Karen Gasche and Marcia Aubineau

00:01 My name is Karen gasche and I am 75 years old.

00:08 Today's date is July 26th, 2018 and we are recording in St. Paul Minnesota. And I'm here with my partner-in-crime Marcia who is my teacher.

00:26 My name is Marcia aubineau. I'm 71 years old. Today's date is July 26th, 2018. We are talking in St. Paul Minnesota and I was privileged to be the instructor for Karen at lyngblomsten residence and we were talking about the Opera Rigoletto.

00:59 Okay.

01:01 As far as the Opera experience was concerned just to explain to The Listener the Minnesota Opera and Lang bloomston, which is a Senior residence collaborated on a program in which we offered an 8-week course on the Opera Rigoletto.

01:22 And we had about 35 senior citizens who are students and we went through the the Opera with lecture you using videos enactments live singers and we then brought our students to the Ordway theater where they attended a performance of Rigoletto and Karen in our reenactment played the Duke we had to gender-bending Glass and I'll ask you Karen. Why why did you sign up for the program in the first place? I signed up because I am

02:13 Almost a lifelong lover of Opera the the drama the music the the color the acting all of that and I've loved it all my life and imagine my surprise because I just moved in to the lyngblomsten community in on January 3rd and a couple of weeks later. I saw this program on Opera and I signed up and I and I went because I was very interested. I had no idea what to expect and it was just delightful. It was so much fun. Where did you where were you before you came to lyngblomsten? I actually was up in the Northwoods of Minnesota at a camp. I lived there for five years and I was the the hostess two groups that came in and used our Retreat facilities and I was available if they had any questions.

03:13 Are any problems? So I was I was living in a stone Cottage that looked like something out of the Irish Moors out in the woods.

03:26 Northwest of Milacs Lake in the middle of Minnesota and so I was I was dependent on Minnesota radio public radio to keep me sane as I lived alone with my cat for 5 years was there and there's yes there were Bears they were actually Bears every year at a mother and four Cubs came and they were bears and turkeys and wolves and fissures and all kinds of birds and I had a garden and

04:09 It was wonderful. What what qualified you to do that job. Well, it's a job that I invented. I when I retire. I decided I wasn't going to just sit around I was going to be adventurous and and do some exciting volunteering. So the first two years after I retired I volunteered at a boarding school in Albuquerque, New Mexico boarding school that has had two kids from five different American Indian pueblos. It had a lot of African-Americans a lot of Hispanics and a lot of angles and it was a it was a wonderful community and I was an event planner there. So and I enjoyed my time and there were about 10 other volunteers from all over the country.

05:09 And we lived in a huge Spanish Mansion called teachers Hall at swear. The teachers had been housed before people bought their own homes. Anyway, that was my first volunteer experience and after 2 years. I came back here because I really missed my family. I have a daughter and her husband and two grandchildren who live here in the cities. And so I was here for three years and I kind of got that and seeing I wanted to do something again some major volunteering and I knew of this Camp I hit tent camp there and it was a camp that we are Church sent kids to in the summer.

06:03 And so I sent an email to the director and I said do you use senior citizens as volunteers at all? And he said well know what would you do if you came and I said, oh I can think of a lot of things I could do and I could help in the office for one thing, which I really didn't want to do but it was a way of getting my foot in the door anyway, but I said can we meet face-to-face and just kind of explore the possibilities so he came down to the city and we had a like a three-hour breakfast where the end we discovered that the two of us just had this this energy and we we just our idea. It's just kept pouring out and so it was really fun. I worked I helped at the waterfront. I never did any office work I established a Nature Center.

07:03 I taught courses nature courses and just did all of this hostessing which previously had been done by the Camp staff the office staffing and because there were three of them they were on duty every third weekend, but they all had school-age kids and families and so my being there freed them to be with their families on the weekends. And so they loved it and I loved it. Where did you learn all about nature? I mean you must have had to learn but bogs and and animals and plants and it's kind of like Opera through my pores from my growing up experiences. I was I've been a lifelong Girl Scout. My mom was my girl scout leader. Mom was interested in that that kind of stuff.

08:03 And it was a good teacher and

08:09 I just I loved it. It just resonated with with something in me. And and then when I was at the camp the opportunity came up for me to take a Minnesota master naturalist class that's offered through the University of Minnesota extension service and I became a Minnesota master naturalist and there they did a lot of teaching about interpretation and so on which is basically wouldn't master naturalist does they interpret they take people out wherever they might be by the shore of the lake in the Deep Woods in the fields and interpret to them with them what they're seeing and experiencing.

09:02 You said that it was observed that through your pores or what about Opera you you have a long history with Opera I do I actually do you know, there's there's that people talk about the way to have a literate and questioning child is to begin reading to them immediately read to them read read read. And and that's what my both of my parents did and one of the books that they read to us when we were little with a little golden book called Hansel and Gretel and so it basically was the story of Hansel and Gretel. Well at the time course, there was no television but the Metropolitan Opera broadcast around Christmas time was and still is I think almost always Hansel and Gretel

10:02 And there were four of us kids in the family. I was the oldest and the deal was around Christmas and you know how squirrelly kids get then was that we could bring our pillows down and put them on the living room floor and listen to the app for 1/2 Hansel and Gretel instead of taking a nap that day. Well, the little ones part always fell asleep, but I didn't because Mom and Dad had read this book to us and we've course had looked at it ourselves. We had pictures that we can put with this Opera that was sung in English. And so we had mind pictures that went with the music and and so that was my very first introduction to Opera and how many Christmases do you think you listen to Hansel and Gretel. I don't know lots and lots and lots and then

11:03 My brother was in a production and he his company did Hansel and Gretel each year around Christmas time to Tradition. Now, were you or are you a musician sort of a qualified that because I play I play the viola from about 4:30 fifth grade on my started on the violin as so many Viola stew and I switch to Viola when I realized that the old is were pretty much in demand. There were a thousand violinist for everyone or two violas. My brother was a very good cello player. It was just superb. I was not a very good player, but it gave me an opportunity to do things with him.

12:03 Events in participate in orchestras with him. And so I had musical experiences all the time as I grew up. I played in orchestras and I played in pit orchestras actually for a couple of operas when I was still in high school, so

12:24 What did you play for? The first one I played for was Magic Flute at private school. Probably about 20 miles away from where I lived and of course they needed they needed a cello but they also were desperate for a viola and they had to be pretty desperate to take me because I was a great deal is but you know, the viola is a middle voice and that's kind of a nice comfortable place to be so that was the first one and then the second one that I played for was Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo menotti so are high school did that and it was some was just one of those years where it all came together. We had we had the voices High School voices, but the big thing of course was that we had a boy soprano who was very capable of

13:24 Doing the the role of Amal and

13:31 When when did you start going to Opera's professionally like The Big Bang Theory of the big things? Okay. The first big thing that I went to was was with my maternal grandmother and I was probably 11 or 12 and I was visiting her in the summer and she lived in Chicago and took me downtown on Michigan Avenue near the the art institute. There's a small theater Art Theater called I think it's called the world theater and we saw a film of madama butterfly. And as I said, I was eleven or twelve and

14:17 I do remember the color in the pageantry and and I had heard had probably had heard the Opera before so I was a little bit familiar with the the music and the story but the thing that I remember the most about that was how and terribly embarrassed I was because my grandmother just stopped at 11 and or 12 year old is is not comfortable with her grandmother sobbing in public. And so I was just just embarrassed to death but that was my my first my Madame Butterfly. I I think I've seen that maybe four or five times and every time I cry, so don't go with me if you're stupid. I cry at La Traviata. I cry at Madame Butterfly. I am I'm just

15:17 Basket case it just affects me so much and I think that that's part of the power of Opera because it's not just theater. It's the music and the the motion that inhabits the music and then you put that together with the words and the ACT being in and everything and you've got some Dynamite combination will and that's certainly what we learned in this class you and and our other teacher Pablo really really got that across to us. How how hopera is this total experience of of that just touches your heart and and if the plot doesn't make you cry the beauty of the music will make you cry or for the beauty of the sets or or all of it together.

16:17 It just gives me goosebumps to talk about it. Well, you were the Duke and the Duke is not the character to make you cry unless unless you're crying anguish for anger because he's such a rotten guy proud of that. She's not even mad. I loved it you were you were terrific. What would what about the class? What are some things you remember? Well when I remember is when I decided to go to the class.

17:01 I hope that there wasn't any performance element and then when I got in there I found out that there is a performance every single week and then was chosen to be the do actually I volunteer did Viola and I thought to myself, you know, doggone it. I'm

17:25 Three-quarters of a century old and I have nothing to lose I can and plus I was fairly new to the community at that time and I didn't know these people from anybody so I could stand up there and make a fool of myself. And that was okay and that's part of part of what has happened to me and retirement is what I've gotten braver and braver and doing

17:54 Different things that are different for me putting myself out there. So it's it's admirable. I've taught.

18:04 High school students. I've taught college students. I've. Graduate college students. I've taught other teachers. When I worked with the College Board. I was teaching other teachers how to teach advanced placement and everybody all of those audiences are stakeholders the you know, they're working toward a diploma or they're working toward their teaching certification or they're working towards salary credits or you know, whatever so that a class becomes an end becomes a means to an end. But when you're dealing with really young people or older people, they're taking it especially the older people because they're just enjoying it. They're taking it for the love of it. And so they're they're not going to get up certificate.

19:04 It or anything like that when we're done and that's what's so wonderful for me working with senior citizens is that they they are so enthusiastic and an A lot of times they don't have filters that they just say what they think and and it's it's it's it's really quite refreshing and quite wonderful B, they don't they're not guarded they don't they're not protecting anything. And as long as they remember to put their teeth in then we're okay, you know, I had several years ago. I was teaching a class on the Opera Cinderella and one woman asked.

19:55 She raised her hand and she said I should say I have a question. How did Cinderella danced all evening in glass shoes? And I said that's a really good question. I have no idea what I said, but have you seen these shoes that young women wear now with a six inch heels and and actually there had been a young woman if this was a language then there'd been a young woman visiting her grandmother a day or two earlier and she had these really high shoes on and I said, well, you know a man designed those shoes and the women are looking at me there but I don't know couple dozen women in the class and and I said go to the shoe store and read the boxes and their men's names Calvin Klein Manolo Blahnik Christian love, you know all of us.

20:55 And the women were sitting there and nodding their heads and kind of fun and then I said. Bravely and you know, I said a man invented the corset.

21:08 And they went

21:10 Ali-A but at that very moment, there was one woman in the back of the room. She was in her wheelchair. She had her head forward and but I knew she was awake and all of a sudden her head jerked up and she says just when I said and a man invented the corset, she jerks her head up and she and the mammogram machine.

21:40 Burst out laughing, but that's that's an example of no filter. Boom. That was what she wanted to say. Right then. I'm right there and that's part of what I experienced in this class because you and Pablo had a way of pulling of of asking these these questions that pulled all kinds of answers out of people and because I was fairly new in the community. I didn't know who these people were and I only knew them by by what I saw very frail some of them in wheelchairs some of them disfigured and unable to put together three or four coherent thoughts in a row.

22:40 And it was humbling for me to hear the the conversation between you and the students all of the students and people talking with one another as the class went on. And and what I learned is, you know, some of these people who were so quiet and didn't say anything and didn't really seem to be with it too much had been fabulous teachers in their day and or missionaries or I had spent 30 years in in a place like Madagascar had super adventures in their lives, but I never would have known that if I hadn't had had you guys pull that out of them in in the class too. And it was I just you just for such Masters Master Teachers. It was great, Hawaii.

23:40 Who is so much fun? And sometimes remember we everybody had a part and so for example, everyone was a court here and they all had to laugh remember that started at a higher pitch and they think I went it was fun to see what one of my favorite moments but I would like for you to tell this is when when we were when I inserted popular songs from the 50s and 60s into the libretto and so

24:29 Well, we can tell this together. So at the very end of the Opera Rigoletto is

24:37 Bending over the dead Shield. His daughter and you are you always you lose you'll know, you know my daughter and the song that I had inserted was Teen Angel and Brian who played Rigoletto start. Sorry. He's reading his script and he goes, oh my oh my daughter and it's 15 and and then he starts singing singing and what happened then everybody joined in.

25:13 35 senior citizens singing Teen Angel by heart I remembered but I didn't know it was I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or be cut you son of a gun if I would have been eighteen. I would have grabbed my phone and started recording it. But I I didn't think to do that. Oh I would have I would have loved I would have loved to have that well and then the other the other part of it was and we talked about this afterwards when we are processing was the Angels play a bit of a part because you'll de had this collection of ain't right around her bed, right lost her mother at an early age. And so there were there were angels that played in a part important part in her life, right? There was a double meaning there to that was just kind of fun is love

26:13 Do you have a favorite Opera? I do my very favorite Opera is boito's Mephistopheles. And it's an opera that isn't done very much because it's so huge and scale it. First of all, it's a long Opera OK and but it it takes place in in heaven and and on Earth and in the in the fictional Grecian garden and there's even a Sabbath a devilish. Hellish Sabbath dancing. So it takes place in Howland and if there's this this tug-of-war between between God and the angels and

27:13 And I'm the ideal love Brotherly Love sisterly love and for spouses Soul the struggle between the devil mephiskapheles and and the Heavenly forces for for Faust soul and its just oh my that the music is wonderful and the pageantry can't be beat and and with all of these different places where the the action happens

27:49 There's an awful lot to see on stage in and in terms of the technical and how do they get from from hell to Earth up to heaven? And so there's a lot of damn spectacular flying around on a harness and and then there's an offstage chorus of of cherubim and and there's an offstage-brass choir and it's just full of of all of the magical kinds of things that can happen in Opera and its two beautiful tuneful. It's got several places where

28:31 Do you remember the tunes you go off singing?

28:36 Oh, I love that. I love that. That's why I'm not I personally am not very fond of a lot of modern Opera because it's you can't helmet exactly is really a lot of its really rich and China and exactly is Rose a mr. President. You just want to go get over it get over it. Seriously, he heard you know, oh my gosh. I hate that. I hate I hate I hate it, but your friendship is incredibly boring about as boring as ravel's Bolero is to play.

29:36 Oh, okay. When Bo Derek isn't on the movie watch walking around in a bikini and I seen your just sitting in front of all of those notes, you know, I heard that on the on the radio the other day and I had never realized how boring it was driving and I hear you know, the right now I'm thinking is this ever going to stop. Oh my God, there's a certain age.

30:12 Any younger may be more passionate time can be very cold for Bolero. Is that what you're saying? Probably as I started to say that I also started to think that I better censor myself a little bit here because I know I know there's passion after 7. That's that's what the AARP magazine says.

30:43 There is sex or after 70 or whatever the article was. I just looked at the other day. Ali's.

30:58 How many how many cast members do you think it takes to put that on? Oh my goodness. Well, there are

31:10 There's Faust and Mephistopheles. Right and there's Wagner who is kind of companion and then there are the two women.

31:26 Margaery done what's-her-face here and there are you know, there are all there's the chorus which Our Town people and there is a there's a children's choir that is is more or less backstage and way up high on risers. What are even more on right? You don't like up three stories up for something and there are

32:03 And the cord welder are dancers because there is there a couple places where there is where there's dance to and there's the The Witches Sabbath that the one in hell and is there a couple of dances I think in it? And so it's huge. So I had you are we talkin 70-80 a hundred people. I know why I haven't seen it. It's too expensive right? I mean it going to amount that would be astronomical is the is the Opera based on Marlow spouse to a goethe's Faust does the spouse go to heaven at the end? Yes, he in some Productions and goes to heaven in a cherry picker. But yes, yes he does.

33:03 I think it's a three operatic Foust that I know that I like this one the best and it's I think it's the truest to the sticks closer to the story line of the literary.

33:22 Okay, okay, because I used to teach Marlowe's Faust give my seniors in high school and I always I enjoyed it because Marlowe.

33:38 At the time was giving the finger if you will to the theatrical establishment and he's saying look I sure all out with Marlo didn't even believe in hell and so he thought okay. I'm going to let this guy get away with everything, you know, he's going to make fun of the pole piece going to you know, do all of these outrageous things. He's going to have his his lover the most beautiful woman in the world get you know, he's just going to do all kinds of really really St. Thomas Aquinas Jose and athema anathema sit up and he's going to get away with it while he's not going to get away with it, but he is going to get away with it because Marlowe has him go to hell but Marlow's and believe in hell, so, you know, it's kind of like to have your cake and eating it too if it will so I had a different agenda.

34:39 It was more Renaissance key to have him go to hell then to have him go up to heaven. Let it pretty close. They came pretty close. Okay, okay, but in the end the Heavenly choirs came up in their midst and Eau Gallie. Did you cry of course and where at where I cry the most though is in in the the

35:14 In the garden, there's a quartet between Houston mefe. And the and then the two women that is absolutely gorgeous and I cry there and I cry I cry when I hear the first three notes of the of the prologue in the prologue takes place in heaven and and I just get goosebumps and I cried because I love it so much, you know.

35:48 Going back to something that we talked about a little earlier. It's that combination of the words and it's the spectacle of it, but there's something about music whether that at the first time I heard I don't remember. I think it's Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto. I was just in tears I thought

36:15 These this is just so beautiful. And and it's too bad that today. I think we've

36:27 I kind of lost some of that beauty. We've lost it in art the visual arts. I mean the visual arts aren't beautiful anymore. They're shocking.

36:42 Their political not that there's anything wrong with that but it's like

36:49 You know, it's a garbage can is a garbage can and if you put it on the wall and I'm in a museum, that doesn't make it art. That's what is it the aesthetic the modern aesthetic it is like what we were talking about with modern Opera. It's like it's like glass and what's really astonishing and sad is that are our aesthetic sense reflects who we are as a culture and so you know, what? What does our art say about us today?

37:33 You know, but who is us here you go part of being old is that you get to be blatantly counterculture and I know I love it. I'm counterculture. So I need to get it to you later to like, yeah, you don't have to apologize sure. I'm counterculture to do that for next year's class and explain two folks what what were meaning with that? I think that would be fun really into that would be a I think that's really isn't. I'm a I'm Counter Culture or member of the counterculture.

38:23 I don't know. That's when we'll have to experiment La have to say it a lot of different ways. Okay and figure out what would fit okay, but I think that would be and then we could all wear our t-shirts to the Opera with.

38:45 Member of the counterculture t-shirt. I think we should do that have to tell that too busy without without actually saying that that's what was going on. That's what was happening in our class and then actually and yet there were those moments like Teen Angel where we jumped into the popular culture and brought it in and what we didn't do rap. No. No, we didn't do that. But that's part of what made that class so much fun, and I'm just so grateful to you as a teacher for how how that happened. Well, I'm grateful for you as the Duke and as as an enthusiastic participant it was a real privilege to work with to work with that group at Lindblom send it was so I will say thank you Karen or a few Marsha and

39:45 Thank you for today. And thank you for the whole experience. Okay, I just Echo that bad.

39:57 You don't want to I don't know. What is a know it because she grew up doing I'll sing it but but I will tell you that I was in one Opera and the Opera paid me not to sing which was a very wise choice. But but teenager I'll give you the background of the song. We're not on the air still are we? Oh gosh. Okay, I'll tell you it's about this boy in this girl that I see that fit. He says that fateful night. The car was stalled app on the railroad tracks. I pulled you out and we were safe, but you went running back and Teen Angel then.

40:45 Let the courses Teen Angel, can you hear me Teen Angel? Can you see me? Are you somewhere up above and am I still your own true love you can tell why they paid and anyway, what happened is his girlfriend?

41:07 Runs back to the car and they find her after the train has squish the car and her on the railroad track clutching his high school ring. He went back for the course. I cried the first time I heard it, but it's a very sad be sad song.

41:33 Well, she is Jill de the daughter of Rigoletto was she she died. And so the only song I could think of for a regular letter to sing a song about the teenager. Who is Dad. So it has nothing to do with high school Rings or any except.

41:55 Except that she does Die to Save The Duke. It's a tragic to a very tragic that because her father unwittingly participates in and then discovers and he thinks the body is someone else and when he opens the shop, it's his daughter. And so so he collapses be the father has hired a Hitman to kill the Duke because of the Duke seduced Rick. Are you following this Duke seduced rigoletto's daughter. He deflowered her if you will and so this was rigoletto's Revenge was To Kill The Duke, but it

42:46 Long story short

42:49 She pretends while she doesn't pretend she she offers herself instead of the Duke and she gets killed and Rigoletto realizes too late that he has set himself up for great unhappiness unwittingly. Yeah, it's real sad in the inmost a traditional IRA vs. Soprano has to die at the end. So throw your kind of expecting us was best blessedly quick. Yeah it just because sometimes she's she stabbed she falls down and and then she sits up and sings for two more minutes and then she then she collapses and then one more thing and she said that when she sings for another 2

43:49 So

43:54 So much fun we have with afro, it's just

44:01 Senior when you're welcome.