Hi Everyone,

Delighted that, due to massive public demand (two people in the queue outside SPAR), the Blogg lives on. The same two people also made nice noises about the stuff from NPR Music Tiny Desk I found in the third issue of the blog. So, to keep them happy I had another long and tiring day sifting through obscure American bands on YouTube.

However, I got diverted into listening to ‘Postmodern Jukebox' and their covers of Lady Gaga in the style of the 1920s and The Spice Girls reimagined as The Andrews Sisters! The track of theirs I really liked was a sort of Tango type version of Billie Eilish’s song Bad Guy. Just for comparison, I thought I ought to check out Billie’s original track and was slightly surprised to discover it completely blew Postmodern Jukebox out the window.

Billie Eilish, who you may or may not have heard of depending how closely you follow modern pop trends, burst onto the scene, aged 14, with a song called Ocean Eyes and then by 2019 topped the US charts aged 17 with Bad Guy. All this was achieved in collaboration with her brother Finneas who is co-writer and producer of her music as well as having the bedroom next door to her in their parent’s house. They both have full recording set-ups in their rooms and spend their days swapping samples and lyrics while becoming multi-millionaires and taking over the world. As one young fan plaintively puts it on the YouTube comments page “ I’m 14 and would like to write songs but MY brother just hits me!”

However, to get back to the track, it is a stunning and faultless bit of production and recording that easily stands comparison with the best in the business, and coupled with the smart and humorous video you have to take your hats off to ‘these crazy kids’. Here are both videos, the Postmodern one and Billie’s. Check out the super-tight, in tune harmonies on the last verse at 1min 28. It's no surprise homeschooled Billie spent a lot of her childhood singing in choirs and, since you ask, brother and sister never use auto-tune.

So to return to my original plan, which was to find some more Tiny Desk sessions that might amuse you, here are two that tickled my fancy. First another youngster, Hobo Johnson who made his name aged 15 on YouTube after being kicked out of his home by his dad and while living in a 1994 Toyota Corolla. The first track on this video is Hobo’s fantastic retelling of Romeo and Juliet which ends with the band exhorting Shakespeare to give them a happy ending before Hobo tells us the sad ending of his own parents' marriage. The other vid is Chicago band Mucca Pazza trying to fit 23 people into the Tiny Desk and having an indecent amount of fun doing it.

Pete

THE VIEW FROM HERE © Peter Wright 16th June 2020

Almost a decade ago while living in France, I woke up one day and realised that in spite of all that is good about France, I did not want to retire there. And so I set out to find somewhere with as many of the fine qualities without the bureaucratic disadvantages. I knew Norfolk, and an old college friend suggested I also looked at Herefordshire (his main reasoning being the lack of enforced speed limits!)

Thus I set out on a 6 month quest, searching estate agents’ web sites for the two counties. I didn't have a firm set of requirements but was confident I would know the right place when I found it. During those 6 months, I actually viewed just one property, one that I stumbled over on the Internet well outside the realm of estate agents. The description didn't sell itself and it turned out the owners didn't really want to sell; maybe that is what caught my interest.

They say "location, location, location", but this property on Stonewall Hill, in Herefordshire but right on the Welsh border about a mile and a half north of Presteigne, had two other attributes as far as I was concerned: it was off-grid, and while the shell of the stock-barn had been restored, the interior was a blank canvas. This piece is about the location – with its stunning view over the Lugg and Presteigne, all the way to the Malverns in the west, Hay Bluff to the south, and the Brecons to the east.

Once I had settled into the completed house and Dorothy had joined me, we spent a few seasons watching them roll past, and it began to dawn on us what a special view we had. In winter and on wet days we began to see the house and its south facing picture window as a way of watching the scene while staying warm and dry. In fine weather, climbing north up the hill exposes new vistas as a reward for every 10 metres of height gained. Anyone who walks up on Reeves Hill receives the ultimate reward.

After we had been here a couple of years, a visiting sister-in-law commented that the view would be even better if there wasn't a town in it. That thought had never occurred before, and on contemplation, we both disagreed. I was unaware of how special Presteigne was when first coming here, but we have now caught up with the many who, over the years have appreciated its special qualities of community and culture. I guess one needs a strong connection with the buildings that form a large part of the view in order to want them to be there.

The foreground as one looks down 100 metres to the Lugg forms an amphitheatre in which nature performs theatrics against an ever-changing backdrop of sun, clouds, mist, snow and rain. On many a November day we either have our heads in the clouds and can't see more than 50 metres and on others we are in the clear sun while the Lugg valley is filled with wispy cream, blanketing out the town.

At this time of year the housemartins and swallows gather to perform their aerial antics – are they feeding, playing, or is it foreplay? How do they decide to suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear? Who tells them there is somewhere better to perform? Their thrilling flight must be the epitome of joie de vivre.

The masters of the stage of the raptors – buzzards, red kites, and even the occasional osprey. Before apoplectic ornithologists try and storm Stonewall Hill, that would be the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, a contraption that is more insect than bird and doesn't look as if it should fly. At £43 million a pop, I guess the SAS expect to be able to exercise them locally.

The buzzards and kites are so expert at soaring, using thermals and wind, and I marvel at their ability to find lift and dispense with wing beats to climb almost vertically out of sight. They seem to simply do it for fun. Lower down they tend to be mobbed by the crows in their black hoodies, who believe the pasture is theirs to rule.

In normal years we can view from above the events that take place in Presteigne, with a clear view to Went’s Meadow. During the ever more frequent flooding, the meadows glistened silver along the river. Bonfires reveal changes in wind direction as the smoke rises, and fireworks in the winter evenings reveal who is having a party or celebration.

From the top corner of the property, by the spring, we can see over the trees to Castle Ring, wondering at its history and mystery. Over the years we have been living here we have noticed that this place has had a profound effect on us; I think it is known as “wellbeing”. There are many factors that could have contributed but when friends and relatives who have stayed here a few days started remarking on feeling similar effects, there is just one common factor: the view from here.

DON’T YOU WANT ME - Jenny and Dave

GARDEN @ No 3 - Sabina Rüber

Midsummers Day and the garden is at a point where Spring is definitely behind us and the beautiful lush late spring growth of cow parsley, self-seeded foxgloves, valerian and sprawling verbascum have turned into mayhem and chaos. This being my studio and the backdrop for beautiful plants - now is the time to edit the canvas, make space and reorganise the colour palette.

Scents : Honeysuckle and Pinks

Lonicera periclymenum 'Belgica’ and Dianthus ‘Gran’s Favourite’ (I know - the name is enough to put you off - but it does have a fab scent and is rather pretty…)

Before the ‘Chop’ …. and loving Foxgloves

Bright pink Centranthus ruber with apricot Digitalis ‘Goldcrest’ and Rosa ‘Crown Princess Margareta’ - a David Austin rose.

Digitalis purpurea ‘Pam’s Choice’ and a happy cross pollination between Digitalis purpurea and Digitalis lutea.

Pale lemon yellow Digitalis grandiflora ‘Carillon’ brightening up a dark corner.

And soft pink Digitalis ’Suttons Apricot’ and Rosa ’A Shropshire Lad’ another rose by David Austin : Next year I'll grow them next to each other.

Verbascum x hybrida ’Southern Charm’ - a true perennial in my garden.

Dark-leaved Geranium ‘Marshmallow’ against a frothy cow parsley and campanula backdrop.

Clearing and thinning out now...

…means space and loving attention to everything new….

SARAH BERNHARDT IS UNWELL - Puccini’s first Tosca

Richard Studer

There is not much a of play, a mere outline at best, made to fit like a glove the talent and personality of Bernhardt who is all and everything, but who should or could complain? The interest never slackens; there is enough dialogue and apropos to keep both gratification and amusement entertained, and the story enobles itself magically in the hands of the greatest living actress.’

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tosca is an opera of many victims, some fictional, some real, an opera where the operatic plot device of ‘boy meets girl — she dies’ is extrapolated into an orgy of bloodshed, torture and death. One of the most unusual tragedies associated with this opera came not from the pen of Victorien Sardou but never the less befell the title role. Not any Tosca but the first and without doubt the most famous.

Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris circa 1844. Should any of the proponents of opera verissimo had needed an additional plot they need have looked no further than Sarah’s own background. Her mother, Julie Bernhardt, was one of six children fathered and abandoned by an itinerant salesman and petty criminal, and raised by her stepmother. Julie eventually fled to Paris to make her living as a courtesan where she was known by the simple nomenclature “Youle”. With the inevitable combination of her profession and 19th century prophylactics “Youle” soon found herself with a troupe of five daughters to raise, fathers unknown … one child died in infancy, of three little is known and the last went on to become the most famous french actress of all time, and muse to the greatest playwrights in the french language.

There is much uncertainty regarding Sarah Bernhardt’s early life owing to her propensity to dramatise and exaggerate the details. With her birth records lost in a fire she created stories as required, even forging new documents regarding her parentage to prove French citizenship and thus eligibility for the Légion d’honneur. At various points in her career she described her progeniteur as either a law student, naval cadet, accountant or officer. What is documented is that in 1860 Sarah Bernhardt attended the Conservatoire de Musique et Déclamation in Paris before moving as a student to France’s premiere theatre, the Comédie Française to appear in the title role of Racine’s Iphigénie. Miss Bernhardt’s acting ability however was insufficient at this point to prevent her from being fired after an incident at a party celebrating Molière’s birthday, where she slapped another actress across the face in front of the distinguished guest.

From this moment on, details of her life become so exaggerated that it is hard to believe them credible, and yet they are — her affair in Belgium with the Prince of Ligne (to whom she bore a son) and the royal family’s refusal to permit marriage, her career as a highly successful courtesan (having been introduced to the profession by her mother) not forgetting the controversial purchase of a coffin, in which she regularly slept in order to ‘understand’ the true nature of her dramatic roles.

Sarah Bernhardt’s controversial personal life is a biographer’s dream and clearly added to the legend that she was to become but it is her talent on stage that remains the outstanding legacy of her life. ‘The Divine Sarah’, as she was to become known, was the most formidable dramatic actress of the period. It is no exaggeration to say that of the new writing that was being produced in the French theatre in the later decades of the 19th century, Bernhardt either premiered the play or became its most famous proponent of a given role. She was to become muse to many artists, playwrights and musicians alike. Works she performed in the theatre were to be a golden pool of resources for composers and librettists across Europe. Examples of this cross fertilisation that remain at the core of our modern opera repertoire include Dumas Fils’ — La dame aux caméllias’ (La Traviata), Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Racine’s Phèdre, Victor Hugo’s La Roi s’amuse (Rigoletto) and Hernani (Ernani), Sardou’s Fedora and of course, the author’s most famous play ‘La Tosca’.

In the early 1890s Sarah Bernhardt began a professional relationship with the french playwright Victorien Sardou. A playwright who, to quote Susan Vandiver Nicassio’s analysis, ‘wrote more than seventy plays … all of them successful, and none of them performed today …’. La Tosca was the third in a series of historical melodramas he wrote for the actress. As with many of the greatest operas, the play premiered on 24 November 1887 to a hostile critical reception.

“A vulgar piece, without intrigue, without characters, without morals …”

JULES FAVRE, LES ANNALES POLITIQUES ET LITTERAIRES

Yet the play appealed to the audiences — it was a triumph with more than three thousand performances in France alone, going on to tour the Americas and Europe. Parisian society flocked to see the production and its star — a celebrated, erotically charged, temperamental diva portraying a celebrated, erotically charged temperamental diva.

The London critics continued to rage at Sardou’s play and its gross depiction of torture, notably the offstage screams of Cavaradossi — most critics, but not all. Oscar Wilde found the production deeply moving in its depiction of a terrible human tragedy and George Bernard Shaw, though dismissing it as ‘an empty headed turnip ghost of a cheap shocker’ commented that “it would make a good opera” on witnessing the 1890 London production — at least that is one critical sentiment that cannot be questioned. One journal went so far as to warn the delicate ladies of New York against viewing the play:

“Not only shocking to the nervous system and grossly offensive to persons of true sensibility, but which might inflict irreparable injury on persons yet unborn.”

W I L L I A M W I N T E R ’ S WA R N I N G T O T H E W O M E N OF AMERICA UPON VISITING THE PRODUCTION

By the time Puccini saw the production, Sarah Bernhardt’s portrayal of Tosca was famed across the western world, indeed Puccini saw the play twice, once in Milan and again in Turin. Within eighteen months of the play’s premiere Puccini had written to Ricordi his publisher requesting him to acquire the rights from Sardou. “I can see in this Tosca the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music”. Puccini clearly changed his mind on the ‘elaborate spectacle’ element, the ‘Te Deum’ at the end of Act I remains one of the great production pieces of Puccini’s operas but the rest is true. He refrains from toning down the melodrama choosing instead to edit the extraneous characters of the original. The result is a score almost as concise as his ‘Bohème’. Dramatically the opera’s time-span covers less than twenty-four hours from the fateful meeting in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle between Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi and Cesare Angelotti, and the opera’s ghastly conclusion. Puccini manages to incorporate all the intrigues of the plot in less than two hours of music.

The influence of Sarah Bernhardt’s portrayal of the diva ‘Tosca’ is embodied throughout the work. Puccini, was more than a just a brilliant notesmith, he intuitively understood the theatre and his scores are littered with stage directions to the extent that a producer can ‘follow the instructions on the tin’ and achieve a credible production of the work, but in the final moments of Act II Tosca he goes further still. As a composer he musically illustrates not Sardou’s text but Sarah’s performance of Tosca itself. From the moment Scarpia sits down to write the letter guaranteeing Tosca and her lover safe passage from Rome, the score is a recreation of Bernhardt’s astonishing performance in the role. In the theatre, Bernhardt held the audience enthralled for what was reputedly on occasion a full seven minutes after the death of Scarpia with no dialogue. Each gesture and action she created is incorporated in Puccini’s stage directions and musically illustrated in the orchestra from espying the knife on the supper table, the search for the letter giving her and her lover safe passage, the lighting of the famous candles to the final placement of the crucifix upon Scarpia’s corpse and her hasty retreat from his apartment under the looming threat of the gallows drums.

Though the play is neglected, the opera survives, and Sarah’s role and artistry is perpetually captured in Puccini’s score — something that her contemporaries could only dream of until the revolution of the film industry began to immortalise such performances forever in the celluloid archives of the motion picture libraries. In her later years, Bernhardt herself turned to silent film, however I like to think that no fading cinematic print can capture the authenticity and dramatic power of her artistry as succinctly and intensely as Puccini did in his score for Act II.

In 1905, sixteen years after Puccini famously attended a performance of Sardou’s most successful work, Sarah Bernhardt the original, brightest star of the French dramatic arts leapt from the parapet in the final scene of Tosca and injured her right knee. The leg never healed, gangrene slowly set in and by 1915 there was little option but to amputate. This marked the beginning of the end of a career that spanned five decades (never one to give her rivals a leg up, Bernhardt famously turned down an offer of $10,000 by P.T. Barnum to allow him to display her errant limb in his circus of curiosities).

After the amputation, Sarah continued to perform at times with, but often without, her prosthetic leg (which she disliked intensely) almost up to her death. Her health never fully recovered after the original accident and she ultimately succumbed to kidney failure in 1923, her precise age unknown as befits any actress of her calibre and artistry. Would the last Tosca standing please blow out the candles...

Richard Studer is a freelance Opera Director and Designer and lives in Presteigne with his dog Pike. He has worked at theatres and festivals across the UK and is Artistic Director of Mid Wales Opera - one of the National Portfolio companies of Wales. He is currently on Covid-19 enforced gardening leave until the current government realises that the Arts are an essential part of the human experience and the economy (apparently it's safer to cram ourselves into a Wetherspoons after a night at the cinema than attend a socially distanced live performance...)

This piece was first published by Longborough Festival Opera.

VISITORS TO SALT’S GARDEN

LOCKDOWN DHABA - Pip and Gurd

My mum sent me off to uni with a rolling pin and a bag of wholemeal flour. ‘Learn to make chappatis!’ She said, ‘It’s really cheap and easy, and this bag of flour will last you ages!’

It did last, probably a few years before I chucked it out! Funnily enough I didn’t spend my time at uni making bread. I was in East London, and Gurd and I (who I’d started dating a few years earlier at school) dipped our toe into the curries of Brick Lane, and we also sought out a few Indian restaurants in Brighton, where Gurd was working at the time. We struggled to find Indian food that matched up to that which we had eaten in dingy pubs in Wolverhampton, and I started to experiment a bit more in the kitchen.

I volunteered in Rajasthan for a few months after uni, it's a desert state, hot and dry, with beautifully painted villages and towns appearing out of nowhere in the dusty heat. This is when I first experienced Indian Indian food. We’d eat samosas fresh from the fryer, dark and bubbly pastry with smooth spicy mashed potato and fresh peas, always with a steamy cup of milky sweet chai. If you’ve never eaten spicy food with tea, I urge you to try it. The heat of the tea somehow exaggerates the spices in the food and there is really no better thing after a tiring day in the hot sun.

I worked in an orphanage for a while and they gave us chai which had been simmered with black peppercorns, it caught in the back of your throat, a comforting warmth. I’ve tried to replicate that chai at home but I think you had to be there.

We’ve continued to explore India’s food over the years. There’s a chain restaurant called Saravana Bhavan in Delhi, you can find it all over the world (There’s one in London). It's like a canteen with amazing dosas (massive crispy pancakes stuffed with spicy potato filling). We ate momo’s (Tibetan steamed dumplings) in Dharamshala, the foothills of the Himalayas and home to the Dalai Lama in exile, sampled Awadhi ‘dum’ cooking (steaming for a long time over an open fire) in Lucknow.

In south India, Udupi is the birthplace of dosa’s, we ate dosa here so big we had to spread out over a few tables. However the stand out food we had came from a small trolley at the side of the road, in the baking sun, selling pani puri. Pani puri is the epitome of the creativity of indian food to me. It’s a small very thin puffed fried ball, a bit like a poppadom but spherical. A pani puri stall has these puffed shells, some potato filling, and a big vat of brown water. The server popped a hole in the ball, pushed some potato in with his finger, and then dipped the whole thing in the spicy brown water. It sounds and looks pretty strange, but the taste is out of this world! It’s crispy, crunchy, warm, cold, tangy and sweet all in one tiny mouthful.

Mumbai, with its incomprehensible mass of people, tangles of electrical wires, striking lack of pavement and of course, cows, has incredible street food. Chaat, a starter, appetizer or sharing platter consisting of a main component such as samosa, or potato cakes (aloo tikki) sprinkled with sev, (gram flour sticks) chutneys, (sour tamarind, spicy sweet coconut, cool refreshing mint and coriander yogurt) pomegranate seeds and fresh salad. It just hits your taste buds, salt, sweet, sour, so delicious. Another famous Mumbai dish is vada pav. It's a deep fried spiced potato patty, coated in gram flour, served in a bread bun, the inside toasted in butter. The chutneys make it, sweet tangy tamarind and hot spicy dry coconut. We ate it topped with sugared fiery green chilies. We’d already eaten lunch but ate two of these at the roadside as we just couldn’t leave it behind!

We’ve been developing recipes and planning food based ventures for many years, inspired by our travels and love for India. Finally lockdown life has given us the space to realise the dream and share some of our food with you.

Lockdown Dhaba link here

PENTABUS THEATRE have put many of their productions on their website to watch and enjoy until the end of June. The recordings are free to watch but donations are invited. The productions include Joel Horwood's play 'Wolves Are Coming For You' which was performed at the Assembly Rooms in autumn 2017. Watch online here pentabus.co.uk. Do consider signing up to their newsletter to find out about what is happening in the future - link here.

Finally - THE QUIZ!

And just a reminder, if you would like to contribute something to this lockdown blog in the form of art, photography, music, travel, Presteigne history, literature, local lore, gardens, food which you think might fit into future issues, please send your stuff to luggblogg@outlook.com. We’ll keep it going a little longer.