Scene

Added pep to my step by going to a recital by the German baritone Matthias Goerne last night at the Palais Garnier. He was accompanied on piano by Seong-Jin Cho, and they performed some of the lieder posted in the accompanying video ― not to establish Goerne's bona fides by any means (he studied with Fischer-Dieskau) ― but just as a reference point. I guess what most impressed me was their fearlessness in using silence to bracket the works. After several pieces, Cho's hands would hover motionless for ten, even fifteen seconds before dropping to his sides. Goerne, likewise, appeared to be in a trance in these moments. There's a bit of theater involved, perhaps, but I prefer to think of it more as a way of instructing the audience how to listen. Every silence, after all, has a sound, if only the reverberation of what came before it.

The program opened darkly with songs of aging, loneliness and regret by Hugo Wolf and Hans Pfitzner. By intermission, I contemplated throwing myself off the balcony. For the second half, however, Goerne and Cho did the Wesendonck cycle by Wagner, dripping with romantic longing, and several pieces by Richard Strauss, concluding with an Im Abendrot that had the audience leaning forward, chin in hands.

No amount of syncopated clapping could bring the pair out for an encore, which bugged me at first, but on reflection, Goerne is a singer who has one instrument, not, say, a violinist who is unlikely to develop "violin elbow" with one last Paganini cantabile.

L'Opera itself, as a destination, is in fine shape.

I may stand alone in this regard, but Marc Chagall's art-forward ceiling, joyous as it is, fits in this gilded environment like an Eames chair at Versailles. Don't @ me.

The evening was so energizing, I walked the three miles home, some of it along the Champs-Elysees, above. The Police Nationale presence around Elysees Palace and the Franklin Roosevelt metro station was insane! Vive le nouveau normale, I guess.