A Fork in the Road Page 47
Without fail each explosion led to a more rewarding communication. This was the true magic of the schloss. And the friendships we took away from those gatherings changed the tenor, and sometimes the direction, of our lives.
Not all the discussions were deadly serious or erudite. There were often refreshing interludes of humour. And there were breaks, often musical performances in the evenings. It came as no surprise – in fact, it seemed almost fitting – to learn that the young Mozart had most probably performed for the Archbishop of Salzburg in one of these ornate rooms. Sometimes there would be excursions, most memorably into the Salzkammergut, the region of lakes and mountains; or up the Wintersberg; or occasions to break away for a walk through the town, perhaps a visit to the St Peter restaurant shouldered in under the mountain where, it is alleged, Charlemagne had occasionally enjoyed a meal; or to a concert in the Mozarteum or the Festspielhaus or high up in the Festung.
The conferences at Leopoldskron began in the late forties when a few young Americans who had spent time in Austria during the war set in motion a project to establish a ‘home from home’ where academic discussions and cultural interaction could turn the war experience and its memories into something positive and lasting. Over the years, more and more of the conferences focused on education, economics, law, business, ethics … But there always used to be room for cultural matters too: drama, literature, philosophy.
Gradually, as the twenty-first century began to affirm its presence and press its demands, Schloss Leopoldskron appeared to follow the example of more and more ‘educational facilities’: turning them, no longer into institutions of intellectual, cultural and moral excellence as into well-run businesses which can show a profit. The face of America became more and more visible; and not always the face one likes to associate with its period of cultural excellence. For me, over the last few years, the schloss has, alarmingly, begun to lose its magic; and the loss was sealed by the departure of Tim Ryback and his charming family.
This has coincided with a slow but perceptible decline in what the name ‘Salzburg’ used to signify for me. Music has much to do with it.
Through the years, music has always been a major ingredient of my life. Not my early attempts at playing the piano, which had been mostly disappointing. But living with it. I find it difficult to write without music. I find it difficult to think without music. I find it difficult to live without it. This means, specifically, classical music. I have made some valiant efforts to extend my interest and my taste: there are moments when I can open the door and let in some jazz, a few phrases of Dylan or the Beatles, certainly Croatian klapa. But not much more. The summum remains Mozart. Hence my response to Salzburg. And certainly also Beethoven. Quite an array of others – Chopin, more and more since I met Karina. And certainly a wide range of baroque, from Vivaldi and Telemann and Scarlatti and Corelli to Bach. And then Brahms and some Wagner and Mahler and Richard Strauss, and yes, some Stravinsky. But that’s about it. I’d like to hear Beethoven’s Funeral March when my ashes are strewn at a cherished spot; or Chopin’s. For the rest, I can rest peacefully and imagine, as George Eliot phrased it, to hear the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and die of that roar which lies at the other side of silence.
Instruments, solo or in concerto: yes, the piano, or the flute, or the violin, sometimes the deep drone of the cello; often chamber music of many kinds and forms. And the great symphonies in turbulent or expansive mood. There, too, I would always be happy to slide back into Chopin, or Beethoven, and – ultimately and compulsively – Wolfgang Amadeus.
As a student I was fond of opera, but only because it seemed ‘easy’. It took years before I cautiously returned to it and discovered, first through Gigli and Di Stefano, through Sutherland, soaringly through Callas, how sublime a form it could be. Lucia di Lammermoor. Tosca. La Traviata. And again Mozart, from opera seria to opera buffa – but who can think of Cosí fan tutte or Le nozze di Figaro as opera buffa after Mozart has been there? But it was only when, early in 2005, I was in Oudtshoorn with Gerrit and Marina and they made me listen to Anna Netrebko’s now almost legenday first CD, Sempre Libera, that opera was irrevocably changed for me, into something comparable in scope and impact to Beethoven’s Ninth, or Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, or one of Mozart’s late piano concertos.
It was here in Salzburg that Netrebko made her phenomenal breakthrough on the world stage in 2002, after bewitching Russian audiences at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and Americans in San Francisco as early as 1995, as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. Since then, either on her own or with the inimitable Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, she has become the name at the Met, or at La Scala, or Covent Garden, or of course at the Salzburger Festspiele – a too meteoric rise for some, an unforgivable veering from opera to show business, as a once-noted but now outdated singer like Christa Ludwig recently complained. Like Gigli and Galli-Curci, or Di Stefano and Callas, or Sutherland and Pavarotti, or more recently Alagna and Gheorghiu, these two, Netrebko and Villazón, have become the ‘heavenly twins’, a phenomenon which brought the whole world of gloss and promotion into overdrive. Regrettably, perhaps; because it can become difficult to see – or hear – through the hype. But in this case – and so far – their real greatness seems to have stayed a step or two ahead of the inventions of the media.
It took me one day with that early CD, Sempre Libera, and I was smitten. It was in the early days of my relationship with Karina, and before Gerrit and Marina and I had stopped listening, I sent Karina an SMS in Salzburg to tell her about the discovery. Within minutes she responded with a detailed write-up on Anna Netrebko. After that, there was no turning back for us.
2005 was the year of La Traviata, with Netrebko and Villazón. But many months beforehand there were no tickets to be had; on the black market, we learned, they went for 5,000 euros. Even so, undaunted and ever optimistic, we decided to travel to Salzburg and try our luck. But this was not to happen. On this occasion we were invited to spend a night in the schloss together, in the magnificent room I’d stayed in alone on two of my previous visits, overlooking the lake, a peerless view.
On the night we would have gone to the Festspielhaus to see La Traviata, we met Karina’s brother Krystian in town and went for dinner in the restaurant Zirkelwirt. A good meal, but a sad and depressed evening. Because we knew that barely 200 metres or so away Anna was singing, while we were out here, literally in the cold.
After the main course we decided to go to Tomaselli’s for dessert, a touch of sweetness on a bitter night. Along the way we passed several of the curious tall colourful cones the municipality had erected all over the city. There was a yellow one in the square near Tomaselli’s too. In passing, Krystian heard music coming from it and bent over to listen. He motioned to us to come closer. I pressed my ear against the cold, wet, yellow thing and my heart missed a beat.
‘It’s Traviata,’ I gasped. It had to be a direct broadcast from the Festspielhaus. It certainly was Netrebko. No doubt about it. In that spine-chilling farewell scene. As close to a live performance as we might ever be privileged to witness. We stood there in the rain, listening, transfixed. The next day I asked Karina to take a photograph while I embraced the yellow cone. I was convinced that this might well be the closest I could ever get to Anna Netrebko.
But a year later, in 2006, the impossible happened. There was no hope of getting tickets through the normal channels: every single performance of Le nozze di Figaro was sold out eight times on the day the bookings opened. We resigned ourselves to fate, resolved to make the pilgrimage. At least, we speculated, we might see it on the big screen erected during the festival on the Mozartplatz. And then, barely a month before the festival, one of the many pistes we had attempted, unexpectedly resulted in a hit. There were tickets waiting for us.
The performance was unbelievable, Anna breaking away from the old tradition of the opera buffa with Susanna as the coquettish soubrette. This was a performance in a new key, picking up
on aspects of Beaumarchais usually left unexplored: a deeply disturbing unmasking of the droit du seigneur and the ruthless exploitation of women. This production was altogether darker and more disturbing, even though Anna managed with unbelievable deftness to do full justice to the deceptive lightness of the music as well.
We went back to the schloss, walking in the dark across the mountain, to our own private celebration.
Two days later there was an opportunity of meeting Anna at a signing in the Katholnigg music shop and for a few precious minutes we could talk to her.
In March 2007, a good friend, Jean Félix-Paganon, who used to be the French ambassador in South Africa and who had been instrumental in honouring me as an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, succeeded in obtaining tickets for us to a recital of duets by Netrebko and Villazón in Paris. Only later did we learn about all the obstacles that had suddenly arisen, and how it took the personal intervention of the French prime minister to secure our seats.
This still didn’t open any doors to Salzburg. Once again all tickets – this time for a Domkonzert with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garača a as the soloists in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater – were sold out even before the official opening of the bookings. But once more the impossible happened and through friends close to the Festspiele we managed to get tickets. Once again we set out on a pilgrimage of 12,000 kilometres to hear Anna.
But this time fate intervened in a new way. No fewer than five of the top performers at the festival withdrew at the last minute. Among them: Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanča and Rolando Villazón. We did not question the validity of their reasons. But what did seem unpardonable was that the festival office bluntly refused to refund the cost of the tickets. As for travelling from South Africa to Salzburg to hear Anna, that was just too bad. It was advertised as a Pergolesi concert, insisted the woman at the ticket office, and it still is a Pergolesi concert, even if the venue had been changed and the main singers replaced. ‘We are strongly against this new cult around “stars”,’ added the intendant of the festival in a television programme soon afterwards, in response to an outcry among festival-goers. Ignoring the fact that it was Salzburg that had first turned these musicians into stars.
This was comparable to setting up a tennis exhibition match at Wimbledon between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, and then informing fans, upon their arrival in London, that the match had been moved to a court in Kent, and that Federer and Nadal had been replaced by Tim Henman and Leyton Hewitt. Offering as an explanation, ‘It’s still a tennis match.’
The triumph of the bureaucrats. A blow for artistic integrity. The replacements found for Netrebko and Garanča in the Domkonzert were excellent. But like hundreds of other festival-goers, I had not gone to Salzburg to hear them. And the purely mercenary attitude of the organisers may yet bear some rather sour and shrivelled fruit in future. Karina and I will certainly not travel to Salzburg for another Festspiele. And we have heard from several others that they will also think twice about returning.
STILL BLACK AND WHITE
I HESITATE TO return in this final chapter to the theme of black and white. One would have liked to think that at the very heart of the shift in South Africa since the transition that began in the early nineties would have been a move away from race. And this appears to be borne out by the amazing reaction throughout the country to the two Springbok victories, in 1995 and 2007, in the Rugby World Cup. But the basic divisions in our society have not changed all that much. Over the last few years there may even have been a resurgence of racism. And the tragedy is that this is fuelled not only by stark white right-wing attitudes, but by actions and attitudes within the ANC itself.
What I find saddest about the country today is this: in the past, when I was driven by the urge to come to grips with Africa, there were some whites whose attitudes kept me at a distance: while they were there, Africa could not speak in its own voice. Today it has changed, and the ANC must bear the responsibility for this: because today I find that there are some blacks standing between Africa and me. People like Tony Yengeni, the poor man’s Vladimir Putin; or our sick minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang; or our court-jester minister of safety and security, Charles Nqakula; or a number of other people who should have been proud symbols of Africa, but who are now betraying the continent and what it should stand for. And these names should not be read as referring to individuals and exceptions, but as representatives of attitudes which obscure the history and the legacy of values that have been realised through much suffering, at a high price, and over many years. But how on earth did we get here?
The New South Africa was ushered in by an unforeseen event: early in 1990, the mad old emperor, P. W. Botha, whose apoplectic rages and intransigence had brought the country to the edge of the precipice during the eighties, was incapacitated by a stroke. Flanked by Foreign Minister Pik Botha, F. W. de Klerk lost no time stepping into the shoes of the unlamented leader. This did not necessarily herald significant change: de Klerk was still known as a dour right-winger who had launched some of the most odious apartheid legislation affecting education and social relations through parliament. And 1989 was a bad but fascinating year, wobbling along with two centres of power: P. W. Botha as state president, F. W. de Klerk as leader of the National Party. The outcome was predictable: assisted by the foreign minister, de Klerk outmanoeuvred P. W. Botha and took his place, leaving the old man vile and powerless in the background, trying dementedly to pull the strings of puppets that no longer danced to his tune.
The rest is, indeed, history. Even though everything inside him and everything in his past probably militated against it, de Klerk was a shrewd enough politician to read the signs of the times and the mood in the country and act accordingly. Behind him loomed and moved world events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the liberation of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, rumblings in Latin America and Africa: with the Soviet Union suddenly no longer the pretext that had driven South African violent authoritarianism to the final excesses of apartheid. With a new worldwide surge towards national liberation, and the staggering increase of internal and external pressure in the country itself in the form of economic sanctions, demonstrations by trade unions, and agitation in the churches and the universities, the appearance of vigorous young black leaders within and around the United Democratic Front, de Klerk capitulated. But he had the skill and shrewdness to do it in style. Clearly still convinced that by initiating radical change he could continue to control it and define its parameters and its momentum, he catapulted the country into the future with the historic address to parliament on 2 February, 1990. The death penalty would be reconsidered and a moratorium placed on executions, all liberation movements would be unbanned, political prisoners, including Mandela, would be released.
We stared at the TV screen in stunned disbelief. Immediately afterwards we started telephoning friends, while outside in the streets a cavalcade of cars came past, with the clenched fists, black and white, of the Africa salute protruding from all the windows. It felt like a carnival; at the same time there was an element of irreality, a silence of awe and amazement. Surely this was not really true. It could not last.
11 February, 1990 became one of those days not only South Africans, but anyone who had lived through it, would ever forget. A day to be commemorated like the murder of Kennedy or the fall of the Berlin Wall, a day when, in Santayana’s winged words, humanity started dreaming in a different key. The last-minute wrangling behind the scenes, the flaring tempers and frantic efforts to put a stop to it or push it in a different direction, only became known afterwards. What we, and the rest of the world, saw on our TV screens was a tall, greying, immaculately dressed man – he was already in his seventies – clutching the hand of his wife as he walked with long, slow strides through the green landscaped garden of Victor Verster prison outside Paarl, sixty kilometres from Cape Town, towards the massive crowd waiting outside. A moment in which, with incredible abruptness, a myth was transformed into a human b
eing. A moment when an impossible dream became shockingly real. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was free.
I was in Grahamstown. In spite of all my efforts I could not break away and go to Cape Town for the occasion. For several years I had been working on my novel An Act of Terror, in which Mandela’s walk to freedom formed a key episode. At the moment of writing, it was still an almost unbelievable vision of the dream that had kept the country going for so many years. Now it was actually, and unbelievably, happening in front of my eyes as I sat at the TV with my typewriter, writing the last few pages of that book. My vision was blurred. I was in tears. But in a way it was like seeing more clearly than ever before. It was like moving into another time frame, a different kind of reality. Suddenly anything and everything seemed within reach.
Later, I would write: Now we have achieved the impossible. What remains is to manage the possible. Which certainly turned out to be much more difficult than we could ever have expected.
But the threshold had been crossed. Nelson Mandela was free.
It is still hard to find words for the events of that searing summer’s day and what followed. Yes, I was elated. But I also had lingering leaden doubts, as I still found it hard to trust de Klerk, having known the man since the time we were together at Potchefstroom University. We had never been close friends – he was always on the side of the establishment and took care to follow all the right channels to reach the top in student affairs; I was always, albeit cautiously, a heretic on the ‘other’ side – but at such a small university everybody knew everybody and we were bound together by a sense of family. Moreover, at that time I still supported the National Party, had a strong historical sense of Afrikaner identity.
Not very long after 11 February I wrote him a letter, congratulating him on his stance and expressing the hope that he would follow through on it. At the same time I mentioned that within a few weeks I would be leaving for Europe and I knew in advance that I was going to be approached by journalists and politicians in several countries for my view of the changing climate in South Africa. What, I asked FW in my letter, was I to tell them – given that at the time I was still under constant surveillance by the SB, that my mail was still being opened and my telephone calls intercepted? A few weeks later, just before I left for Europe, there was a short official letter from the presidency: Mr de Klerk would ask the police to investigate the matter.