Operatics

Around 1997 I became disgusted with contemporary music. No, that’s being a bit dramatic. But I distinctly recall driving up to CD World one night, cash in hand and looking for something cool to buy, and after casing the store for over an hour, literally finding nothing to pique my interest. Nothing at all.

A change was needed.

A couple years earlier, in my band’s heyday, looking to expand my musical horizons, I began listening to a local classical music station. Over the summer. Didn’t get too far into it (aside from realizing I liked the music of some guy named Sibelius). But my ma bought me a “sampler” 10-pack of CDs, each one of a different heavy-hitter. Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, to name a few (but no Sibelius).

So, five years later, desperately seeking something new, I decided to throw myself wholeheartedly into classical music. I believe I wrote about that mini-quest elsewhere here on the Hopper. But in true Hopper form, I quickly grew bored of classical music, and again needed a fix of something new.

Why not – Opera? Surely that would truly challenge my long-held proud musical identity as a grunge guitarist. Surely that would make me grow as a musician, being such a foreign – yet well-proven musical influence.

I bought a “Mad About Wagner” CD, which introduced me to some of the famous passages of his Ring cycle, and a few others. It was mostly music, though, with no singing other than a chorus here and there.

Then I tried La Traviata by Verdi, The Barber of Seville by Rossini, Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart. But none particularly grabbed me, and I was about to write off Opera until I borrowed Carmen by Georges Bizet from a local library. It was April of 1999, and I was in the middle of renovating my apartment. That night I was washing the walls with some orange-scented chemical before priming and painting them. The early Spring evening was that perfect balance of warmth and wind, and I had all the windows opened. And from the very first notes I was hooked.

I loved Carmen. Yeah, I’m about as far as one can be from hot-blooded Spaniards or Frenchmen. But every song had something that grabbed me, that hooked my soul. Very quickly after that, I had to hear more.

Carmen was Bizet’s only opera – pity, but the man died of a heart attack as it was preparing to premiere. Fortunately, I followed it up with that oft-paired duo, Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, the “Heartbreaker” and “Living Loving Maid” of Operettas. Both remain with me to this day, in the form of a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law. Yes, Pav is headlining both.

Over the next five years I listened to a little over twenty more. 2004 was a particularly fruitful year. That May we moved into our house, and that summer, working full-time and painting every single room in it by myself, I would soak in a hot tub nightly listening to each of the four operas in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. My favorite one is Das Rheingold.

Verdi is often touted as Wagner’s rival. I must confess I am a Wagnerite (my father-in-law is a Verdi man himself). But this has not kept me from exploring the Italian’s work. I listened to Rigoletto, Aida, Traviata, Il Trovatore, Falstaff, Giovanna d’Arco, Otello, and La forza del destino. Though none are true personal favorites, I absolutely loved the ending to Falstaff. Goose-bump inducing, and a triumphant finale to both the opera and the composer’s career.

There were some dead ends. Though I loved Dvorak’s Rusalka, I never did get into central European stuff. The Bartered Bride and Wozzeck did nothing for me, and, traveling a little north, the operas of Richard Strauss ditto. But I did enjoy Die Freischutz by Weber. Go figure.

Puccini … some say he’s the greatest operatic composer. I’ll say this of my personal experience with him: La Boheme, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly did nothing to me (gasp!), though I grant the right leading lady in the role of Tosca can be incendiary. That being said, my all-time favorite opera, hands-down, is Turandot. The version with Pavarotti never fails, even to this day, to send shivers up and down my spine.

There was a stretch, before children and before the house (in other words, when Mr. and Mrs. Hopper had money), where I’d see an opera every year for my birthday. It started out with a trip to the New York Philharmonic to see a symphony, then turned into a visit to the Metropolitan Opera House. There I saw Traviata and Aida; at the Julliard Theater I saw Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, in a hypnotic and strangely riveting performance.

Soon after this the long-suffering wife put her foot down. The next year we saw Jazz at Lincoln Center while my ma watched the little baby. And soon after that there no longer was money for trips into NYC. My interest in opera waned, then dwindled, then disintegrated. The last one I listened to with any real intent to get into the work was Beethoven’s Fidelio, in May of ’06.

On the way home from work tonight, though, on a whim, I stopped in at a local library and browsed their music shelves. Ah! Begging me to take it home was a battered and torn opera by – Wagner! Parsifal! Don’t think I ever listened to that one. Hmm. Maybe tonight, after everyone’s in bed, I’ll get the headphones and crack open the libretto …

The Oscillating Electron

This is currently my favorite physics “oddity” – check it out …


Why does every electron “look” exactly like every other electron?

Because there is only one electron in the entire Universe.

Huh?

Aren’t there anywheres from one to over a hundred in any given atom, and aren’t there megagazillions of atoms in the tiniest little hair poking out of your skin?

In fact, the number of atoms in the universe is guesstimated to be somewhere around

10 ^ 78

to

10 ^ 82

which are, of course, numbers with 78 to 82 zeroes after them.

That’s a lot of atoms. A hydrogen atom has only one electron, while an atom of uranium has 92. So multiply that gargantuan number by a factor of 10 or 100 or so to get an idea of how many electrons exist in the universe.

Physicist John Wheeler believed that there is only one electron in the Universe.

Now, I don’t know how far down the facetious scale Wheeler is taking us. I don’t really think it matters, for the reasoning is truly wonderful.

Most of us are aware of the Big Bang – the “birth” of the Universe in which all matter, energy, and space burst outward from a singular point. The best analogy is not an explosion, but a massive balloon being blown up at hyperspeed. We live on the surface of the balloon, so in effect the Universe is bursting outward from every single point.

There is only one thing that can stop such outbursting – and that’s gravity. Gravity from all the matter in the Universe. So the big question is, is there enough matter to slow the expansion of the Universe? Right now, observably, the answer is no; that’s why there is so much interest in dark matter (and energy), “dark” meaning not “black” but “undetectable.”

But Wheeler assumes that there is more than enough matter to slow the Universe’s expansion. In fact, there is enough to cause a reversal after 50 or so billion years. This contraction will lead to a Big Crunch, which itself ultimately leads to another Big Bang. This is the model of the Oscillating Universe.

Once upon a time, there was a Big Bang which shot forth a single electron. It traveled forward in time billions of years until – the Big Crunch, where it moves backward in time as the Universe contracts to a singularity. Then, the Big Bang again, spewing that solitary little electron, forward in time, backward in time to Crunch. Ad infinitum.

What is the difference between an object traveling in space and one traveling in time? Objects in space can not see duplicates of themselves, but objects in time can! Just think, if I go back in time a year, I can sneak around and spy on myself.

So there is this electron that lives through a series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. How many? Oh, I don’t know … how about

10 ^ 78

to

10 ^ 82

or a similar amount by a factor of ten or a hundred? In other words, a megagigantazillion of Bang-Crunches. Now … see where Wheeler is going with this?

There is only one electron, but we experience a megagigantazillion time-copies of it.

To which I can only add: how cool is that idea? Yeah, it goes against Christian theology, yeah, it mirrors that nut-job Nietzsche’s belief in Eternal Recurrence. But It Is So Cool!

Man I wish I stuck with physics …



(Note: this neat little anecdote is better described in Michio Kaku’s excellent book, Beyond Einstein. Great for beginners or those re-introducing themselves to cutting edge physics from a 1980s point-of-view.)

New Year New Do

All righty! 

I do have some interesting ideas to blog about ... just simply need to find the time to sit down and write them!  There's a review of the Alien "Director's Cut," there's a meeting I had with a childhood friend I hadn't seen in 30 years, there's some theological thoughts that bounce about that noggin above every morning during my commute that make me exclaim out loud: "I should blog about this!"  And lots more, mostly in the form of vague and amorphous blobs of semi- and pseudo-thought.

So please check back!