Feast of Saint Lucia

 Also see Inger's blogpost for an authentic Swedish take on this. In fact, follow her while you're at it, she's a very interesting blogger. The link works for me, so I hope it does for you, too, with Blogger, you never know. 

Anyway, do you see the girls in white and the crown of candles?  Today's the day for Swedish people to celebrate the Feast of St. Lucia, where girls dress in white, the eldest with a crown of candles, to serve coffee and special  buns to their parents in bed in the early morning.  An American friend of mine of Swedish descent used to have her three daughters do this.

Also today, Handsome Son told me to expect our Great Big Birthday Extravaganza to happen this evening, since his time off works this way right now.  This involves my putting out crockery and a tray and then sitting on the sofa waiting for him to do the work of making tea and serving whatever nice thing he's bringing to eat.  Not bad.

I will be 82 in a couple of days, and that's 82 years old, NOT young.  I hate the glorification of youth to the point of not allowing people to say they're old when they are! I've earned that rank, and I'm happy to have been lucky enough to get here.  Almost twenty years already more than my parents got of life. So I have no problem being described as old, particularly when you consider the alternative.

Just because you're active, doing stuff, having ideas, and feeling well, doesn't mean you're young.  That's not the province of the young, it's for everyone.  And I don't say things like "in my day" because guess what, it's still my day!  So there.  Neener, neener. And other such indignant retorts.

Moving on before I fall apart laughing at myself, I now have to go get out my pearls.  They are my dressup item, brought out for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and other such official holiday meal events.  A nice gift from Handsome Partner, long ago, they're real, and I love them.  I remember when he gave the to me long ago, first thing in the morning when I woke.  So I put them on right away, and there I was, wearing only a pearl necklace.  Nice day.  We did have fun.

Today I will be fully dressed, however, probably in hoodie and sweatpants, complete with pearls.

This is the season where I avoid Nutcracker, now that I no longer have a child in the house who needs to go to the local performance every year.  It was good as local performances went, with serious professionals dancing the principal roles, sometimes from New York ballet companies, since it was only an hour away by train.  And a lot of local folks getting hired as extras, or mice, or dancers if they knew how to waltz for the waltzing scene, all dressed up and having a lovely time.

Acting, and the theatre in general, isn't my thing at all. I really don't get how over the top it all is, and having known actors in my youf and seen firsthand what sort of needy people they were when they weren't on stage, well, no, not for me.

I grew up in the north of England, from mid childhood on, in a big industrial town.  Interesting, for what the BBC used to call the bleak English north, where people talked funny and couldn't hardly read, they thought, it was in fact a mecca of culture, theater, ballet, opera, the lot.

The major companies, Old Vic, Royal Ballet, then Sadler's Wells Ballet, Met opera, would try out chez us, giving us their entire season's repertoire over typically a two week span.  That's how I came to be exposed to the best ballet in the world, pretty much, and grand opera, and serious theater, Shakespeare an' all.  It was out of town tryouts, I guess.  And they knew it was a tough audience to please, because a lot of these coal miners and steelworkers and bricklayers and bus drivers were self educated and knew the Bard as well as the actors, also knew their grand opera just fine, whistling the arias at work.  Many were musicians, too, playing in brass and silver bands sponsored by their workplaces.

Since the traveling companies needed a lot of extras, they would hire locals to play bit parts and crowd scenes.  The favorite was Aida, where you need a stage army, and a lot of dark makeup for the people in the army.  The father of  one of my school friends was a bus driver by day, and worked Aida at night and matinees, as part of the stage army.  You got paid extra if you had to put on dark makeup, and keep it on, just touch it up for performances.  He really enjoyed the drama on stage, said it was much less demanding that the drama of drunks trying to crowed onto his bus when he was driving the last route of the day. It was funny if you happened to see an normally pale and now unusually dusky guy working on a building site, or somewhere, , and realize he must be working Aida at night.  This was back in the fifties when the population was pretty much lily white.

The only thing was that the stage was large, but not huge, likewise the budget for the army, so they hired the minimum number, had them march off the stage and run like maniacs to get back across and join on the the marchers still processing across.  He said it was pretty good sprinting practice.

My mother would buy standing seats, all she could afford, for the entire two weeks of operas and take me with her or some one else, to use the second standing place. I remember going to "Maritana"  when I was about seven, and still remember the blue dress of, I guess, Maritana, and the dramatic faint she did while still belting out her aria.  This was what always puzzled me.  How come the soprano was dying in an attic or fatally stabbed or strangled or something and still projecting her voice to the back row of the nosebleed section, huh?  Unlikely.  In fact I never did take to opera, too much bloviating for my taste.  And they kept on stopping to sing arias just when the plot was getting going.  The recitative was what annoyed me though, that talking while singing stuff between arias.  This is all very irreverent, and I do revere the voices and skills of the best singers, I'd just rather hear them in recital than overdressed and overacting on stage.

We also got some wonderful soloists locally.  Dogonart, my older sister, who is sometimes seen in the comments here, took me with her to a few recitals. I remember vividly Beryl Kimber, the violinist, and Eileen Joyce, the pianist at the town hall. I think it was some kind of commonwealth tour or something, since I believe they were Australian.  And wonderful performers.  I was just a young kid, maybe eight, and still remember the experience. Which shows you it's worth taking kids to events that might seem over their heads, as long as they can be trusted not to disrupt the proceedings.

Oh, funny story from my voice teacher a few years ago:  she had been an opera singer, moved in all those circles, knew Kirsten Flagstad, massively Wagnerian powerful singer.  Now, singers all do warmups to get their voice clear and up into the mask of the face, that's the bit where your sinuses come, very important for projection, the squillo, and how they can soar above the full orchestra all the way up to the eighth circle.  And the warmups can sound pretty comic, like the tenor singing naming the enemy naming the enemy up and down the scale. Or one I had to learn: my fa my fa my faaaather, up and down different chords to extend the range.

Anyway, Ms. Flagstad, in her New York hotel, ahead of her Met performance that night in some part of the Ring cycle, was busy doing loud warmups, which probably sounded like nothing on earth. Big woman, massive vocal chords, terrific amplification.  Another guest, hearing the racket, thought someone had broken in and there was an assault under way, called the police, who showed up all concerned, and found Ms. F. puzzled and wondering why they'd interrupted her normal routine.

Off to find my pearls now.