mine. And mostly because she was meeting a friend she hadn’t seen in too long, and needed to catch up.

So we drove to the venue, the University Lutheran Chapel, Chaz driving, and I became more and more familiar with the neighborhood.

We paid at the door, Chaz did, we took our copies of the program, waited with a few others in the lobby until we were given the all-clear, and we climbed to the second floor. Chaz had been talking with two friends and even I joined in, preparing to continue the conversation in the concert room where we took four seats at the side, facing the piano and profile to the music stand where Victoria would stand.

I looked at the program and effused with delight. “Ah!” and “Oh, good!” and “Ending with the complete Berlioz, perfect!”

More than thirty of us, the faithful, arranged ourselves in anticipation, and Renée, the Director of Resmiranda who also, I see from the program, directs Opera Non Troppo and apparently never sleeps, came to the front to introduce us to what we were about to hear, going in order from poet and composer and telling us everything we needed to know. She had done her homework and internalized it so she spoke as the source. Rarely do I ever hear someone speak so articulately and intelligently and comprehensively and insightfully with the same aesthetic apprehension as my own but on a higher level with the knowledge I felt alas I would never possess or achieve. I felt I could listen to her forever in enlightenment, but cautioned myself to show restraint lest I tell her so too much babbling after the program. I know how I can get carried away, and sometimes I startle people.

Victoria, in a beautiful gown, dressed for the benefit of a much larger audience, with just the understated makeup that displays her beauty which by itself needs no further enhancement. Her resplendent agile young accompanist, Evangeline Wolf, seated herself at the keyboard, and Victoria began with Faure.

Four lovely songs that show what French vocal art is and does. Victoria is one of those too few singers who take a beautiful voice and infuse it with art beyond mere beauty. How lucky we were to be there in its presence.

The French art song opens onto another world as it is rooted and transcends this one, removes the barriers of sense and thought. German song is rooted in this world, is more straightforward, intensely melodic, easier in response, easy to like quickly and to sing along. French art song asks more of the listener, takes him from the past and breaks into the new, is harder to “get into” because people are still learning to be more than they were. It’s not as simple as wine over beer, but the comparison is instructive. Once one gets the taste of French, one can’t get enough.

We applauded the Fauré, Victoria carried the music stand to the sidelines and sat as Evangeline at the piano gave us Ravel’s Sonatine.
Ravel continually shows us why he was dominant in the century’s beginning. He and Debussy were not really dueling music rivals, they were contemporaries who each gave us music we cannot live without. When you love one, you love both.

Great pianists from many countries concertize across the world like a confabulation of colleagues of the keyboard, giving us the heights of music in large concert halls at higher prices. Here we were, in a modest room upstairs at a modest church, with the same music at the same level. I was astounded, in awe, and whispered, “Thank you, Ravel. Thank you, Evangeline.”

Victoria returned the music stand to the front, and gave us more vintage Fauré. Verlaine was the poet twice, and we remembered how Renée had correctly categorized him as the best of the lot. How can she be so right all the time?

I want to say something about Victoria’s beautiful voice and her wonderful artistry, but I’ll wait until the program is over. I might just add here that Fauré is like a drug, and once addicted, you can’t get enough. My remarkable wife Shirley helped me to discover him, and now he’s with me beyond my ability to encompass or comprehend.

Evangeline came back to the solo keyboard to give Debussy his turn, and La cathédral engloutie plumbed the French depths rather like Jacques Cousteau.

They say, “Save the best for last.” Berlioz, Les nuits d’été. Victoria had sung one at an earlier concert, and I babbled and gushed then, and had even more to say.

This is one of the Great Song Cycles. Each song builds upon the last. Songs of deep loss. I was emotionally fixed and torn apart. I thought back to when Shirley and I lived through the various performances, Regine Crespin with a voice of almost unbelievable clarity and beauty, but who, I felt, let the beauty of tone become the focus, to settle back so the text is projected but not lived from the inside. And Eleanor Steber, whose fine voice did not become the focus, but gave us the actual experience I felt was more satisfying as a higher more complete level of art. Of course I could be wrong, my judgment colored by the past, but these songs held special meaning for me. Victoria understands them and gave them to me as a personal gift.

They brought me to tears.

I’m an emotional guy and tried not to be obvious as the tears began, swelled, and I covertly wiped them away, only to start again, as I choked my sobs to silence and hoped no one noticed. They’re songs of loss, and I was thinking of Shirley. I thought Chaz on my right was looking straight ahead, but later he commented on how I broke down silently. How fortunate for all of us that Berlioz, knowing he has put us through it, ends his cycle on a positive note so no one else could see me cry in public.

Thunderous applause! Then the lines of congratulation, and Victoria came over. I clumsily thanked her for enriching my life and praised her and started to ramble about French song to someone who knows more about it than I do, and how we had seen years ago another mezzo, Jennie Tourel, Bernstein’s discovery and protégé, sang French songs with a voice I said Victoria’s was somewhat better than, bald faced praise, and because I was wearing a face mask to avoid Covid, was somewhat inarticulate, as she leaned forward and said, “Say that again,” either because she hadn’t heard it the first time, or because she had and wanted to hear it again. I didn’t get to launch into my raves about her subtlety and musical insight, the way she shaped each musical expression with the range of dimension one so infrequently encounters, and I noticed her eyes not yet glazed over but distracted by the growing line of well-wishing congratulators who wanted their turn, as Chaz kindly and gently pointed out, and I said to myself chastisingly, “I know there’s always more to say, but enough with the Blah Blah, I need to learn when to quit.”

And then I went over to Renée and started in on her, “Thank you for such a wonderful articulate…” and I tried to hold myself back, saying, “I’m going on too long,” and she said, “Oh no, we love to hear it,” but I knew I was pushing it, and Evangeline came over and I started in on her, and Chaz steered me out the back door, and we drove around looking for food to bring home to Kristina, and we settled on the new iteration of Kentucky Colonel and brought home a bucket and we feasted and then time for bed and I said, “Just a little more, I have to finish this paragraph,” and she said, “Don’t stay up too late. Tomorrow’s another big day.”

And so I thought some final thoughts, how lucky I am that true fine art is just down the street and around the corner.

And I thank you all, and so good night.