On Propaganda and Perfection

Music at the Opera House and Mont la Salle.

The first time we entered the Napa Opera House occurred not long after a road trip through rural Nevada, and a tour of the opera house in Eureka counted as one of the high points of the journey. The little town hides amidst one of the mountain ranges of central Nevada, and it still contains the urban remnants of a small city once containing many times its current population. Founded to exploit the silver and lead deposits in the locale, Eureka had by 1880 come to take itself seriously enough to demand first-class entertainment and a place to showcase it.

Renovated within the last decade, its opera house is a small gem of a time capsule, hinting with its very existence at the splendors of a previous era. An antique curtain remains, on which advertisements from the teens and '20s are painted, arranged around an unlikely picture of an ancient ship at an exotic port, like Venice, a scene that couldn't be further removed from its surroundings. By then, movies accompanied the live shows.

One of the great pleasures of exploring the history and places of the far west is the consistent discovery of culture in unlikely spots. Entertainers followed the miners soon after commencement of the Gold Rush, and dancers, singers and theatrical companies thrived on an audience of lonely, often-bored men. After women came out in any numbers, the desire for refinement and culture accelerated, leaving a legacy of little opera houses or their remains all over Nevada and California. People often presume these days that we have everything you could ask for in the way of entertainment, given the hardware of DVD and CD players, stereos and big screen TVs--not to mention hundreds of stations--but something wonderful disappeared when these venues closed down. The shared experiences of an inspiring performance or a funny movie, discussed afterwards among friends and neighbors, has since given way to cocooning, isolation and the constipated pleasures of personal gratification. Yes, some of these theaters have reopened, but the several times a week schedules of affordable performances of the past have been replaced by expensive tickets that render their purchase a rare treat for most.

In the old days, touring companies debarked in San Francisco, and worked their ways out from there. Extensive train and stagecoach networks connected towns now languishing in remote decrepitude, and within weeks of performing in the big cities--San Francisco, Sacramento or Stockton--famous troupes headed to the hinterlands, bringing the wide world to desolate outposts. We suspect that if records were available, evidence might be found indicating more than a few instances of the same companies appearing in Napa and Eureka in the 1880s and '90s.

We mention all this because the respective opera houses are so similar in design, both containing the distinctive balcony shape of the day, somewhat replicating the lines of a strung bow, with wings coming out from the side of the wall, and then curving inward in a gentle U above the main auditorium. It's a pleasing, elegant configuration, providing optimal visibility of the stage, while at the same time revealing the upstairs occupants to those below, resulting in an atmosphere of collective intimacy. Napa's building opened a little later in the '80s than Eureka's, but it is considerably larger, containing a sizeable downstairs lounge. They share more than they don't, however, and we never enter the local establishment without thinking of Eureka.

The last time we attended a performance at the Napa Opera House was in June, the month the world celebrates people of unconventional sexuality: The San Francsico Gay Men's Chorus was invited to perform. Some 50 or so men sang their hearts out under the direction of their female leader who, evident from her accent, hails from the British Empire somewhere. We lacked any fixed expectations on going to the performance, but were surprised to discover that rather than a program of good, neutral music sung by men who happened to be homosexuals, it was in fact a display of smug musical propaganda.

They sang several clever Broadway-like songs about coming out of the closet, the funny moments of understanding or conflict, and then moved onto the serious message stuff. They lamented the persecution they suffer at the hands of adherents of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, all those perfectly equivalent belief systems that routinely chase down, torture and kill homosexuals the world over, in the same, predictable manner, whether in Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca. Then they moved on to manifestations of more general victimhood by coming out strongly--politically and personally--against breast cancer.

These selections seemed to have been recycled from the early AIDS era, when it was the Reagan Government's official policy to prevent research into the disease in an act of conscious genocide; one presumes that these policies continue, since that's the only explanation for the lack of a cure to this day. Now society seems to be murdering women too; breast cancer hasn't been defeated either. The chorus made clear that there is much to be aggrieved over, and they're upset about it. We were deeply touched by their self-satisfaction in bravely speaking out against the patriarchy in its ongoing attempt to exterminate womankind and silence those who would speak out against their own, special plague.

This segment of the program ended with a finale devoted to promoting faith in a cure. The phrase "Step out onto groundless ground" repeated throughout the selection, implying that wishing hard enough will take care of everything; forget about science, rationality and all the researchers who doggedly toil away in labs and hospitals across the planet. Considering the disdain they earlier demonstrated for the dangers of common religion and the inherent superstition underpinning such doctrines, this appeal to mindless belief appeared slightly inconsistent.

During the intermission, attendees drank wine on the first floor, while the chorus leader gave a little pep talk out back. She thanked everyone for their hard work, complimented the men who would be dancing in the next segment for their successful rehearsal, and expressed enthusiasm for a coming performance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco where they'd be included in a choir 200 strong. She wished them a good summer, and they all trooped back in for the rest of the show.

"Westside Story" provided the inspiration for the next number, a riff on the gang rumble scene where they sing about "When you're a Jet you're a Jet..." Here's where the choregraphy came in, but in this case the gang conflict centered on hairdressing. They vamped around in reinforcement of every sissy stereotype imaginable in an utterly predictable manner, as if to say, See, we can laugh at ourselves too!

It is possible that we were the only member of the audience who left feeling disaffected and annoyed at the heavy-handed agitprop, so our criticisms are probably uniquely questionable. The rest of the assembly, we suspect, walked away feeling a warm, fuzzy sympathy for the special interests advocated, tinged with bitter resentment at a mainstream society so clearly devoted to oppressing innocent victims of whatever.

We couldn't help but contrast this experience with a musical performance a month earlier at Mont La Salle, the Christian Brothers' retreat up Redwood Road, next to the Hess Collection Winery. The Napa Valley Chorale sang a couple of requiems, the first by Mozart.

When we initially came to Redwood Road in the '50s, the Christian Brothers used Mont La Salle as a school to train members of the religious teaching order, and they owned and operated the winery, since then taken over by Hess. Our family spent a lot of time up that way when we came up for weekends from San Francisco; there were the six o'clock Masses on Sunday morning, where the novices sang Gregorian chants as part of the Latin service, and many long afternoons passed by lazily in the tasting room at the winery. Christian Brothers produced thirty or so different wines, and one could sit there all day and drink them, no charge, no pressure; the kindly old retirees who staffed the place were equally liberal with the Coke they poured for the kids.

Where Mount Veeder and Redwood roads diverge, a largish, plain building decays under the trees. In the old days it housed a country store and gas station, and we seldom passed without stopping for a soft drink or treat. Not far from it, the broken dam still collected water in its spillway trough, making a swimming hole along the creek's course, in which we caught crawdads by the hour.

On the far side of Mont La Salle, Redwood Road continues for a couple of miles beyond, winding through a fairy tale forest of great trees, cool darkness broken by the odd beam of sunlight, and gurgling waters in the deep gullies below. Castle Rock loomed a half-mile short of the road's end, and a steep, but easy 30-minute climb brought you to its peak and a view of little valleys and Grandma Moses farms arranged across hillsides to display their comfortable houses, sagging barns and patches of orchards and vineyards. It all constituted a self-contained world of its own, with Mont La Salle, its mission-style buildings and cloistered gardens at the center.

As a result, we suffer a strong tendency to favor the place, and that mood certainly accompanied us as we sat down in the stark, white interior of the Spanish baroque structure. A hundred or so people joined us, and a couple of dozen men and women stood at the front of the altar as their performance began.

Featuring Mozart's last work, the first part of the program lasted about an hour. The combined voices sent their song to the rafters and bounced them from every surface of the walls, in the most all-encompassing musical experience we remember. The sounds were rich, magnificent and jubilant, and we were literally overwhelmed by feelings of bliss; we sat with tears streaming down our face and onto our wide smile. During the intermission, we asked the chorale director--a woman who's been doing this for almost three decades--about the acoustics of the room and whether they were considered good or bad.

Everyone thinks they sound great in that room, she said, and the most difficult part for me is to restrain them and get them to tone it down some.

Whatever the problems she experienced harnessing a few dozen people trying too hard to send their voices to the heavens, they were lost on us. Perfect gratification described our feelings, reaching a sublimity so thorough as to render whatever followed superfluous. We surrendered completely, and made our retreat.

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Copyright WineMerchant.com 2006