I got an email from my Lehigh County Master Gardener friend Sue on November 28. She had just finished reading my blog on Ghent cafés and wondered if I was still abroad.
“The reason I ask is because my son Peter is performing at the opera house in Ghent. Below is the link. He is Gandhi in a Philip Glass opera. They have three more performances that would be amazing if you are still in Belgium.”
Unfortunately, I was not. But, I included Marina in the email conversation to see if she’d be interested in going. The following day Sue and I got the news from Marina that the opera dates for Satyagraha were sold out.
“Let me see if I can get his attention. Sometimes during performance dates he’s not too responsive. Sold out. What pressure for Pete,” wrote Sue, the mom.
Opera Vlaanderen
A little background: I started taking classes through the Master Gardener program in the Lehigh Valley when Marina was 2 weeks old. With plants as our bond, Sue and I became fast friends. When Marina and Richard were in pre-school, their classes went to the Pool Wildlife Sanctuary in Emmaus for field trips. Sue led them on nature walks with her amazing knowledge of the woodlands and creatures that lived there. I tagged along as a room mom.
While I was an MG in the Lehigh Valley and later a coordinator for the program, I dragged my kids to various events, and they helped with everything. They babysat a taxidermy groundhog we used for our volunteer appreciation dinners, carried boxes of picnic supplies, and helped divide plants in the garden for our annual perennial exchange. Sue watched my kids grow from mere sprouts to seedlings to tall saplings. While that was happening, Sue was raising her older kids and opened Edge of the Woods Native Plant Nursery in Orefield. I opened Fleur-de-Lys Farm Market in Maxatawny Township. Sue’s passion is natives; mine is edibles.
We’ve stayed connected. Two years ago I invited her to be a guest lecturer at our Centre County Master Gardener Home Gardening School at University Park. She spent the weekend at our house, presented her PowerPoint, and took home a couple boxes of Ye Olde College Diner Grilled Stickies for her husband Stan.
November 30, Peter messaged Marina on WhatsApp to say he had two tickets for the final performance.
Needless to say, the two moms involved on this side of the Atlantic were so excited!
Dec. 2, Marina sent Sue and me the photo, above, taken inside Opera Vlaanderen before the performance began. During intermission, she emailed us a quick report… “The show is fantastic. Peter sings while they turn him upside down…dancing shows so much struggle and passion.”
Dec. 4, Marina’s full review arrived in our email mailboxes:
“Before it all becomes a distant memory…
“Koen got sick and so I invited Karel to join me an hour before the start. He was one of the original four who wanted a ticket and had tried to get tickets before when they were sold out. He was one of 75,000 people marching in Brussels during the day to ‘reclaim the climate’–the biggest march in Belgium since the White March in the 90s. I debated going but had so many things going on… Anyway, Karel was still in Brussels when I texted but when I told him there were two intermissions he said he would come right away. He got there for the 2nd and 3rd acts.
“(If I counted correctly) the show had a team of 6 opera singers, 10 dancers (3 women and 7 men) and many people in the chorus (my guess would be 50). There were also people playing the music live, but they were down in a pit and we could only hear them.
“It opened with the chorus, dancers and Gandhi (Peter) sitting around the stage… he sang while dancer after dancer got up and performed. There were a few things that struck me—such as how they all interacted with each other. It was clear there were professional dancers on stage, but at times all the chorus and opera singers were also involved in the dancing. They helped show the struggling, the protesting, the violence, and peace. They also picked Peter up and turned him around and then he would sing upside down –without any apparent effort…amazing! Another element which was really beautiful was the use of “props”—chalkboards and chalk which were drawn on while singing and dancing; paint which was thrown or dripped on the stage; a platform which would rise to highlight different elements…and in the last act went completely off the ground so people could dance underneath it and later for Peter to be perched in the middle—very godlike and floating…
“There was a very modern part, when they danced under the stage, and the dancers started taking off their clothing to reveal different labels painted on their bodies (slave, gay, black, white, muslim, jap, black lives matter, slut, jew…) This part really put me on the edge of my seat!
“They sang in Sanskrit and there were Dutch subtitles. I probably understood 90% (Karel said the Dutch was a bit archaic). It was hard to take your eyes off what was going on stage to look at the subtitles anyway…
“Peter met us afterwards in a bar across the street. He said that the show had been played in Germany, Antwerp and Ghent, and each time there was a new cast of opera singers. Some of the dancers and chorus had been in other shows. The four dancers who were there said Peter had been the best (and lightest) Gandhi to work with and everyone was sad this was the last show…although rumors were swirling of the show going to a few other places two seasons from now.”
That same day, Sue responded saying that our kids’ get-together after the performance made Peter feel like a bit of home was with him. “I miss him and his music making so much sometimes. Today he sent me pictures of his new home for a few months—Florence.”
In January, Peter Tantsits, graduate of Northwestern Lehigh High School, Yale University and Oberlin Conservatory, will sing the part of Erik in Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman) in Florence–if you are in the neighborhood. Laurie Lynch
If you’re not, but would like to get a glimpse of Peter in Satyagraha click on this link:
If that doesn’t work, Goggle Peter Tantsits operaballet.be and you can probably get to the website and watch the trailer.
Written on Slate: “To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion—and above all, the passion.” Andrea Bocelli
It’s funny how things stick with you. Looking over my photos from Ghent I was surprised at how many were of horses. I was transported to 8thgrade. My parents got home from the parent-teacher conference and I was in deep water. Mrs. O’Neill said she appreciated my interest in reading BUT I had to start reading books on topics other than horses.
Fleur-de-Blog 