Twenty Years Ago, I Wrote ...

     This post is not just a selection of journal entries from twenty years ago; more specifically, it is an homage to a little café in Houston called Epicure. I frequented Epicure during my many years living in Houston, always finding it to be, as the Germans say, a most gemütlich retreat with good food and coffee. It's on West Gray in River Oaks, a street that twenty years ago was one of the most charming commercial streets in the city; I believe it's changed a bit since.

     Epicure Café began rather humbly, as a true konditorei run by a certified Konditormeister; now, looking at its website, it seems to have evolved into a full-fledged café. If I ever visit Houston again, Epicure will definitely be on my list of places to go.

 

19 September 1993

     I'm having breakfast before a long day of chorus rehearsals. Epicure serves their coffee with hot milk, as it should be served, and their ham and cheese croissant is very substantial and comes with nice fresh fruit.

     The most beautiful child just came in—can't tell whether it's a boy or girl; I think boy—a Botticelli cherub crowned with copper curls. The parents are foreign, but I don't recognize the accent. She's very striking, strong dark features in a small face. The child is having gelato for breakfast, and his older brother is entertaining him by rolling his red toy convertible across the table. The cherub shrieks with delight, little pink mouth covered with vanilla gelato.

     I do love watching children, especially babies and toddlers.

     Epicure has retained the European way of not issuing bills—when you finish eating, you simply remind them of what you had.

     It's starting to get busy in here. Late-rising single women, older ladies just come from church, middle-aged bespectacled gentlemen reading the paper while their breakfast cools. Above it all, the white ceiling fans whir away, the soft lights casting small rainbows on their blur of blades. Sunday morning, a time of quiet recovery from the bustle of the week and the gaiety of Saturday night.

     The cherub is wandering around on his little unsteady feet, flourishing a menu. Maybe when he grows up he'll be a maître d'.

     And now, off to work and the stark, sterile surroundings of the opera house.

 

1 October 1993

     What a wonderful place this is. In the mid-afternoon, the bookish and artistic come in and read, or in my case write, with a pot of coffee. Just like Europe. A middle-aged couple has come in, obviously friends of the owner, speaking German. I wish I could really understand; I can catch a word here and there but can't put anything together. They always have good music playing; today it's Strauss waltzes. Sunday morning it's usually Mozart. Breakfast with Wolfie. I think I'll make it a custom to come here every Sunday, a mini-retreat of sorts.

 

26 October 1993

     There are two people that are almost always here when I am: a middle-aged woman with carrot-colored hair and matching glasses, and a young man who reminds me of James Stephens in The Paper Chase television series. Like me, they each sit at the same table every time. There's something very comforting about that. It's good to know that other people need these little rituals too. Both of them are writing something, too.

     The Paper Chase guy speaks French and Spanish. The other day, he spoke to the owner in French; now he's speaking to a companion in Spanish.

James Stephens

 

 

31 October 1993

     A quick sweet and a pot of coffee before going to Butterfly second cast piano dress. Saw, at the table behind me, someone writing in a cloth-bound blank book. A fellow journalizer.

     It gets dark so much earlier now. I much prefer it to stay bright as long as possible. This way, the day has such an early death.

     The street lights have just turned on. The sky is an iron gray, a strange transition from the brilliant blue it was an hour ago. West Gray is a fun street—all the buildings have been restored and done in stark white with black trim. Most of the street is lined on both sides with tall palm trees which are lit up at Christmas with tiny white bulbs. The shops are mostly of the "yuppie" type, upscale but not too; and of course there is the inevitable Pier 1 Imports. Two types of bookstores—one chain discount (Crown Books) and one independent (River Oaks Bookstore). Two types of movie theaters—one multi-screen mainstream, and one artsy-fartsy (the latter is still showing Like Water for Chocolate). The restaurants range from Black-Eyed Pea at one end to Café Express at the other, with a moderately priced seafood kitchen and moderately priced southwestern eatery in between. There is a pizza joint, a Chili's, and a grocery store. You can buy futons and antiques, coffee beans (at the wonderful Café Maison) and apple strudel, wilderness equipment and gently worn evening gowns. Or you can do as I do: hole up in Epicure three or four times a week and write in your journal. West Gray is probably my very favorite street in Houston.

Blogging A to Z: "O" is for October

In the autumn of 1993, HGO opened the season with a musically and theatrically stunning production of Elektra. It starred Hildegard Behrens, Josephine Barstow, Leonie Rysanek; Christoph Eschenbach conducted the Houston Symphony Orchestra (for many years, HGO used both their own orchestra and the HSO; now they use their own orchestra exclusively, and a very fine one they've become, too).

Here are some entries from my journal written during the rehearsal period. I'm afraid I devoted a lot of ink to recording my own personal experience in playing the score, but I never intended my journal to be just a record of backstage goings-on. Admittedly, I now rather regret not writing more about the artists and productions, as my memory is lately disappearing along with my hair.


1 October 1993   Barstow's first music rehearsal today. I was fine for the first scene, then I went steadily downhill from there. By the offstage chorus stuff, I was playing like your average pig. How embarrassing. I had worked on the stuff after the murder of Klytemnestra all this week except yesterday, which I devoted to Chrys' earlier scenes. It just goes to show, you can't skip a day on any of this.
        Tomorrow, my "day off" (ha!), I'll spend practicing till 2pm when Barstow comes in to go over some music with Richard. I want to be solid for Behrens' rehearsal on Sunday. L said she saw Behrens in the library in New York just recently, wearing her full-length mink and tennis shoes.
        What a wonderful place this is! [I wrote this in a place called Epicure, on West Gray, a very konditorei-like place run by a certified Konditormeister from Central Europe.] In the mid-afternoon, the bookish and artistic types come in and read, or in my case, write, with a pot of coffee. Just like Europe. A middle-aged couple just came in, obviously friends of the owner, speaking German. They always have good music playing over the speakers; Sunday mornings, it's usually Mozart. Breakfast with Wolfie.
        As I get older, I find that I really have to warm up well before I play, so I've been doing about 15 minutes of Hanon before working. Today, I warmed up in one of the rehearsal rooms, and people kept poking their heads in with an expression that said, "Who the hell is doing Hanon, of all things?" But I've found it to be very beneficial--it exposes every flaw, it forces the fingers to be even, and it forces (if you will) you to relax, because one can't get through a section of Hanon being tense. When I was a kid, I could barely get through the first six exercises withot tiring and having to stop. Wimp. Now it doesn't bother me at all to play through the whole first two sections non-stop. Playing opera scores can be deadly for the technique, so one needs this solid foundation.

3 October 1993   Finished rehearsal a little while ago, so I felt I deserved a dessert and coffee. Behrens is in great form and is a very nice lady.
        I played very well (what a relief!), especially Elektra's opening monologue. Maestro said "Thank you" twice to me, and before we went in the room to start, he actually gave my cheek a little fatherly rub! I was astonished.
        There was only one moment where I screwed up rather royally, and that was the horrendous orchestral interlude right after Orest tells Elektra who he is. The first 8 bars were fine, then came the part where the violins jump up and down and up and down; I felt myself start to falter and I emitted an agonized yelp. Thank God Maestro laughed. I worked so damn hard on that passage. I can play it under tempo (big deal), but up to speed, I need three hands, or at least an extra pair of eyes. It's like flying blind, those leaps, and you have to keep the middle melody going too, switching it off from one hand to the other. It's a nightmare!

4 October 1993   Just finished staging rehearsal with Behrens and Barstow, their first two scenes. After playing the section Richard and I call "the Jaws music" (Klytemnestra's entrance), I got an emphatic "Very good!" from Behrens! Then, of course, in the euphoria of my success, I screwed up the scene after the Junger Diener's aria. But I redeemed myself with the "digging" interlude, which I thought I played very passably. It's scary--this score is just now starting to feel comfortable for me. I thought it would never happen.

5 October 1993   Behrens is a fascinating woman--small, slight, with that dramatic face. She comes to rehearsal in her little flat black shoes, long, filmy dancer's skirt over tights, and a rather frightful looking red chenille kimono-sleeved top that she's cut off at the bottom, leaving the ragged edge to curl and loose threads to hang about her waist. She wears her hair long, loose, and straight, so that from the back she could be taken for a bohemian teenager.
        Barstow is a trim, compact figure in her cotton t-shirts and trousers, pattering about in clean white sneakers, her frizzy mass of red hair pulled back in a tail.
        The two women are complete opposites in rehearsal. Barstow stops often, asks questions, discusses, and probes. Behrens is quieter, listening to the director with her great face in repose, sitting on the floor, or standing in a dancer's feet-apart stance, hands one over the other in front. Every once in a while, the face breaks into a smile, bones softening and shifting underneath the deep-set eyes. But for all her repose, you know she is constantly alert and thinking--you see it in the slight furrowing of her forehead or the set of her jaw.
        Rysanek starts rehearsal soon. At 67, she is a true Grande Dame of the Theatre.
        For me, the real opportunity is not seeing these legends perform on stage, but watching them work. It's one of the aspects of my job that I love most. Playing for Eschenbach is another. For such a small man, he radiates a presence and charisma both on and off the podium that is very daunting. The stern face with its watchful, penetrating eyes belies the gentle man inside; the heavily-accented voice is always soft, but somehow commands attention and respect.

7 October 1993   I have a session alone with Barstow today, to help her with memorization. She's not off book yet, and Maestro has complained to Gockley, who promptly replied, "All right, we'll fire her." Richard intervened, saying, "Let's wait a few days; we're giving her an hour every day with a pianist."
       Barstow's last show here was Rosenkavalier; she had done the Marschallin before, but in English. So poor Jay Rozendaal had to prompt the show. He had never prompted before in his life, and the stress manifested itself in a horrendous backache. I hope I won't have to prompt this show. I would die, I would simply die.
      Caught some of the Klytem./Elektra scene, which Richard played. Those two ladies are firebrands! Of course, everyone was paying court to Rysanek, it being her first day, but Richard told me that after I left the room, Behrens sang her end of the scene aria in full voice (she always marks in rehearsal) and absolutely nailed it, causing Miss Rysanek to burst into applause. Miss Behrens beamed in triumph.

31 October 1993   The street lights have just turned on. The sky is an iron gray, a strange transition from the brilliant blue it was an hour ago. West Gray is a fun street--all the buildings have been restored and painted stark white with black trim. The shops are all upscale, but not too; and of course, there is the inevitable Pier 1 Imports. Two kinds of bookstores: one large discount, the other small independent. Two kinds of movie theaters: one arthouse, the other multi-screen mainstream. The restaurants range from Black-Eyed Pea to Cafe Express to moderately priced Chinese and Italian. You can buy futons, antiques, house-roasted coffee beans, apple strudel, camping equipment, and evening gowns. Or, you can do as I do: hole up in Epicure 3 or 4 times a week with a book or a journal. Most of the street is lined on both sides with tall palm trees which are studded with small white lights at Christmas.