Eilat To Do

EILAT TO DO

So much to do; so little time. Truth to tell, there wasn't that much to do the Fri. afternoon we were in Eilat. But the “little time?” We all know that, no matter how late Shabbat kicks in, it seems as if there's precious little time left. Of course, if you're at a hotel, and you're not doing the cooking, it doesn't seem quite as frenzied. Once we stocked up on sushi at the Ice Mall for our Shabbat lunch, we headed back “home” to the Astral Seaside. Tina and David got ready for some serious pool lounging. (I should correct an earlier impression that only David was willing to use the pool; Tina did also.) I, however, had another item on my agenda.

For reasons that I don't pretend to understand, the Israeli government does not impose the V.A.T., now at an almost confiscatory 17%, on anything you buy in Eilat. (Sort of like the 3% sales tax zone in NJ.) Needless to say, lots of folks come to this little seashore town waving their credit cards, with high hopes of saving money while they are spending it.

There were a few computer related items I needed, and, wouldn't you know it, there were two (not one, but two) KSP stores in Eilat. Long-suffering readers may remember my thoughts about KSP. They are the folks who import a lot of computer stuff into The Land, so they can charge less than the competition. Just don't buy anything from them that they would have to service if it stopped working (at which point, their command of the English language also stops working).

When we arrived at our hotel the day before, Barbara and I were standing on our little merpeset, admiring the scenic view of the hotel parking lot, when I suddenly realized something. On the gleaming white facade of the big hotel nearest to us was inscribed in two languages the legend, The Rimonim. Isn't that where the KSP store is? Sure enough, the store I needed was around the corner from the hotel about fifty yards from where we were staying. Good to know, in more ways than one – as you will soon see.

Needless to say, Friday afternoon found me heading over there as fast as my rapidly aging legs would carry me. I've been to the two Jerusalem locations numerous times, and there are usually two or three customers ahead of me in the store. So I was not prepared for the pre-Shabbat mob scene in Eilat. As I said, lots of people waving their credit cards, essentially overwhelming the sales staff. When it finally was my turn, I pointed to what I needed (if anybody cares, it was a 2TB WD external hard drive to use as a backup for BigMac – my 27” iMac, purchased second hand). Ze hu! That's all; take my credit card and I'm outa here, saving about 80 shekels on the deal. Plenty of time left in the afternoon to dip my timid body in the unheated hotel pool.

Earlier in the morning, Barbara, my ever-attentive wife, had gone down to the hotel lobby and picked us up a Shabbat key – an old-fashioned room key to use on Shabbat instead of the electronic device ordinarily used – and a sheet of paper announcing the times of services for Shabbat at the Astral Seaside. OK; let's see what happens. Somewhat skeptical, I headed down to where the “beit knesset” was on the lower level, timing my arrival at exactly one minute before the evening davening was supposed to start. Hmm. Nobody here. Let's wait and see.

The room certainly had all the accoutrements of a shul: an ark, presumably holding a torah scroll, a bima on which to place the torah scroll – assuming it ever emerged from the dark recesses of the aron kodesh, shelves of prayer books, rows of chairs for the people who weren't there, even a container for tzedekah, which I noted had one half shekel coin inside. There was also a musty smell. I had plenty of time to locate the source of the problem, a slight drip from a water pipe in front of the room. How long had this minute amount of water been plopping onto the rug, I would not want to speculate. Possibly quite a while, given the amount of foot traffic in and out of the beit knesset. Where was Alon-with-a-smile-and-a-song when we needed him? Probably back in Ma'ale Adumim, turning people's water valves on and off.

After about ten minutes of enforced solitude, my reveries were interrupted by the arrival of an Israeli woman, dressed for Shabbat. Was there an ezrat nashim, a women's section? she inquired. A women's section? There's not even a men's section; there's nobody here. Sit wherever you like; it's fine by me. I continued perusing my siddur; she did whatever she was going to do. This went on for a few minutes until a second guy showed up. As the de facto usher and gabbai, I indicated that he had his choice of about thirty seats, not counting the section in which our Israeli woman was sitting – in case he was fastidious about such matters. Finally, another Anglo arrived with glad tidings. There is a minyan at – you guessed it – The Rimonim. Clutching my handy-dandy Koren siddur, I accompanied the two guys across the parking lot to the bigger hotel. The doorman told us where to go, and we went down a long corridor, past the exercise room, down a flight of stairs to a beit knesset. You could hear the sounds of Mizrachi davening from a distance. Yes! There were about thirty or forty Sephardim (I'm guessing they came to Eilat with their families as part of a group). That's more like it. The little hotel shul was even more crowded than the KSP store! They had just gotten started; still we were done just in time to get back to our hotel for dinner.

There would, of course, be a minyan in The Rimonim the following morning. I was also given to understand that I could even find an Ashkenazic minyan at another hotel a little farther away – exact location and commencement time uncertain. But even if I figured out the details, would there be enough time – at either minyan – to finish and get back in time for breakfast? Yes, breakfast on Shabbat does end later than the rest of the week, but when the food is gone, it's gone. Maybe I should just daven by myself in our room. It's crazy to have to adjust your davening time around the hotel meal schedule instead of the other way around; but we were by ourselves, so there was nothing much we could do – except not eat.

Shabbat was relaxing, although hardly newsworthy. There wasn't much to do besides eat, rest, do the requisite amount of praying, sit by the pool, and take several walks up and down the promenade, trying to vary our itinerary slightly each time. One thing I did notice: how many of the shops were closed over Shabbat. Unless you're serving food, you're not going to need or get a certificate of kashrut from the rabbinate that you're shomer Shabbat. There's no economic benefit to doing so in an area chocked full of tourists to whom Saturday is shopping day. If your store is closed on Shabbat, it's because it's important to you. Ze hu.

Shabbat was over, and now it was our last chance for a family shopping spree. But first, dinner. The dining room was closed at the Seaside, so the nice folks at Astral gave us a voucher for a cab to one of their sister hotels, which we could have walked to. We were quick to notice that this Astral was a tad classier than the one we were staying in. The food was about the same.

Then it was off in the opposite direction to another mall, our last opportunity to save 17% on all the money we could spend. Natania had not been able to come, so she sent her shopping list along instead. Sometimes you get lucky. The Gap store in the Mamilla mall in Jerusalem often has stuff on sale, but only in anorexic sizes. In Eilat, they actually had jeans for normal shaped people....on sale! So Barbara got a few pair for our daughter, while we all wandered around the store. There were lots more places to inspect, but it was a foregone conclusion that David and I would spend some quality time together at the iDigital store. That's where Apple products are sold in The Land. I was able to show him an exact replica of BigMac, ask a few questions of the store personnel, and pick up something I needed – saving the 17%. Looking at the prices here and elsewhere, it occurred to me that if you were planning to drop a bundle on a big ticket item or a lot of small ticket ones, you would actually save money by spending the day traveling back and forth to this resort town. I wonder how many Israelis actually do this?

There was one thing more we simply had to do. It would have been impolite, even downright rude, to leave Eilat without having a night out on the town. David went back to the hotel, and Barbara, Tina, and I headed off to The Three Monkeys, one of establishments along the promenade in which you can order a drink or two, enjoy the balmy breezes coming from the Gulf of Eilat, people-watch to your heart's content, and feel appropriately decadent. The next morning, the two “youngsters” would catch an early flight back to Tel Aviv and head back to the hum-drum world of business. Barbara and I would spend the morning examining another facet of the aquatic world that makes this little corner of the gulf so special.

Thanks, Eilat

THANKS, EILAT

I've always wondered what it would be like to stay at a “classy” hotel, which I define as a place where someone takes your luggage when you get there and brings it up to your room for you, and the accommodations are so tasteful that you never want to leave. To be fair, you have to be willing to dip into your cash reserve to afford such luxury. If you're not (and I'm not called Frugal Fred for nothing), you have to lower your standards a teensy-weensy bit. One thing about Eilat, they have a full range of hotels from one-step-up-from-Motel-6 to some p-r-e-t-t-y extravagant establishments.

The Astral Seaside is “my kind of place,” not the lap of luxury we could easily become accustomed to, but what we can reasonably expect on our budget. Our room was large enough to move around in, plus a little balcony – overlooking the parking lot. By walking to the end of the corridor from our room, you’d get to the swimming pool, which, it being off-season, was open until about 4PM. with a life-guard on duty. Not a stressful job this time of the year. The pool was not heated, and the next afternoon when we went to use it, only David was tough enough (or crazy enough) to go for a swim. Having brought my bathing suit, I was determined at least to get wet, and I achieved my goal – to wade from one end of the pool to the ladder on the other end, hastily emerging into the warm, mid-day sun.

But first things first. Didn't I say it was just about time for dinner when we arrived? Let's get cracking! If you had any question at all, this is not the kind of establishment in which you need to “dress” for the evening meal. Just show up at the dining room in anything more formal than a bathing suit, and you're in. And so we showed up, along with everybody else who was staying at the hotel. I guess everybody got the same deal, half-board, meaning you get breakfast and dinner included in the tab. So everybody picked out a table and then sort of weaved his way through the several food tables, creating an individual, eclectic mix of dishes, hot and cold. It wasn't the insane over-abundance we experienced a year and a half before on our cruise to Greece and the chef probably will not be lured away to join the staff of the David Citadel in Jerusalem, but, all-in-all, the food was OK. No complaints.

I had wondered: who hangs out at a hotel like this, as opposed to some of the fancier places? Tourists? Locals? The kitchen is, of course, kosher. Would they be getting a religious crowd? So I made it a point to eyeball the crowd as they came and went and listen to the languages that were being spoken. Not much English. No Russian, no French. Lots of Ivrit. Looking around, I had the sense that I was looking at what has been called “Middle Israel,” the people who don't live in either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, who are not really religious but would not consider themselves hilloni (secular) either; who are neither part of the Tel Aviv left nor the Gush Etzion right. In America they might be described as “the silent majority,” but I have rarely met an Israeli whom I would consider quiet, let alone “silent.” I was also curious how many of these guys might show up for a minyan Fri. evening, but that I would find out the next evening.

Tina and David had already taken a walk in the afternoon and were more than content to hang out in their room after dinner. So Barbara and I ventured forth to take an evening stroll along the promenade, along with a sizable crowd of like-minded people. There's something about being in a place where essentially everyone is on vacation. There is, of course, another Eilat, the place where the “locals” live and work, but the area by the beach is definitely for the folks in the hotels. At some point along the way, my “I'm on vacation, might as well start enjoying myself,” mode must have kicked in. Maybe it's a subliminal feeling that becomes contagious in a large crowd. We walked along the promenade with the gulf on one side and a mix of shops, restaurants, and hotels that, once you cross the overpass over the lagoon, become increasingly “tony.” One of the restaurants had a solo saxophone player sitting on an outdoor podium, playing surprisingly good jazz, the sound of which contributed to a feeling of total and absolute relaxation. It was a pleasant evening after a warm day. No stress, no worries – except for the off chance that we might oversleep and miss breakfast the next morning.

In case you had the slightest doubt, none of us did that. The four of us had, in essence, one day to spend sightseeing – or whatever you want to call it – together, and we were going to make the most of it. By unanimous vote, we agreed to head off to the Coral World Underwater Observatory and Aquarium, a ten minute cab ride from our hotel. The main attraction there is the observatory, about three hundred feet off-shore, which gives you a wonderful panoramic view of what's swimming fifteen feet down in the Gulf of Eilat. It's kind of like being inside an aquarium looking out, except that the fish and whatever else hangs out down there are not looking in. They're just doing their thing, swimming back and forth in the little area they've staked out for themselves. If you've ever spent considerable time in front of someone's tropical fish tank, just watching some guppies go from one end of the tank to the other over and over again, you know the hypnotic effect it can have on you. We must have spent an hour down there, and by the time we finished looking at the other exhibits, shark feeding and the like, the morning was over, and it was on to our next scheduled stop.

If you have been playing close attention and thinking ahead, you might have anticipated our dilemma. I mentioned that we had half board at the hotel, breakfast and dinner included. So what about lunch? Not a problem on Friday; plenty of places to go and get a bite. But what about lunch on Shabbat? (Yeah, what about lunch on Shabbat???) Like most hotels in the area, The Astral Seaside has a solution. They provide for those who are interested an elaborate Shabbat meal – at 200 shekels per. That seemed a bit steep. The lady from Zion Tours, sizing up our level of frugality, had a more economical solution. Do what any self-respecting Israeli would do. Bring a bag with you to breakfast Shabbat morning and haul away enough vittles for a decent lunch. (There is a sign saying something to the effect that guests may may not remove food from the dining area; but of course that only applies to the other guests....) There were lots of reasons why that scheme wasn't going to work, not least of which was that the idea of having rolls and hard-boiled eggs for my Shabbat lunch seemed excessively Spartan. Vat to doooooo?

You know already that I would come up with an idea, dazzling in its simplicity and practicality, to save the day. If one is standing in the middle of an ocean-full of finny denizens, what's the obvious thing to think of? That's right: SUSHI!!!!!!!!!! There are several establishments in Eilat that prepare kosher sushi. Why don't we splurge and spend a hundred or a hundred and fifty shekels in total and get enough for a decent lunch for the four of us? We have a refrigerator in each room, so there'd be no problem in storing it overnight; we can get some drinks; I brought some grape juice from home; OK, we'll “borrow” a few rolls from the hotel, and we'll be set. Great idea! So off we went to Sushi Mushi (or was it Mushi Sushi?), a cab ride away in the opposite direction.

We were correct in our assumption that any self-respecting cabbie in town would be able to get us to any place in the tourist area. Atta machir et haMushi Sushi (or Sushi Mushi)? Of course he knew where it was. And so we were off without knowing it to that wonder-of-wonders, Eilat's own Ice Mall.

Israel has achieved a sufficient level of affluence that it can start creating things that are completely zany. For quite a while, there has been an ice skating rink in Metula, all the way up north. Now all the way down south in Eilat there is a large rink smack dab in the middle of a mall – with the stores on several oval shaped levels around it. (Admittedly, it's not as way out as, say, the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho; still, it's high up on my personal outré scale.) Midday Friday, there were a few people strutting their stuff on the ice when we came in. Shortly thereafter, the music started and the folks were treated to a skating exhibition. Most everybody stopped to watch. I, on the other hand, had my priorities straight. Sushi! And while our order was being constructed, off to one of the several other eateries for a bite of lunch. Why watch, when you can eat!

Shabbat was still hours and hours away, but I could relax and take a deep breath. If nothing else, we would have what to eat. Now about that minyan Friday night........

On The Road To Eilat

ON THE ROAD TO EILAT

(Before I forget, I've been asked to announce that the long-awaited episodes of Natania's tales of humor and woe can be found at http://mylifeisacosmicjoke.blogspot.co.il/.)

At the end of the last episode, we had averted a domestic catastrophe. Our apartment here in Ma'ale Adumim would not be turned into a swimming pool, a car wash, a mikvah, or a lake. The outfit that our insurance company engaged to deal with our broken water pipe was set to come back to replace the floor and wall tiles they had destroyed and fix the gaping hole in the wall they had dug through. On a good day, they might even do some painting.

To give them credit, they were all set to do the fixing they had promised. Except for one except. Barbara, in putting up a plastic sheet in the bathtub so we could use the shower, noticed that there was a small drip coming right before the bathtub faucets. Nothing to be alarmed about; but there was no point to re-tiling the wall and sealing in this dripping pipe. Let Alon-with-a-smile-and-a-song take a few minutes (that's all it would take) to fix the problem first and then get on with it. Our difficulty was explaining this to the contractor. They kept calling us up to make an appointment to fix the tiles. And Barbara kept telling them, No you have to fix the leak first. This went on for several days, all the while we walked over the trench in the floor on the way to the bathroom. I looked at it this way: if we were on an archaeological dig or a safari, we would have been more than content with our lodgings. At least we didn't have to go out in the hall or to a neighbor's to go to the loo. And.......Barbara and I would be going to Eilat in a few days.

The jaunt down to Eilat was Tina's idea. Why don't we all do something together as a family? The original idea was for the five of us, me, Barbara, Tina, David, and Natania, to take a few days and head off to Eilat. Because Tina and David are working (someone has to!), they opted for a long weekend, from Thursday to Sunday morning. OK, but what about Natania? The weekend we decided on was supposed to coincide with a break in her classes. Sad to say, she mis-read her schedule and then one of her teachers rescheduled a final exam; so in the end, she wound up staying home, along with Cookie and Moby, our two Tonkinese cats.

The only real obstacle to this plan was me. There is often someone in a family who has to be overly concerned with the family's finances. My self-assigned task is to assume that any planned trip or excursion is too expensive and that we can't afford it; or that we should spend the money on something more mundane, like a coffee table. It is Barbara's responsibility to convince me otherwise. She is well schooled in the art of persuasion. Her gambit this time was to consider this vacation a combination Chanukah, wedding anniversary, her birthday, and my birthday present. Well, if you put it that way......

Who would have known that this would be a perfect time to get away and leave our worries – our broken wall and torn up floor – behind? The plan was as follows: Tina and David would take an El Al flight from the old terminal one at Ben Gurion Airport, arriving in Eilat in the early afternoon. (Travel time about one hour.) Barbara and I would take the 10 o'clock bus from the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem, which would get down there around 3PM.

There is some information that many people know, but no one thinks to share with you. For example: we got to the bus station about half an hour early. Normally for an inter-city Egged bus, you can buy your tickets when you get on. But we figured we have plenty of time, we might as well go to the ticket booths and buy them in advance. So we waited our turn, and Barbara asked the clerk for two tickets to Eilat on the 10AM bus. “Ein makom,” was his reply. No more room on the bus. When, pray tell, would there be makom? The 5PM bus. Being the helpful sort, he suggested we travel first to another city, say Tel Aviv or Beersheba, where there would be makom on a bus to Eilat. To give you a sense of what was happening, you need to understand that at this time of the morning there was only one ticket booth open. You can probably figure out on your own that there was a long and growing line behind us. And you can assume, if you know anything about the temperament of the average Israeli, that some or most of them were quite impatient. Someone – that's us – was holding up the works. We probably would have been better off going down to Beersheba, which is on the way. But the helpful clerk reserved us two seats on a bus leaving Tel Aviv at about 1PM. He also took the trouble to book us two seats going back to Jerusalem from Eilat on Sunday in the early afternoon. We had made no friends by taking so long, but we did have our seats. We scampered off the line, heading for the bus to Tel Aviv. The thing is that when we related this incident later on, a number of people seemed to know that you have to reserve your seats in advance if you're going to Eilat. Well, next time we'll know too.

Now it could have been a lot worse. We could have wound up getting to Eilat the next day, Friday – just in time for Shabbat – in which case there wouldn't have been much point in going. We could have wound up not getting there at all. As it turned out, we would arrive Thursday in time for dinner. It just meant a long day traveling for us and, horror of horrors, having to spend an hour and a half in the “new” bus station in Tel Aviv – the one we never, ever want go to, if we have a choice.

Natania read somewhere recently that the “architect” (I use the term loosely) who designed this nightmare, this stain on the city's reputation, had just died, and there's this thing about not speaking badly about the deceased. I just hope for his sake that his coffin is more accommodating than the bus station he designed for the rest of us. At least it must be harder to get lost in. We were able to find some kosher food there (in the depot, not the coffin), and we whiled away the hour and a half until departure time. We did find out when we finally boarded the bus that the seats actually are reserved, as they are on an airplane. A nice young chayelet told us we were sitting in hers; ours, we discovered, were farther back. Everyone scrambled on board, and finally we were off to Eilat.

If you're going to go by bus, even though it's longer, the route from Tel Aviv is a lot more scenic. The bus heads south and then zig-zags its way through the hills down to Beersheba before the road merges with route 90, the coastal road which goes from Mount Hermon down to Eilat. (It's sort of like The Garden State Parkway, which goes from the New York border all the way down to Cape May.) Because of all the late rain, the ground was a sea of green even south of Beersheba, the traditional entrance into the Negev, where grass is traditionally scarcer than a viable peace plan. The other thing I noticed was how much of this turf the Bedouins were squatting on. Let's just say that right now that this land-grab is a small elephant in a room. But the elephant is getting bigger and bigger, and, goodness knows, the room isn't.

Many hours, a few stops along the way to pick up more passengers, and one pit stop later, our bus pulled into the small, unprepossessing depot in the downtown center of Eilat. I had never been down to this port, which Ben Gurion had the good sense to capture prior to the ceasefire in 1948. Barbara had been there with her mother in the early 1970's, when nothing much was happening there. Things were a lot different last year when she stayed overnight with a tour group going to Petra (Jordan is one of the many countries that I don't “do.”) Tina gets to do a lot of traveling for her job, all over Europe and such, but there are no medical conferences schedules for Eilat (only auto races and chamber music festivals), so neither she nor David had been there either. When they got off their plane, they simply walked to our hotel, about five or ten minutes away. The bus depot is a little bit farther away, so we needed a taxi (and there are lots of them in Eilat!) to get us there.

Why did we stay at the Astral Seaside, one of a small chain of hotels in Eilat (they didn't build them; they took over a number of hotels from different chains, so each one was different). Barbara had stayed at another Astral on the way to Petra and was duly impressed with the food. So she was amenable to the suggestion by someone at Zion Tours (a highly recommended outfit, by the way) that the Seaside would be a good option, not too pricey and, as its name suggests, right by the beach. Like most or all of the hotels down in this resort town, the kitchen was suitably kosher. Tina and David, as I said, had arrived hours before and were just “chilling,” having taking a stroll along the beachfront. We, to our great relief, were just in time for dinner. Our vacation had officially begun, and none too soon.

Raindrops Were Falling on Our Heads

RAINDROPS WERE FALLING ON OUR HEADS

Everyone is familiar with adages that seem old but are of recent vintage – like “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” Another one is “Be careful what you wish for............” The thing about these truisms is that sometimes they are all-too-true. Here's a case in point.

Our friend Varda was spending a Shabbat with us. It wasn't just any old Shabbat; it was the day before Purim most everywhere (two days before Shushan Purim in Jerusalem, just down the road). It was midway in the morning. I had come home from shul and was sitting in our living room with my buddy Michael, making kiddush with some Jack Daniels, herring, and a cup of instant coffee – which we do most every Shabbat (and why not?). Barbara and Varda were upstairs, as was Natania. And Barbara was regaling Varda with our travails as apartment owners. More specifically, she was describing the on-going saga of our merpeset.

A merpeset, which can either be a porch or a balcony, is a standard feature of many Israel apartments. We in fact have several, but the one under discussion is the large one off our dining room, the one with the view you could die for of the hills leading to Jerusalem. This merpeset is right above a bedroom, not as you would expect, from the apartment below us, but part of an apartment in the adjacent building.

The thing is, that every time we have a decent rainfall here in Ma'ale Adumim, water from our merpeset leaks into this bedroom. Now that we've been here awhile, we've learned that this particular problem is quite common in our building block. We're also convinced that the previous owners of our apartment knew about it and chose not to fix it. The first winter we were here, we got an angry phone call from Carmi, the lady who owns the adjacent apartment and rents it out to a tenant. When were we going to fix the leak? No doubt, she had heard that “rich” Americans (in The Land, it is assumed that all Americans are wealthy) had moved in, and she figured that if she called us and screamed, she would get further than she had with the previous guy. Maybe we aren't rich, but we are reasonably responsible, so when the rainy season was over, we called up our local handyman and had him come over and do some major re-grouting. We even had him go down to the apartment in question and patch up the paint where the water had seeped in.

Then we waited and waited. We wouldn't know until the next rainy season whether what we had done was going to work. Well, the rains did come the following winter and not a peep from either the tenant or Carmi. Yesssssssssss!!!!!! No more worries! So we thought. Months later, Carmi called and started screaming again. When were we going to fix the leak? There was one thing we hadn't counted on. Carmi's tenant couldn't stand her, wouldn't talk to her, or let her in the apartment. This may sound crazy, but the tenant would rather have rain drops falling on her head than complain to her about the problem.

We upped the ante and called in a roofer who had experience dealing with leaks. He did a better job of sealing the places where water might seep in. He changed the drain. Same thing all over again. It's still leaking. I'm taking you to court. A few months ago, we got the name of a guy who specializes in leaks. He came and ran around with an infra-red camera, taking pictures. Even before he prepared a written report, he was ready to start ripping up our porch and re-doing it. Fine, except he wanted an amount that was more than we bring in each month. There seems to be a special rate for rich Americans. It's called an arm and a leg.

Finally, we got one more recommendation, an American named Dan. He came over and sized up the situation. He looked at the other guy's report and said it was spot-on – except for what he was going to charge us. So Dan was hired and will be coming in about a month. He will rip up the tile floor and deal with the problem, laying new tiles (which we will buying) and replacing the entire drainage system. He'll also do the same for the small merpeset off our bedroom. It won't be cheap, but it won't be highway robbery either.

In a nutshell, that's what my wife was explaining to Varda. She lamented that we'd much rather use that money to replace the bathroom (off our bedroom), the one the geniuses who had the apartment ahead of us removed (rather than deal with the leaky pipes there), and maybe redo the main bathroom. But that, she said, would have to wait – until we had a leak.

End of conversation. Then Varda decided to take a quick shower before lunch. You may remember that Michael and I were relaxing in the living room, nibbling our herring and sipping our Jack Daniels. So we had ringside seats to what happened next. We watched in awe and then in horror as water started coming down through the big fluorescent fixture in our kitchen, which fortunately was not on over Shabbat. I don't mean a trickle or a sprinkle. We're talking here about carwash strength, enough to take a shower and shampoo your hair; in fact, a flood. Boy, did we have Barbara's leak big-time! We figured out pretty quickly that a pipe upstairs had burst.

We have three water valves in a little box of their own in our kitchen. We weren't sure which one went to where, but we turned them all off. Eventually the water subsided on its own. Mercifully, we did not need a raven, a dove, or a rowboat. Just a few buckets to collect as much water as we could.

Fortunately for us, we were invited out to Ron and Esther's for lunch. They offered us some great advise. Before you do anything else, call up your insurance company; let them handle it. There wasn't much we were going to do over Shabbat as far as calling anybody. The one thing we were able to do was play with the valves for the water. We figured out by trial and error that if we kept one of them on, we did have water on our lower floor. We weren't about to mess with anything on the top floor; let leaky pipes alone. Shabbat would soon be over; time for the Megillah reading and frantic calls to our insurance company. Let's see if their emergency number would be of any use!

Did I mention that on Sunday, Purim day, we were set to host our usual Purim meal? Well, we were. Every year, we have the same crew over: Ron and Esther (and Sara), Michael and Tehilla (and Yisrael), and another couple (with or without their son and his girlfriend). We make most of the meal and our friends provide the rest. As long as we had some running water in the kitchen, I figured we would be OK. So I called everyone and said we were on (by this time, apparently everyone we knew in Ma'ale Adumim was aware of our plight). First thing, though, Barbara wanted to clean up the kitchen before we started cooking. That involved lots of mopping, cleaning behind the refrigerator, the whole ball of wax. Finally, finally, it was time for me to start cooking; and then the inevitable happened. No more water. Not a drop. It turns out that what we had been doing, unbeknownst to us, was using up the supply of water stored in our dood shemesh, the water tank-solar heater that everybody in Israel has. (Now that I think of it, I don't know which valve controls the water supply going into the dood shemesh, but we must have turned that off as well.) Once the dood was empty, we were as dry as a county in the Bible Belt.

No water. Hard to cook that way. More phone calls. Ron and Esther were kind enough to a) loan us the use of their kitchen, b) host the Purim seudah at their house, and c) drive over and pick up me and all the food and everything else I needed to prepare the meal. Not to mention d) let me take a shower at their place afterwards.

By this time, at least one person out there must be wondering what the menu was, and usually I would remember what I had prepared. You'll have to let me slide this one time; I was somewhat distracted.

Most of you, however, are probably wondering what was happening with our water – or lack thereof. We were able to reach our insurance company, and Goldfoos was as as good as gold. With more than a little effort on their part, they arranged for a plumber to show up at our door on Monday. In walked Alon, the Israeli plumber, (which prompts me to begin singing, as if on cue, Alone, alone with a smile and a song..... which as you all know was written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed for the Marx Bros movie “A Night at the Opera,” where it was sung by Kitty Carlyle and Allan Jones – but I digress) with his Arab assistant, named – I kid you not – Osama.

Alon-with-a-smile-and-a-song is one of those guys who projects a demeanor of complete self-confidence – never fear, I am here. As those of us with a little life experience are aware, the fact that someone appears self-confident does not mean that he knows what he doing. Our Alon actually is a qualified plumber, but here he was a tad too sure of himself. The first thing he did when he came in was turn our water valves back on and then go upstairs to see what the problem was.

Would you be surprised in the least if I told you that within a few minutes we had a repeat of Niagara Falls in our kitchen? But this time, we had a witness – Osama. Alon had sent him down to get something-or-other from the truck, and the young Arab walked past our kitchen as the water began to flow. I imagine that the look of awe and horror on his face mirrored the expression on my face several days before. “ALON..........” Within seconds, our self-assured plumber was down the stairs to get a first-hand look as water gushed through our light fixture. Within seconds, those water valves were back to an off position.

I stayed downstairs to keep out of the way; but not so far that I couldn't hear the racket upstairs. Alon-with-a-smile-and-a-song was conducting a two-phase assault to reach the offending pipe. The first phase involved breaking through the wall that separates our bedroom from the pipes behind our bathtub. That wall, like all the walls inside and outside, is tromi, pre-poured concrete – not the easiest thing to demolish. Nor the quietest. The second phase involved tearing up a row of tiles in our bedroom and hallway in front of the bathroom. The result: a gaping hole in our wall and a trench a few feet long on the floor. However, they did find the offending pipe and do the necessary surgery. Water would again flow – through the proper channels this time – in the Casden household. Keep the bathtub wall dry for twenty-four hours. Alon and Osama would return within a few days to mend the damage they had created in their search and rescue mission.

Anyone who knows Israel realizes that it wouldn't be that simple........

The Gondoliers #3

AWESOME TALENTS AND VULGAR FRACTIONS

As I have mentioned more than once, when rehearsals begin for a new Encore! Production (may there be many more!), those of us in the chorus always start out by learning our parts without the soloists. We get a lot done that way, but we are often left wondering for weeks or months who the principal performers are going to be. Even knowing their names doesn't always help if we haven't a clue who they are.

There are roles for – count 'em – nine principal soloists in The Gondoliers, taking the work out of the talent range of most theatrical companies. Three of the performers in our production were veterans of the company, including Aviella, she of the enchanting voice, the sunny disposition, and Romeo. The other six? We would get to meet them one by one, although rumors of their ability might proceed their actual sighting. For example, one of the women in the chorus mentioned a tiny soprano with an extraordinary voice who had appeared at their latest rehearsal. Ah, she must be taking the part of Cassilda; that's the only other soprano part besides Gianetta, and Aviella is doing that. Sure enough, on cue, Maria showed up several weeks later, probably about one-third the size of some legendary Wagnerian sopranos of the past but with a voice out of proportion to her petite stature.

I remember vividly the day when a number of us male choristers showed up for rehearsal a few minutes early, in time to hear Rafi singing one of the tenor solos and for our jaws to drop in unison. I waited patiently until set-painting on Friday to interrogate Robert Binder, as he sat at his sewing machine, preparing someone's costume. Who's that guy, and where did you find him? Turns out he found Rob. The son of a chazan in Leeds, this remarkably gifted young man had made aliyah on his own, recently finished the army, and was singing on the streets of Tel Aviv. He had called RB and asked for an audition. I asked Rob exactly how many bars Rafi had to sing before they tackled him, gave him a score and rehearsal schedule, and told him he was hired. My guess would be between four and six notes.

Jay, with his stentorian bass-baritone, absolutely perfect as the Grand Inquisitor, was found via RB's extensive network of friends and talent scouts. He is a conductor, a voice teacher, a composer, a writer about things operatic, and when he has nothing else to do, treks in Northeast Albania. (I couldn't and wouldn't make that up.) By way of contrast, Michael, who works in the legal profession by day and had previously led a band that played at simchas, never before appeared on stage. How did Rob know in advance that, as the comic Duke of Plaza-Toro, he would bring down the house as he trod ever so lightly through I am a courtier, grave and serious? How does a swallow know anything about Capistrano?

Because of Encore!'s growing reputation for the best in English-speaking theater, it became possible to pluck talent from JAMD (Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance). Hence the appearances of Hanan (as Luiz, the drummer boy who winds up as king), who aspires to be be the chief hazan of the IDF, the aforementioned Maria, and Maya, the other principal contadine opposite Aviella.

All of these wonderfully gifted soloists, including returnees Daniel and Claire, would be introduced in my imaginary screenplay (the one I “created” in the previous article), probably as they made their appearances one by one at rehearsals. If one were to make a real live documentary of an Encore! production, a good way to do it would be to select one number from the show and film it, from the first rehearsal with the chorus fumbling through, then mastering the music and movements that are essential to any G&S performance, later rehearsing with the orchestra, up to an actual performance, with everyone is costume and stage makeup. Such a film might give a glimpse of what those of us in the cast already were aware, that Encore! rehearsals are themselves the best show in town, but that's another story.

But in my make-believe scenario, the performance would be filmed from the vantage point of the chorus, from the back of the stage when we were performing or from the wings when we were waiting to go on. Unlike My Fair Lady, when we were rarely on-stage and were often busy changing our costumes, here we got to see a lot of theatrical magic as well as a remarkable level of consistency each of the six (alas, only six) performances. Which brings me to a series of questions I had as I watched and participated in the production. How did I, with my legitimate yet modest talent, get to be on stage with such extremely gifted performers? Was I only dreaming, or had I arrived in musical heaven? Ultimately, I was asking myself how was it possible for this production to be so close to perfection, given its provenance in “community theater?”

This last question got somewhat revised last week, several weeks after the sets for the Encore! production were struck for the last time. I was able to find a competing version of The Gondoliers that I could download (and wouldn't disappear like other versions on Youtube), one of a series of G&S performances that were produced for British television. My revised question goes something like: how is it possible for a theater company in Israel (of all places!) with a very limited budget to do a better job with something so quintessentially British than an English TV production? They have a lot more money to spend. They should have a bigger and better talent base. They ought to have an almost proprietary sense of what to do and how to do it. So why is the British version so mired in mediocrity as opposed to the scintillating performance that 1800 patrons – give or take – got to witness at the Hirsch Theatre in downtown Jerusalem?

Some of it I simply can't figure out. The performers that RB assembled are at least as talented – and sometimes clearly superior to their British counterparts. That shouldn't be, but it's true. Six of the nine main roles are for characters in their twenties, and in the Hirsch Theatre production they actually were that young. (Hint to British production crews, whoever and wherever you are: if you're photographing the future Queen of Barataria, who “at twenty-one is excelled by none,” i.e., the most beautiful young lady in the land, and your performer is in fact closer to thirty-five, nor is she as attractive and ingenue-ish as our tiny Maria – then reconsider all those close-ups of your bored-looking prima donna.) For the life of me, I can't imagine why our rivals could not find in the British theater world a bass-baritone who could actually sing the role of the Grand Inquisitor – instead of reciting it à la Professor Higgins – or come up with a comic actor energetic enough to bring a bit of brio to the role of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.

But there's something else. The world of G&S is not only topsy-turvy, but in constant motion as well. If you're going to go onstage in one of their roles, be prepared for some high-stepping and cavorting. We're not doing Madame Butterfly here! You can't just stand there like a statue and trust your vocal pyrotechnics will carry the day. Not a chance. Also, if you're given a line or two to recite that's supposed to be funny, don't declaim it as if it were one of Cicero's orations against Cataline (O tempora, O mores). Finally, for the director, feeling free to ignore or edit the script is not, generally speaking, not a good idea – unless, that is, you have a better theatrical mind than William Schwenck Gilbert.

There were a few things in the British production that got me to start yelling choice expressions at my computer screen (as I'm working on my new pre-owned iMac with a 27” monitor, that's a lot of yelling). For example, it's time for the two gondoliers, Marco and Giuseppe, to choose their brides from among the twenty-four contadines. Being chivalrous, the two of them declare, “As all are young and fair, And amiable besides, We really do not care A pref'rence to declare, A bias to declare would be indelicate...” They will let themselves be blindfolded and “...let impartial Fate Select for us a mate!” Of course, a fix is in, and they're not really blindfolded, or at least they don't stay blindfolded. Surprise, surprise, they will wind up with Tessa and Gianetta, just the very girls they wanted. Everyone on stage can spot the deception. The women are singing, “You can spy, sir! Shut your eye, sir!” And the guys are singing, “You can see, sir! Don't tell me, sir!” With that amount of prompting, everyone in the audience at the Hirsch Theatre, even the legendary Mrs. Cohen in the twelfth row, who doesn't see or hear too good, soon figures out what is going on. But in the British production, Marco and Giuseppe must have missed their cue; they're standing stock still, with their blindfolds firmly in place, posing for their portraits in the National Gallery. A big Bronx cheer for that one.

During the course of the first act, the Grand Inquisitor reveals that one of the two gondoliers – but he's not sure which one – is actually the heir to the throne of Barataria. Until they figure out which one it is, the two of them must rule jointly as the king. As Act I comes to an end, the two of them, along with all the other gondoliers, are setting out for that island kingdom. “Away we go to an island fair, that lies in a Southern sea: We know not where, and we don't much care.......” At the Hirsch Theatre, a long, white ladder is brought out and placed on the stage. The men, in effect, climb into it; the ladder is lifted and transformed into a boat. Then they march off stage, setting out to sea (“.......away, awayyyyyyy!”); the contadines, left behind, sorrowfully wave good-bye to them. It takes a minute, but the audience – except for Mrs. Cohen in the twelfth row who by this time has woken up and is on her way to the Ladies' – figures out what just happened. At every performance, the audience burst into applause, exactly what you want to have happen at the end of an act. In the film version, the two men sidle into a boat that you can't really see. The other gondoliers silently drift away one by one. (Wait a minute, guys! You're going the wrong way; you gotta get in the boat. You're supposed to be going to Barataria along with Marco and Giuseppe. They're going to need you in the second act. If you don't believe me, ask Gilbert. He'll tell you.) The last thing the audience sees before the curtain descends is a shot of one poor shlub, the one who, whenever the gondoliers are on stage, is shown at a table in the café working his knife and fork; he's now finishing his plate of pasta. That'll send the audience out to the lobby abuzz with excitement!

There are many other examples, but I think I've made my point. As Abba Eban said about our Arab neighbors, the directors of this British version of The Gondoliers never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Every time there's a bit of comic dialogue, these guys either cut it completely or found a way to make it not funny. Every time there's a place to do something distinctive, these folks looked the other way. Every Encore! performance, I was in my place at the back of the stage (where I would be anyway in my imaginary screenplay),watching as Maya/Tessa would vehemently twist Daniel/Giuseppe's ear as she reminded him not to forget “You've married me.” Or in Act II, when the women finally arrive in Barataria, as she would take a flying leap into his arms from half-way across the stage. Or rebuke him with heartfelt indignation that “one cannot marry a vulgar fraction” (this after the discovery that three women, Tessa, Gianetta, and Casilda, are married to two men – hence two thirds of a husband per wife). That's what theater is about, a little excitement.

Maybe I should re-refine my question. Is it possible that Messrs. Binder and Salter are the only ones left alive capable of putting on a Gilbert and Sullivan production – with a little style, a little panache, a soupçon of gusto? Will Jerusalem become the G&S capital of the world? Only time will tell.

As for “time,” it became time when our six performances were over and done with. Just in time for three more performances of My Fair Lady, one of them in Givatayim, where our daughter Tina and her charming husband, David, live. As wonderful a show as that is, it was still anti-climactic after the once-in-a-lifetime production of The Gondoliers. It would be wonderful if Encore! could top that one, but I don't see how. Their next venture will be the musical version of the children's story, The Secret Garden, for which my services will not be required. I have other things to do and say, but not about a production that I may not get to see.

The Gondoliers #2

ROMEO MEETS THE PRODIGAL SON

We – the men's chorus, that is – had just finished our song and dance and were heading off stage, leaving behind several of the principal singers to finish the number. I turned and remarked to Jerry, one of the other guys in the chorus, “It doesn't get any better than this,” a sentiment to which he readily agreed. We in the chorus were performing as flawlessly as we could, the level of talent of the principals on stage was beyond anyone's wildest expectations, the music sounded more infectious every time we heard it, everything about the production was first-rate, and the audience – a full house on that Saturday night – was justifiably enthusiastic. So we weren't just engaging in idle chatter. This may have been the best production of The Gondoliers anywhere on the planet in half a century.

I often try to imagine how things that happen in front of my eyes would look if they were in a movie. If I were going to consider my experience with this production and then create an imaginary version of it for the silver screen – or someone's laptop – I would start with this very conversation with Jerry, and then flash all the way back to an early rehearsal, beginning with a close-up shot of a pair of hands clutching some small sheets of paper. It would, in fact, be the self-same Jerry holding his crib sheets. Jerry has an excellent voice, but he'd be the first to tell you that cannot read music. So what he does when he gets his copy of the score is to copy out our parts onto palm-sized pieces of paper, which over the course of several weeks he commits to memory. Some of you may have noticed that if you remember the words of a song, it's easier to remember the melody; and, likewise, if you know how the tune goes, it's usually easier to think of the words. But what can you do if the baritone part for our entrance on stage in act I goes something like this?

Solo by Antonio: For the merriest fellows are we......

Us: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la la la la la, Tra la la la.......

Antonio: That ply on the emerald sea........

Us: Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la la la la, Tra la la la......

Antonio: With loving and laughing, And quipping and quaffing We're happy as happy can be....

Us: Tra la.....

Antonio: With loving and laughing, And quipping and quaffing, We're happy as happy can be......

Us: Tra la la la la la la la, Tra la la la, Tra la la la, Tra la la la la la la la,Tra la, tra la, la la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la la, la la, la la, la la, la la, la la, la la, la la, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la, Tra la!

How would having the “words” written on crib sheets or stone tablets, for that matter, be of any use to anyone? That's the first thing I thought of when we started rehearsing this opening number: Now what is Jerry going to do with that? Somehow he managed. He even did his mini-solo, But what of us, who one and all adore you? Have pity on our passion, we implore you! with suitable aplomb. I always say, when there's a will, there's a way.

There are two other vignettes that I would certainly want to insert somewhere, somehow into my virtual screenplay. The first took place as I was sitting one evening on the Light Rail on my way to rehearsal. (When the entire chorus was rehearsing together, I would get a ride from and to Ma'ale Adumim with Helen, another cast member, and her husband, who functioned as chauffeur. When only the men were scheduled, I was on my own to shlepp back and forth.) I was sitting, minding my own business, perusing my copy of the score. The train pulled into the station near the Damascus Gate, and I was aware that a group of tourists got on. One of them, a guy about fifty, sat down next to me. Seeing me and my score, he asked in English – in an accent unmistakably German – if I was a conductor. No, I replied, I sing in the chorus of a musical production. What part do you sing? I'm a baritone. To which, he replied, I'm a tenor. What are you performing? Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers. Sullivan? he inquired. He wrote The Prodigal Son. I sang in that, he asserted proudly. I was the prodigal son. Whereupon he whipped out his smartphone and asked if he could take a picture of the cover of my score to show to the folks back home. He had just enough time to do so, producing an askew copy, before I had to get off at the stop by King George St.

I guess we were even. He had not the slightest notion of who W.S. Gilbert was, and I had never heard of The Prodigal Son. Yes Sir Arthur Sullivan had a life apart from his famous collaborator and had written a whole bunch of stuff that is less than well known today, for example, the song, The Lost Chord, and Ivanhoe, the opera he finally got to write. But The Prodigal Son??? I made some discrete inquiries at the rehearsal. It was not part of Paul Salter's repertoire; Moshe, the resident expert on every patter song from our illustrious pair, assured me that no such piece of music was ever composed. Was the man I had met on the Light Rail delusional? Was this piece of music a product of his distorted imagination, a remnant from his own unhappy childhood? In today's high speed world, anything can be ascertained or verified in a matter of moments. Just go to that expert on anything and everything, Wikipedia. It turns out that Sullivan did in fact write the oratorio in question in 1869, a number of years before he encountered the topsy-turvy world of William Schwenk Gilbert. According to our on-line encyclopedia, “The piece continued in the standard choral repertory until World War One.” (That's the war my late Uncle George fought in.) There have been a couple of recordings in the last twenty years, but if you're waiting for a revival of this piece at your favorite local concert hall, I suggest you bring along a few books to read. Maybe a sandwich or two. A pillow wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

So perhaps there have been a handful of performances of this sadly (?!) neglected work in my lifetime. What would be the chancess of meeting somebody – anybody – who could say that he had performed the leading role? And then, what would be the odds of meeting that person on the Light Rail in Jerusalem in the three or four minutes it takes to get from the Damascus Gate to the center of town? If the world got any smaller, you could fit it into that box I'm always trying to be out of.

And then there's Romeo. Not the lead tenor role in the opera that Sullivan didn't write, but the small “rescue dog” that hangs out with our star soprano, Aviella. Because of this little canine's great appreciation for all things G&S, he got to attend a number of our rehearsals. I should note that our Romeo is not one of these white dust-mops that get carried around all over the place. Our Romeo, must have had a terrier wannabe as a recent ancestor. He is perfectly capable of of self-propulsion and usually arrived at our rehearsal space a minute or so before his co-star, signaling her imminent arrival, something that always brings joy to the hearts of those of us assembled.

Why is his presence, let alone his existence, of any interest to the general public, cano-philes or not? The fact is, our little mixed breed is a star-in-the-making. True, he is somewhat limited vocally, but he can trod the boards with the best of them, especially when he senses encouragement from those humans around. You can only imagine his enthusiasm when he senses that it's his turn to go on. There's the scene at the end of act one when the two gondoliers, Marco and Giuseppe, are about to embark on a journey to Barataria, leaving their two new brides, Tessa and Gianetta, behind. The two women see the need to admonish their husbands to behave themselves when they are separated. Both of them, first the soprano and then the mezzo, get to sing, ...And O my darling, O my pet, Whatever else you may forget...... No one had the heart to tell little Romeo that they weren't referring to him.

The Gondoliers #1

BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION

It’s never easy putting on a musical production, but for Encore!, one of the hardest parts of the process is deciding just what show to put on -- which task ultimately falls to Robert Binder, the artistic director, and the maestro, Paul Salter. Choosing an American musical comedy to put on each spring is especially problematic. First of all, both of these gentlemen need to have some affection for the work in question. I’m told that Paul, for example, is less than enthused about anything with Cole Porter’s name affixed to it, and RB shares my aversion to The Sound of Music. There’s also the issue of suitability. For obvious reasons, our company would have a hard time doing Showboat; and something like Cabaret might also prove problematic, for different reasons. That’s just for starters. Will we get enough of an audience, especially when a lot of people won’t go to see either anything they’re not familiar with or have seen too often, which narrows down the field considerably. Then there are all sorts of other matters you might not expect. Has any other company here in The Land done the work in question in the last few years? Encore! has competition -- not in terms of quality -- and there are others out there working the same standard repertoire, even mounting their productions to be in direct competition with ours. Finally, can we even get the rights to do the show here in The Land? Sometimes not. As I said, it’s no picnic in the grass deciding what to do.

Happily, it’s a lot easier with Gilbert and Sullivan. There are no longer any copyright issues, so we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, without worrying about being politically correct or age appropriate or if anybody else has “the rights” to put on the particular show we want to do. The best part is that there is no competition. We’ve had the field all to ourselves for years now. The last time anybody besides Binder-Salter did any G&S here in The Land was somewhere around 1995, and the last time The Gondoliers got performed was about ten years before that.

The plain truth is that The Gondoliers is not exactly a household name in most parts of the civilized world; in fact, when word got out that last spring that this would be Encore!'s next production, I had never heard even one song from the score. Part of “my job” is to do a little publicity for the company, and I thought it might be useful to put together a little promotional piece entitled, “Introducing The Gondoliers,” which could be inserted into the programme for My Fair Lady. Well, I thought to myself, I'd better get cracking. Start surfing the web for information; find a recording or a video of somebody performing it and give a listen. Even though the work is not often performed, there were enough versions – excerpts and the whole score – available on Youtube and the Naxos catalog to get a good idea of what I had been missing in the first seventy years of my life on this planet. Gadzooks, what a lot of great music! After reading a few article, I even figured out what the story line was supposed to be – no mean feat, even for someone like me, growing up with the Marx Brothers.

With the tune of the Cachuca, Fandango, Bolero to inspire me, I put together the following little piece, slightly re-edited from what appeared on page twenty-one of the programme (I know it should be spelled “program,” but sometimes you gotta go with the flow).

There comes a time when a creative team, no matter how productive, can no longer work together. Each one feels his work is undervalued; each one has a different idea of where the two of them should be heading. That about sums up the situation for our heroes, Sir Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert, in 1889. Sullivan was eager to abandon the comic opera format that had made the two of them so successful, wanting instead to write a grand opera based on Scott's classic, Ivanhoe. Gilbert wanted no part of such a project, sensing that his lyrics would be “swamped” by the music. He could not understand Sullivan's intimations that the composer had submerged his talents over the years to showcase the lyricist's rhymed verses.

Fortunately, a compromise was achieved. Sullivan agreed to write his grand opera without Gilbert, and the two of them would collaborate on a comic opera – assuming that they could mutually agree on a subject. Venice, and life therein, somehow appealed to both of them, and the two of them began work on The Gondoliers, which premiered on Dec. 7, 1889. Even though the team collaborated on two additional works, Utopia Ltd. In 1893 (“a modest success”) and The Grand Duke in 1896 (a complete failure), The Gondoliers was, in effect, their curtain call.

And what a finale it was! It was as if they were heeding Alfred P. Doolittle's advice to “Pull out the stopper, let's have a whopper...” Gilbert must have opened up his goody-bag of topsy turvy notions and pulled out every last unused (or slightly used) idea. This is what he came up with for a plot (as best as anyone can describe the story line of anything by G&S):

Marco and Giuseppe are two young, handsome Venetian gondoliers, except that one of them is actually the heir to the island kingdom of Barataria, stolen away in infancy by the Grand Inquisitor himself, who gave the infant to an inebriated gondolier to raise along with his own son. Of course, only one person still alive knows which one is which; and whichever one really is the heir to the throne was actually married in infancy to the equally young Cassilda, daughter of the Duke of Plaza-Toro. As you would expect, none of these young people was made aware of this complication until after both men have taken brides from among the local maidens, and Cassilda has fallen in love with her father's attendant, Luiz (whose mother, Inez, it just happens is the woman who nursed the infant prince and is the only one alive who can identify which gondolier is the rightful heir). Add to this mix the Duke of Plaza-Toro himself, who arrives in Venice, along with the duchess, his daughter, and his attendant, to place the unsuspecting Cassilda upon the throne of Barataria and incidentally repair his rather threadbare finances.

Since no one knows which Gondolier is the rightful heir to the now vacant throne, the Grand Inquisitor decides that both of them should return to Barataria and rule jointly, but without the distraction of their new brides. Both men are firm republicans (with a small “r”) and are determined to treat everyone equally, a situation which affords Gilbert ample time to satirize the British class system and, of course, the monarchy. (“When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.”) By the end of Act II, the rather awkward situation of three women married to two men is sorted out in typical Gilbertian fashion, thus allowing the young people to bring down the curtain properly matched with their hearts' desires, so that the entire company can reprise the enchanting Cachuca, Fandango, Bolero.

It may have been the exotic Mediterranean setting for the work, the fact that the composer finally had a a libretto to work with in which he was truly interested, or just the feeling of exhilaration that he would soon be free from all things Gilbertian, but Sullivan was in rare form. Talk about a truly inspired score, as light-hearted, as fun filled as Gibert's libretto was zany! Melody after melody flowed from his pen, enough music to engage the talents of nine principal singers, each on a (presumably) equal, republican footing.

One can only wonder if the audience leaving the stellar world premiere at the Savoy Theatre that December evening in 1889 had any idea that the string of magical theatrical pieces that G&S had created over a span of almost two decades had come to an end, as all things must. Would those ecstatic theater-goers have been so happy? However, our audiences need not worry. Encore! has a substantial repertoire of G&S and other musicals to present in the coming years and, with your continued attendance and anticipated financial support – and G-d's help – may the music keep on playing!

I have no idea if this little promotional piece got anybody else's juices flowing, but it sure got me revved up, ready to start rehearsing. But that's for next time.