A Great Mass in F Minor, Xena, & "The Garbo of The Skies"

One goal for my time here in Auckland is to take advantage of as many of the varied entertainment and cultural events at as many venues as possible. Some experiences are better than others, but I rarely regret any of them. My parents instilled us with a pre-Nike ethos of "Just-do-it-ness". Rarely, when the setting and the performance mesh something truly extraordinary occurs.
I am in no way an experienced or sophisticated classical music aficianado, so I didn't know what to expect when we went to see a performance by the Auckland Choral and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra of Anton Bruckner's "Great Mass in F Minor". I knew nothing of the composer, the work, or the performers, but it turned out to be one of the most perfect performances I have ever experienced.
The main reason I went was because I wanted to something in the venerable Auckland Town Hall. 

Built in 1911, it is a beautiful neoclassical oval building, dominated bu the magnificent Klais Pipe organ, with its 5,391 pipes ranging in size from 6 mm. to 32 ft..

2008 Klais Organ

Original 1911 configuration

The program opened with three solo organ pieces, Bach's Fantsia and Fugue in G Minor and two brief modern numbers, followed by intermission. Then the organist was joined by the 115 member Choral and the full NZ Symphony Orchestra.

Composed in the 1860's, the Great Mass in F Minor  is not to be confused with the 1968 album by the Electric Prunes Mass in F Minor. My words cannot express the sensation of being enveloped by the gorgeous combination of the great organ with the glorious choral and orchestra in that beautiful jewel of a concert space. I wish you could have been there. The only comparable experience I have had was as a student in 1971, standing room for Rigoletto  at the Vienna Opera.

Other entertainments has been less sublime, but lots of fun nonetheless. For example, the New Zealand International Comedy Festival is a huge annual month-long event with hundreds of shows in Auckland and spreading out to the rest of the country. Shows we caught included: 
1) Dead Cat Bounce-"Ireland’s favourite comedy rock & roll supergroup" - They put on a great, fun show to a small crowd, and I always respect the professionalism of performers that do that. (Like when I saw Helen Reddy in Laughlin, NV----no lie!) Check out their video "Rugby".

2) Rhys Darby -Hilarious, best know in US as Murray in The Flight of The Conchords. He presented "This Way To The Spaceship", his one-man show based on his book about preparations for the upcoming 2012 Mayan apocalypse. 

Rhys

3) 7 Days - A live performance of our favorite NZ TV show, a weekly comedic look at the news- the way we keep up on Kiwi current events.

4) Constantinople- Pretty much impossible to describe product of Fringe festivals; combines history, togas, farce, more togas, jock straps, grapes, bread, and disco. Starting at 11 pm in the basement of the grand Civic Theater, ending with a disco ball and dancing. On describing this event to Sofia the next day, she was shocked and dismayed hear we had in essence been out "clubbing" and did  not even know it.

I also caught other shows (besides Jersey Boys  and Nick Lowe I wrote about in prior postings), such as:
5) The Loons Circus Theatre Company presented "Hanussen- The Palace of Burlesque", a play, circus,and  burlesque tribute to Erik Jan Hanussen (1889-1933), a clairvoyant, mentalist, occultist, and astrologer in Weimar and Nazi Germany; and
6) In The Other Room (or The Vibrator Play) -A play Linnea would enjoy set in 1880 about treatments with a new electrical device to treat female hysteria. 
7) I just saw Auckland born and bred Lucy Lawless (aka: Xena: Warrior Princess) perform a benefit concert at the small King's Arms Tavern. Her version of "G-L-O-R-I-A," the old Them/Van Morrison number, reminded me of my rendition at the Dixon Middle School lo those many years ago (no YouTube video of that exists; don't even look).  

Lucy (on left), rockin' the catsuit

We have seen plenty of movies, and museums too. I want to share a fantastic tale I found at the Museum of Transport and Technology, or MOTAT. In the 1930's, there were three legendary and stunning aviatrices setting flying records around the globe. We all know of Amelia Earhart, and England had Amy Johnson, but I knew nothing about the Kiwi Jean Batten. Her story is fascinating, and I can't imagine it happening in any other era.

In a nutshell, she was captivated by flying as a young girl from Rotorua, and with her mother's support she was determined to make aviation her life. They deceived her father by going to England under the guise of studying music, but Jean immediately began taking flying lesson. After only 20 hours of flight experience she announced her intention to break the record for flying from England to Australia. In 1934, after two failed attempts ended in crashes, she finally did it in under 15 days, beating the Amy Johnson's record by four days. She went on to set several more records over the next few years and become a world-wide celebrity.

Jean with her waxen double at Madame Tussauds in London

Many aspects of Jeans life are remarkable, as I learned from "Jean Batten- The Garbo of the Skies" , an excellent documentary which interweaves archival film with latter day interviews. She was rightly celebrated as an independent woman pioneer, yet her expensive ventures were financed by a series of wealthy fiances, none of which she ended up marrying. She was considered a stunning beauty, as you can see her here posing with her CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) medal.

She and her mother had a complex intertwined relationship and were inseparable.

 

When WWII came, her type of exploits were considered frivolous. Mother and daughter became recluses and disappeared from the limelight, thus earning Jean the title of "The Greta Garbo of the Skies". They were in Jamaica for a while, then the Canary Islands, and eventually southern Spain. After her mother died in 1965, Jean made a bit of a reappearance in England and New Zealand society as an historical oddity.

She dyed her hair and attempted to look the ingenue, but after a while she retreated to her solitary life. In 1982 she was bitten by a dog in Mallorca, refused medical care, and died of infection a few days later. She had been so reclusive and fiercely protective of her privacy that her family did not know where she was, or that she was dead until a few years had passed. She was found buried in a pauper's grave in Spain.

 

The Auckland International airport is named in her honor. Few outside of New Zealand remember her now, which is a shame. Her story would make a great movie.

Jean Batten's Percival Gull displayed at the airport in Auckland