Fools, Angels and the Devil…an introduction
I had written all of The Songs of War books before it occurred to me that I hadn’t properly introduced Juliette and Peter to my readers. Fortunately, I hadn’t published any of the books in the series, so I postponed everything until I wrote a prelude to the WWII series. Fools, Angels and the Devil takes place before the war, so naturally, I had to release it before any of The Songs of War books. Sooo, back to the computer and the recesses of my brain where the stories are hiding.
The Prelude to The Songs of War begins where all preludes are supposed to begin, at the beginning, when Juliette and Peter were barely aware of the affliction infecting their souls. They haven’t met, haven’t fallen in love, and their real life as remembered in my books has not yet begun. What affliction, you ask?… Why, the desperate need to sing, of course—an addiction many people are born with. Unfortunately, those bitten by the music bug are not necessarily given a corresponding gift of talent, but that’s what doctored recordings and tiled bathrooms are for. Fortunately for Peter and Juliette, the Talent Giver singled each of them out for a high dose, then threw them together in Munich during Hitler’s reshaping of Germany.
Juliette could always sing. When she was still in the womb, her mother sang naughty French songs to her, and after she was born, she put her in a basket under the piano while she played Mozart. She sang before she could form words, and composed melodies without lyrics. She sang in the convent where she went to school, despite the Sister’s efforts to keep her quiet. The Nuns finally surrendered, and Juliette’s mother found a singing teacher for her daughter.
Here is a recording of a young Ukrainian girl singing a song I learned at about that age. My father had taken me to hear Wilf Carter, another of the ‘yodelling cowboys,’ and somehow we wound up in a restaurant with him. My father told him how much I loved the ‘yodelling cowboy,’ Jimmie Rodgers, and Mister Carter asked if I could yodel. I simulated a yodel and he said, “Son, that’s not yodelling, but I’ll teach you before our dinner gets here.” Fifteen minutes later I could yodel, and despite a nerve disorder that paralyzes one of my cords, I can still follow this little girl; yodelling is a balm for the voice. Listen to her yodel and imagine Juliette. Watch the boy who at the beginning pretends not to be interested…watch him when she reaches the fast reprise yodel at the end. You’ve either got it or you haven’t!
Peter’s voice developed in a different way, on a different track, one not far removed from mine. Whereas Juliette was born to wealthy parents who loved and spent fortunes on music and art—her father was an art dealer—Peter’s father was a machinist for M.A.N. (Mannheim. Augsburg. Nürnberg). They build trucks, tanks, and heavy equipment as they did then, and Heinz’s hopes for Peter had nothing to do with art or music. Peter’s father wanted him to study engineering, his son’s natural gift.
However, the church organist knew what she had when he joined her boy’s choir and, although she knew nothing about teaching voice, she taught him to sing solos in church. She sought out recordings, introducing him to the famous tenors of the day. Peter gravitated to Beniamino Gigli and in particular the famous aria, Spirto Gentil from La Favorita by Gaetano Donizetti. At the organist’s urging, Peter’s mother bought the record and allowed him to play it on the precious phonograph Heinz, her husband, had given her. Below is the recording Peter listened to.
Plot Note: The King has given Fernand, the leader of the Castille army, the hand of Léonor as a reward for his victory over the Moors. But now Fernand has found out that she’s been unfaithful…with the King. He is heartbroken, of course, and feeling intensely sorry for himself as he stands in front of a monastery. Forced to choose between becoming a monk or singing, he decides to sing this painful aria.
La Favorita: Spirto gentil (Recorded 1921) – YouTube
A tenor’s stock and trade are his high notes, the ones that ring off the ceiling and walls while girls and ladies swoon. Every tenor who ever sang a note over ‘A’ has known the terror of approaching that note, and the thrill when it lands precisely in ‘the place.’ The vibrations in his head are as addictive as opium, and when he can’t find that ‘place,’ he feels as though life has no meaning; death would be a relief. Yes, I can tell you from experience it is that bad!
Here is a recording by a Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Florez—for me the best lyric tenor in the world. This is the most feared aria in the lyric tenor repertoire, except perhaps the one from William Tell, or maybe the one from…oh, never mind. This aria is from the opera La Fille du Regiment, by Gaetano Donizetti. The tenor has just volunteered to join the regiment that had adopted Marie when she was a helpless refugee, hoping thus to win her hand. This is how a tenor celebrates scoring a game-winning goal.
La fille du régiment – ‘Ah! mes amis’ (Donizetti; Juan Diego Flórez, The Royal Opera) – YouTube
A voice like that should have a military classification…it’s a weapon of mass seduction.
Juliette and Peter got off on the wrong foot, and their teacher decided to do something about it. He had already decided to teach them as a unit, but he wanted the pair to at least tolerate one another, so he hatched a devious plan…in the opera lexicon it’s called a duet. He screamed at them, threatened to expel them, and threw things until they finally sang this love duet like Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani sing it.
Well, let me tell you that singing that aria with a beautiful soprano is one of the hardest things a tenor can do, especially if he is married with three daughters and….oh, never mind, that’s not the point. Even Hitler couldn’t pry Juliette and Peter apart once they could sing that duet like that!
But wait, Juliette and Peter sang another duet to seal the deal. This one is from Der Vogelhändler, (The Birdseller) by Carl Zeller. It’s an operetta so the plot is pretty much the same as all the other operettas. This particular scene is a tiny twist in that the fickle birdseller is two-timing Christel, his pretty postmistress girlfriend because he thinks she is two-timing him. Marie, the wife of someone who is very important, gives him a rose, which is enough to get any tenor to sing, and they spend the next five minutes telling one another what happens when you give one another roses in Tirol. Tirol is part of Austria, the part where all the yodellers and skiers come from, but that’s another story. If you believe the words in the duet, giving roses away in Tirol is dangerous…you could be giving yourself as well. The tenor is Fritz Wunderlich, in my opinion one of the most beautiful tenor voices the world has heard. Unfortunately, just as his career blossomed he died in a tragic accident. He fell down a flight of stairs. We have a few recordings, but only enough to deepen the loss.
Der Vogelhändler: Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol – YouTube
The next recording you should listen to before you read the book—oh no…you haven’t started it yet, have you?—is this one. Juliette has a weak bottom…no, not that bottom, the lower part of her voice! She is timid about making those sexy honey-coated sounds that drive tenors like Peter crazy. This is the aria Professor Garcia uses to convince her she’s a woman.
Plot Note: Rusalka, a water nymph, meets a prince as he swims in her lake and, being a teenager, immediately falls in love with him. She wants to become human and live on the land with her Prince, but she is a nymph and mythical creatures aren’t supposed to fall in love with humans. Her father, a water sprite, is very upset, but pressed by his uncontrollable daughter agrees to consult the local witch to see what can be done. While she waits for Ježibaba, the witch, Rusalka asks the moon to tell the Prince of her love.
The singer is Renee Fleming, a great singer and a great lady. Listen to her sing Antonin Dvoràk’s Rusalka as she prays to the moon; imagine her sound soaring out of your mouth to the ears of the enthralled lady in the back row…. Watch Renée keep the unnamed conductor in her peripheral vision. Watch her flick her eyes to him in crucial spots, perfectly following his wonderful changes in tempi. This is an excellent example of a rare marriage between a conductor and a singer. Like all marriages, It’s not often you find one this perfect. If the God you pray to allows you to experience such a live performance, you will remember every nuance until you die.
Renee Fleming,@Dvorak – Song to the moon – Rusalka – YouTube
The finalé comes from the first opera Juliette and Peter would sing together, La Bohème, by Puccini. They work on the scenes in the Munich Conservatory’s opera school, and this is the duet that ends the first act. I have sung in over sixty performances of La Bohème and I never miss a chance to see it again.
Unfortunately for those who don’t understand it, the subtitles are in Italian, but the gist of it is love at first sight, then manipulation, and finally, some serious flirting. It drips with love, sex, and joy. For those of you who think Rudolpho takes the ‘f’ at the end because he can’t sing a high ‘c,’ I suggest you listen to a few of Rolando Villazón’s recordings. Perhaps he is just being a gentleman, but more likely he is singing what Puccini, who loved sopranos and wouldn’t want a tenor stepping on her ‘c,’ wrote.
The singers are Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón, two of the finest opera singers who have ever sung those roles. Anna Netrebko, Mimi, is of Russian/Austrian lineage and has been given the highest artistic award Russia has to offer, The People’s Artist of Russia (2008), and the Austrian Kammersängerin award in 2017. Rolando Villazón, Rudolpho, is a Mexican opera singer, artistic and stage director, author, etc. They have sung many roles together, and it shows. In case someone should get any ideas, Rolando is happily married and has two sons. Anna did marry a tenor, but not Rolando. She married the Azerbaijani tenor, Yusif Eyvazov, with whom she often sings. So, let’s hear it for their role-playing in this romantic duet.
I am going to assume you listened to all those tidbits, either before, during, or after reading my book. If you haven’t started the book yet, know that these excerpts are not the heart of the story, they are the soul of it. Hitler’s transition from Germany’s saviour in 1933 to an insane dictator in 1939 is the cold heart of the story, and Juliette and Peter represent both sides of the German people’s dilemma during that period.
Fools, Angels and the Devil is not a book about opera. It’s not about music in particular. These are only vehicles I use to introduce the reader to the forces that drove Germany to a National Socialist dictatorship that would, in six short years, extinguish fifty million people’s lives in Europe. Atrocities would be committed on all sides, but Hitler wins that competition by a country mile. The only glimmer of hope for humanity that still lived after the United States dropped two atomic bombs in 1945 was that the magnitude of the horror would preclude such madness from ever happening again. The ending of Fools, Angels and the Devil foreshadows the insanity to come—it is not a warning or a prediction, it is a prelude, an overture to what was inevitable. For me, trying to paint a picture of the worst catastrophe the world has ever experienced that we as rational people can understand, words were insufficient. I chose the power of music, in many ways my element, to help me and my readers understand that it could happen again.
My last comment about this adventure, should you choose to join me, is a word of warning. Do not be lulled into the impression that the next book, A Song of Sorrow, is going to continue with this placid tone. In Europe, the next ‘War to end all Wars’ is on the horizon, and Juliette and Peter will be swept up in the vortex of its awful whirlwind. Keep in mind that war has few happy endings, and you will cry. But life goes on despite it. The books follow the precarious lives of people on both sides; sometimes their paths cross, and sometimes the meeting ends tragically. Peace can’t come until Adolph Hitler’s Germany is crushed under the weight of the world.
But you should also know that most of my characters survive to tell me their story.