Mon métier

On Monday we went back to the Louvre after a week's absence, and spent our time in a couple of rooms containing artifacts from Egypt's Old Kingdom (c. 3000 BC). One of the most remarkable things about Egypt is the homogeneity of the culture over such a vast period of time. I'm sure there are Egyptologists that can immediately tell whether a drawing or sculpture is from the Old, Middle, or New Kingdom, but to the rest of us, the style seems frozen in time. I can tell whether a Beethoven quartet was written in 1810 or 1820, and can see in St. Eustache the line between the Gothic building and the Renaissance interior. But the Egyptians were so insistent on the superiority of their culture that they left it virtually unchanged for 2500 years.

After the Louvre we walked through the gardens of the Tuileries, through the Place de la Concorde, and up to the Palais Garnier. This may be the most extravagant building in Paris, a fitting home for that most extravagant of art forms, opera. The building was designed by Charles Garnier, an architect working for the Emperor Napoleon III, who made it the centerpiece of his vast remodel of the city of Paris in the mid-19th century. Napoleon didn't want any more revolutionary barricades (like the ones you see in Les Miserables) so he had the medieval streets of central Paris widened and straightened, creating the open and airy city that we know and love today. Today the Opéra National de Paris uses the theatre mostly for ballet and 18th century opera.

We saw a chamber music concert there a couple of weeks ago. For their large opera productions the Paris Opéra uses a modern house built at the Place de la Bastille, which is where we saw Aïda on Saturday. Here is a shot of the Grand Foyer. A nice place to hang out during intermission while the wife stands in line at the washroom.

One of my favorite places was the score library. And my students think I have a lot of opera scores…

If you want to see more about this remarkable building, you can check out the film I made for my humanities class. It's on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qVEjkdpslk&feature=youtu.be.

On Tuesday I had the great pleasure of giving a voice lesson to Tara Khozein, a graduate from New Mexico State University in vocal performance. She came to NMSU after I left for Idaho, so I never had a chance to hear her sing. Today we rectified that omission. Tara has a warm and powerful soprano voice and a great heart and mind for singing. Her coloratura is stunning. I hope she won't mind me talking about her, because I have been thinking about a part of our conversation. We talked about her talent and potential and what she would need to do to make the most of it. She told me she wasn't sure she wanted to be a professional opera singer, and I told her it didn't matter, I wasn't talking about what she did for a living. What's important is the powerful and life-changing things that happen to you when you take something you do well and work to be as good at it as you can be.



This got me thinking about the Louvre, and my Foundations of Humanities class, and my life (they're all very connected right now). I have had the great fortune to live here in Paris for two months and buy a Louvre pass and visit as often as I want. Some days I wander all over, trying to master its labyrinth and see all the things I can. Some days I go to a room with Old Kingdom Egyptian art and spend all my time looking at one inscription. For the past three years I have been the dean of a general education program, arguing for a broad exposure for all students to religion, the sciences, and the humanities. But visiting the Opéra and teaching Tara reminded me that I am first and foremost a singer. While it's wonderful to try to be a Renaissance man and learn as much about as many things as I can, my life has the richness it has because of my dedication to the one thing that I do well. I guess what I'm saying is I love the the liberal arts, I love Foundations, I love Paris, but I miss singing and I miss my students.