3/21週五晚上七點半，在春秋書店，請胡耿銘講巴哈的復活節清唱劇。基督教最重要的兩個節日，就是耶穌的誕生與受難，而受難的重要性還超過誕生，很多宗教儀式都與受難、復活有關，衍生出的音樂也非常龐大，光是巴哈為復活節寫的清唱劇，就是一座大山。所幸，有胡耿銘領路，參加者得識沿途花草蟲魚。
An opera company that stages performances in nontraditional settings is bringing Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” to a SoHo cafe. Caffeinated beverages will be served.
Now the company has taken Bach’s “Coffee Cantata” to — where else? — a coffee shop in SoHo.
There is a back-to-the-future slant to staging this piece in that place. Bach wrote the cantata — “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht,” BWV 211 — after he took over as leader of an ensemble that gathered regularly at Cafe Zimmermann in Leipzig, Germany. The cantata, in which a father and his coffee-loving daughter sing to each other, mocked some Leipzigers’ fixation on what others considered an unconventional drink.
在咖啡店唱巴赫
一家在非傳統環境中表演的歌劇公司將把巴赫的“咖啡康塔塔”帶到了蘇荷區的一家咖啡館。將提供含咖啡因的飲料。
現在該公司又把巴赫的《咖啡康塔塔》帶到了——哪裡呢？ — 位於 SoHo 的咖啡店。
在那個地方上演這件作品有一種回到未來的感覺。巴赫在擔任德國萊比錫齊默爾曼咖啡館 (Cafe Zimmermann) 定期聚會的樂團的領導後，創作了這部康塔塔——《寂靜無聲，歌唱不響》(BWV 211)。這部康塔塔講述了一個父親和他熱愛咖啡的女兒互相唱歌的故事，諷刺了一些萊比錫人對這種在別人看來非常規飲料的迷戀。
BWV 211
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Loyexw3uk
The piece was also a caffeinated departure from Bach’s famous liturgical compositions. “This was not Bach’s M.O., generally, to write a secular cantata,” On Site Opera’s music director, Geoffrey McDonald, told me.
Audience members will be served coffee chosen to complement the action onstage: A single-origin variety from Nicaragua, another variety from Kenya and a drink combining coffee from Ethiopia with Ceylon tea. The company’s artistic director, Sarah Meyers, said that when she heard about that mixture, “my first thought was, ‘That shouldn’t happen,’ but then I tried it. It’s quite nice.”
‘A dried-out slab of goat meat’
McDonald reworked the libretto for a “reimagining of the cantata,” translating the German into English and updating some of the wording “to make it more contemporary and, hopefully, more funny than a direct translation would be.” Meyers added that the changes “make it sound as if someone might actually say these things” because, as McDonald explained, the original German idioms “would mean zero to a contemporary audience.”
這首樂曲也與巴赫著名的禮拜儀式樂曲截然不同。 「一般來說，創作世俗康塔塔並不符合巴赫的作曲風格，」On Site Opera 的音樂總監 Geoffrey McDonald 告訴我。
觀眾將品嚐到根據舞台表演而精心挑選的咖啡：一種來自尼加拉瓜的單一產地咖啡、一種來自肯尼亞的咖啡以及一種混合了埃塞俄比亞咖啡和錫蘭茶的飲料。該公司的藝術總監薩拉·邁耶斯 (Sarah Meyers) 說，當她聽說這種混合物時，“我的第一個想法是，‘這不應該發生’，但後來我嘗試了一下。它相當不錯。”
“一塊乾涸的山羊肉”
麥克唐納修改了歌劇劇本，將德語翻譯成英語，並更新了一些措辭，「使其更具現代感，並且希望比直接翻譯更有趣」。邁耶斯補充道，這些變化“讓它聽起來好像有人真的會說這些話”，因為正如麥克唐納所解釋的那樣，原來的德語習語“對當代觀眾來說毫無意義”。
例如？
作品中的女兒利斯琴 (Lieschen) 曾說過：“如果我不喝咖啡，我就會變成一塊乾癟的羊肉。”
麥克唐納表示，他首先將這句話的結尾改為「變成來自地獄的野獸」。但他表示，這種方法行不通，“因為音節與巴赫的音樂不在同一個位置。”
Such as?
At one point, Lieschen, the daughter in the piece, says, “If I don’t get my coffee, I turn into a dried-out slab of goat meat.”
McDonald said he had first changed the ending of that sentence to “turn into a beast from hell.” But that did not work, he said, “because the syllables don’t fall in the same place as Bach’s music.”
So he decided to underline the idea that she cannot function without coffee, and have her sing, “If I’m deprived, it’s not a pretty picture.”
He also reworked a line sung by Schlendrian, the father. “The original German translates directly to ‘Has one not with their children 100,000 bits of sloppiness?’” McDonald said. “I thought, ‘What’s an English word that really lands well there?’”
He came up with this: “Raising daughters is no picnic. They don’t listen, though you try.”
He was drawing on his own experience, not as a parent — he has two sons — but as someone with older sisters. He talked over the line with Meyers, who has two boys and two girls. “None of us can control our children,” she said. “That I know from being a parent.”
因此，他決定強調她沒有咖啡就無法正常生活，並讓她唱“如果我被剝奪了，那將不是一個美好的畫面。”
他還重新演繹了父親施倫德里安 (Schlendrian) 演唱的一句台詞。 「德語原文的直譯是『難道一個人對自己的孩子沒有十萬分的不修邊幅嗎？』」麥克唐納說。 “我想，’什麼英語單字能很好地表達這個意思？’”
他想出了這樣一句話：“養育女兒並不是一件輕鬆的事。不管你怎樣努力，她們都不會聽你的。”
他講述的不是他作為父母的經歷（他有兩個兒子），而是作為一個有姐姐的人的經歷。他透過電話與邁耶斯進行了交談，邁耶斯有兩個兒子和兩個女兒。 「我們誰也無法控制自己的孩子，」她說。 “作為一個家長，我深知這一點。”
會選擇什麼：愛情還是咖啡？
邁耶斯說：“父母總是認為他們比孩子知道得多，而這是一個孩子勝過父親的故事。” 「這真的就是全部了。施倫德里安設定的動態是，你必須在兩件事之間做出選擇——你必須在愛情和咖啡之間做出選擇，最終，她說：’不，我可以兩者兼得。我可以喝咖啡，也可以按照自己認為合適的方式過我的愛情生活。’”
但上週排練期間，邁耶斯、麥克唐納和表演者都沒能喝咖啡。他們的排練室有嚴格的禁止飲料規定。
邁耶斯說：“我們都是咖啡愛好者，幾乎普遍如此。”
她渴望地望著房間前面的一張桌子。
「所有這些杯子都是道具，」她說。 「它們都空了。等我們到了咖啡店，我們就會鬆一口氣。”
What’ll it be: Love or coffee?
“Parents always think they know so much more than their children, and this is the story of a child outsmarting her father,” Meyers said. “That’s really all there is to it. The dynamic Schlendrian sets up is that you have to choose one thing over another — you have to choose love or coffee, and ultimately, she says: ‘No, I can have both. I can have my coffee, and I’ll live my love life as I see fit.’”
But neither Meyers, McDonald nor the performers could have their coffee during rehearsals last week. Their rehearsal room had a strict no-beverages rule.
“We’re all coffee drinkers, pretty universally,” Meyers said.
She looked longingly at a table near the front of the room.
“All of those cups are props,” she said. “They’re empty. When we get to the coffee shop, it will be such a relief.”
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