Luciano Pavarotti for the ages....

I never thought I would air Luciano’s laundry on public television,”said his widow in an estate battle with his three King Lear daughters, sired from his emasculating alliance of 30 years with their momma, his matriarchal
diva...amended October 28, 2007.

His high tenor C’s ran their course for four decades and three......two years in teaching, a stint selling insurance to pay for voice lessons.....mortality extinguished a larger than life Caruso last night in Modena outside Roma.

”E non ho amato mai lanto la vita....” I never have loved life so much”

What a work is man offering to the muses bestowing wonder and awe ,those soft lovable high’s, touching us so often....”Nessun dorma”... The celestial beauty of his voice.

Not unlike Michelangelo’s Pieta, Beethoven’s sonotas, Kirov’s performance of Swan Lake, the cosmos of the unconscious.,he raising our consciousness to the sublime, grasping the boy in his arms at the Met’s green room with his childish bubbling over adoration.. ...

“Sasha over here. What have you got to tell me today?” he asked in a Mozartian De Ponte aside from Figaro’s libretto........An “Ave Maria” farewell into the after life of Saint Peter and his angels.

“Addio Lucio..Mille grazie ni manchetante.. A gift from God, he was not allowed to sing in the Vatican. Does not the Catholic church owe the Maestro an apology.

A “grazie millee”. Sleep well maestro.”

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helly Keats and :Lord Byron weeping into their sensibilities on the 7th Steps of Roma’s piazza., their delirium darkening the consciousness of Dame Joan Sutherland in Australia, remembering the Maestro’s “addios” in Verdi’s ”Rigoletto”...

“Never have I experienced such a feeling of hatred against death, Of contempt for that mysterious bland stupid metamorphosis and craven power. As if God were listening to the polyphonic hubbub of the human race.”

Verdi and Puccini ask “Maestro, what should we do? Find discover cultivate such a God given gift?”

“Riding a bicycle thru Peijing’s Tiananmen Square....a motored cycle with “60 minutes” Mike Wallace holding on for dear life, .begging for another heavenly aria......
An outsized personality with a voice born for glory.... among his Richard Tucker wino pasta and barbershops....”Live from Lincoln Center. Pavorotti and friends....very smart offstage and on, not unlike Verdi’s “La forza del destino”

46 years on the great stages of our musical canon...from Milan’s La Scala to London’s

Covent Garden. To the Met, Avery Fischer Hall.....Wembly Stadium, Glyndebourne Central Park Vienna the World Cup, his cosmic consciousness into Hyde Park, “during a rainy day at Gershwin’s London art museum”. “the 3 tenors concert at the Olympics......
No “Great Caruso” of a gig, Mario Lanza’s mother confessing to ours on a Southern California bus, that Mario, her son, a truck driver in Philadelphia, had been seduced by the sorcerer’s apprentice, abandoning his coach Boris Goldofsky..... marketing his high c’s on an MGM sound stage... lip synching several arias....

He made us better.(actor Burt Lancaster, from the Bronx, caressing those Caruso records on his stoop, below the fire escape) ... transcending heads of state..... Machiavellian chords of sadism and masochism playing out on the battlefields of his humanity....

Mussolini a Jack Oakie’s impersonation., Charlie Chaplin’s “Great Dictator”.

Burl Ives taunting his crutch bearing son “Mendacity. What do you know of mendacity?” ”Cat on a hot tin roof”.

Bette Davis flipping out on the staircase , Dan Duryea mocking her fall, Lillian Hellman’s

“Little Foxes” ..

How else can you explain Lord Byron, Keats and Shelly moaning Masstro’s departure on Roma’s’s 7 Steps....Never stone deaf to his musica.... pausing..in reverence for the Maestro’s soul passing into eternity, his nickel and dime bandits boiling overtime for a piece of their father’s legacy.. Isn’t that the bottom line, dear reader? .

Preserved for all of measured time as the metronome ticks out our heart beats above the spinet.

Step aside Caruso and make space for the Maestro...

Let the mandolins play. All shoemakers cease their toil. Their hi fi FM radios M 3 players I pods satellite radios surfing our planet.

Lincoln Center lower the flag .... half mast.

A thunderous drum roll, the F 16 jet peeling off in a fly over, breaking the sound barrier.

Maria Callas abandoning her shores for Aristotle Onassis, the Mediterranean trappings of tax free havens.... ...sailing the Aegian waters amid the Greek Islands..... waves of whirling yachts.

The birthplace of the human soul at Delphi.

The three poets sitting on Roma’s 7 steps hear the sonic repercussions from the fly over , the green red and white colors of Italy, glittering the blue skies above Modena’s Cathedral..

Nature at a loss for the extinguishment of Apollo’s treasure., the three poets on the Seven Steps of Roma, sobbing into the Maestro’s larger than life handkerchief.....

His four year old daughter.......

“Papa you have loved me so much. I know you will always protect me. I will hold you dear to my child’s heart every tomorrow..

O sole mio.....may the flight of his own Angel sing him to his rest.

Novella Roma, Italy October 28, 2007 amended.... for the 9 decades of George Jellinek’s life, the host of WQXR’s “The Vocal Scene”, January16, 2010

As we were saying yesterday

As we were saying yesterday gents, Lou Gehrig stood at home plate, the mike in his hand....”I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.....”the fans and ourselves hearing our hero’s one for the ages dream flooding its ninth inning five o’clock lightning, the sobbing tears of bewilderment and invisibility of what was once an Iron man becoming a memory, exiting our 12 year old cosmos..

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21st century arrived and Gehrig’s Monument Park heroics were transcended by Derek Jeter....his accomplishments at shortstop or as the knothole kids spruced up their jargon.....”Nothing like Crosetti...the “Crow” the Scooter Jeter on the field at bat and off...sitting in the dugout or at the rail...cap off, arms waving the runners across the bases, his joy in the moment....

Leading off from the right side with his graceful Jeterian swing No bipartisan bickering here The resident authorities were all aghast. Susan Waldman’s hot stove corner espousing the prowess of El Capitan...her voice not that of a shill but telling it like it is..

A prescience bordering on a Clark Kent mystique: born into his role, a supreme athlete in motion ..Nijinsky Baryshikov the Kirov ballet ...... the Crow Scooter El Capitan passing Gehrig, in cracking 2722/ hits.

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The Sunday Caribbean parades on Eastern Parkway, those were but holiday respites..... Carmen Mirandas sushswaying to the bongo drum rhythm.....bigger than Katrina a parallel to Indonesia’s Tsusami tidal waves.........hundred thirty five thousand missing or dead...

Here in Port au Prince the vigilantes machetes in hand vanquished any vestiges of water and reason.. Freud’s “Civilization against the discontents” playing out. Madness lurking just under the veneer..

But what can you expect. Living on two dollars a day the prison doors ajar cannibalism erupting, Port au Prince’s vestiges of civilization crumbling.

Life was on a string ,and the yo yo was swallowed up by the earth faults clashing as the San Andreas in California.....”the big one has hit” cast against the shadows of the palace&populace skeletons......

Balls naked, the truth of posturing playing out.....Right, Marie Antoinette? “If they want bread, give em cake”


Right!.

III

There art thou? Paul de Kruif microbe hunters? Louis Pasteur? Emile Zola? Madame Curie and Paul? The founder of penicillin ,Arthur Fleming? Malaria”s yellow fever m.d? Albert Schweitzer? Jonas Salk? Diptheria? .Doctors without borders can’t do it alone, can they?

On the flight to Shangrila, Ronald Coleman’s quiet mind tried getting the panicky into gear..... escaping the swine flu unto one plane, the last riff of a measure in 7/8th time playing out....... Frank Capra’s “Lost Horizon”

Who was there to kick the cosmic butt and get the island’s raison d’etre back unto the international community track? “Bread and water? monsieur? madame?”

V

There were no lost causes in the House that Ruth built.......the baseball Gods had seen to that......the groupies flocking to the jocks, crowding them for their prowess in a seemingly pop culture that give way to a reality near the old Brooklyn Dodger environs.....

Brooklyn’s “Nostradamus” and Flatbush Avenue reality scene to 230,000 Haitians.....

But did Mamie Van Doren care a whit? No siree....a. knothole kid in quest of a catch.. She had her eyes on an Angel out of Gene Autry’s diamond, subsequently in Anaheim.

Bob Belinsky, a pitcher from the Jersey boy shores....his spectacular 4 starts as a south paw..a no hitter. A former pool hustler and jock out of Trenton ... a life style that dissipated his staying power.....chasing flea flicking floozies in an eight year career.... on and off the mound.

“If I would have known I’d pitch a no hitter I would of gotten a hair cut”

“If music be the food of love, by all means, let thm play on”, his stats ERA4.1 28-57 over his eight years in the majors....

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Meanwhile the O’Malley Dodgers slipped into L.A.’s Chavez Ravine, keeping their Sandy Koufax King’s County complete, he off the Lafayette High field Parade Grounds and the semi pro House of David.,competing in Brooklyn.

His L.A. counterpart, Don Drysdale of Van Nuys High, into his Oxnard Boulevard ‘Dugout’ a block or two from Van Nuys Boulevard, where Tom Cruise cruised the Boulevard in his hot rod lamenting....”Where is the coozie? the knothole blonde?”.

VII

Mamie Van Doren may have been a knot hole wiggler, but her mister Belinsky was truly a rookie, and like the New York Jets in their 2010 Super Bowl prelim with the San Diego Chargers were led by Ray Ryan, himself a first year coach, and a rookie quarterback from the Trojans,...... Mark Sanchez

“He’s no longer a rookie,”said the coach, his players imposing their will .... their running game dominating the Chargers in the second half: their punter psyched out missing three field goals, and mistakenly kicking offsides instead of punting, taking ticks off the clock at the two minute warning, the Chargers might have gone all the way down field but the penalties the head butt ....

Interceptions, taking their toll on 30 year old LaDemian Tomlinson’s psyche at best..

17-14, vis a vi divine intervention.

Right Dante Laveli? Otto Graham’s “glue fingers” of the Cleveland Paul Brown dynasty..

Right.

The coach and quarterback had come complete circle in San Diego... 3000 miles from their New Jersey base......

Bo Belinsky, his Jersey number captured by the muse of Mae West ...., losing confidence in his swagger on and off the mound . Eight seasons and the playboy was caught looking...

“ Strike three... Let the 5 o’clock lightning come to you, Nothing is random”

VIII

Jeter’s announcement...tying the knot with his fiancee..... pitchers and catchers report for spring training at the boss’s ‘s facility in two weeks. El Capitan hitching his treasured pin stripes for marital happiness once the 162 game season ends..

“Long live the King.”


Maerin Luther King Day, the Meadowlands, January 18, 2010..

Hearing from “Haiti con amour” a moment ago....

 that a daily regime of reveille at nine.... running....., listening to Dave Brubeck and Ella Fitzgerald’s jazz .trios..... with a shot of vodka Calibrating a constellation that transcends our earthly coil.. thousands missing, the 7 point quake smashing. the Island on a 9/11 tempest off the charts.

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Growing up in those tipsy streets of prohibition where a player like Meyer Lansky had the foresight to take flight thru our first floor bathroom window, the feds at the front door of the fourth floor walk up,....around the corner from Colonel Marcus’s playground at Avenue P and East 4th Street, the denizens worshiping the baseball and football pros at Bedford Avenue’s Ebbets Field...... Aside from Mrs Harder at P.S. 217, Mrs Kelly and the Midwood High “Argus” gang all denied us a byline for our interview with WOR’s Stan Lomas, our street wrought gig would earn a brownie in the Guinness School of Records......

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However “Ole Reliable” Tommy Henrich, a Bronx Bomber, recorded those yesterdays while manicuring the pastures in right field, playing alongside the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio in center, long before he exchanged his vows with Marilyn Monroe..in Beverly Hills.

The Dodgers had taken his “Five o’clock lightning”, Ole Reliable passing at 97 several weeks ago, encompassing the baseball cosmos from ‘37 thru the present.


Their accomplishments are interwoven ...the glory years of Ruth Gehrig DiMaggio Mantle Roger Maris before Mark McGuire’s confession..... using muscle enhancing steroids..

“I’m good I’m good I’m good” said the Maris family, finding redemption for their father’s immortal character. Inheriting the “mantle” of the mighty Babe...sixty base clearing explosive four baggers..., surpassing it, paying a mighty psych and physical price in the tradeoff.......

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Who could imagine the Babe in his camel haired coat walking the peccadillos of Westwood Boulevard on the Ucla campus in the late forties. A mirage appearing in that world of undergraduates, the aftermath of World War 2, GI housing put together to house them as they let their civies do the talking for them....lecture halls, the Powell library, the graduate research library before Bill Ackerman’s center, Ed Pauley’s pavilion, the tennis center, Ducky Drake’s track, Harry Trotter’s. Bill Spaulding Joe E. Brown fields, Jane Wither’s home above Sunset..

John Wooden’s workout center.,”his pyramid of success”.....the swimming pool. Jans Steps...... the Globe Theater in miniature “no seating for bimbos”, 20th Century variation.

IV

But not to belabor a hero we identified with.....the Iron Man , Lou Gehrig speaking into the mike at home plate.

“I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth”

A massive relief effort to “Haiti mon amour” from the West Coast Middle America, and the Big Apple “Donate now” ($5.00)....January 13, 2010 ...to be continued

Between Johnny Depp and Sasha Cohen at last night’s People’s Choice”

Between Johnny Depp and Sasha Cohen at last night’s People’s Choice", the Bard would be overwhelmed by the "Pirate of the Caribbean" jumping "Captain Blood’s" ship ... the 6th day into 2010.

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For "Alice in Wonderland", Depp losing himself in the role of the Mad Hatter: philosopher and teacher, author Lewis Carrol, caught up in the imagination and enchantment of a cosmos inhabited by the vanished innocence of Victorian maidens like "Alice" finding their way.
Teeny boppers growing up in the quest of their feminine destiny mirror their interior dialogue in the older man’s disguise..
The bachelor reciprocates..... finding himself in their motives and moments of personal discovery... the journeys coalescing , their fates playing out. .... .revelation hypocrisy inhibition mucho grande cannibalism yielding Oedipus madness
"Capito Clytemnestra? Vengence for Agamemnon? Electra, Orestes’s sister. Et tu Brute!"

II

Jackie Cooper and peg leg Wallace Beery as Long John Silver in "Treasure Island" money grubbing for Sir Alec Guinness’s gold bullion. "Lavender Hill Mob"
Spencer Tracy Lionel Barrymore Freddie Bartholomew "Captain’s Courageous"
Dickens "Pickwick Papers" "David Copperfield" "Oliver Twist" "Nicholas Nickleby "Bleak House".
"Where art thou "Madame Bovery?" Simone de Beauvoir’s "Second Sex?"
Victor Hugo’s "Les Miserables" and Frederic March as the haunted and hunted Jean Valjean....for kiping a loaf of bread.

III

The Bard’s own "Midsummer Night’s Dream," with Jimmy Cagney Olivia De Havilland Mickey
Rooney.. "What fools these mortals be" says Puck.
"We are the stuff that dreams are made on, our little lives rounded with a sleep?


At the Spanish Steps of Lord Byron Percy Shelley and John Keats...., on hearing Seiji Ozawa (74) diagnosed with cancer of the esophageal.... he the Red Auerbach of the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood for many a year......
Novella Roma, January 7, 2010