Wie sagt man "pretentious" auf Deutsch?

Anmassung is "pretension," anyway. I have not written much lately, mostly because so much has been going on, and my days have been filled with such debilitating amounts of drama that writing in a blog has not really been in the cards. Okay, really, the drama hasn't been that bad. It's just what generally comes of living in close quarters with a few hundred other musicians. Sooner or later, you think, "If I hear another goddamn singer, I am going to start firebombing." Such was my state of mind, shortly after the last entry. Luckily, my voice teacher recognized that glazed look in my eye when I walked in the door, and suggested that I take the rest of the day off. So I did. A walk up the Schlossberg (this craggy hill in the middle of town with a big clocktower on top), an icecream sundae, and some retail therapy sorted me out a bit, and by Wednesday of last week, I was doing quite well.

Classes are going quite well... I finally got my coaching with Robert Thies, who had had pneumonia for quite some time, and was thus unable to meet before. It went quite well, and we will be performing Rusalka on Monday night's concert. Some of you might be wondering, "Doesn't she ever sing anything else?" the answer would be "Yes, I certainly do. But this is my jam, and it's what worked best with R.T., who is not by nature an operatic pianist (though he is quite a fine pianist in general."

In fact, speaking of new repertoire, I snagged one of the piano students this morning, and we played through a book of Schubert lieder, and I have some great ideas about new repertoire in that vein. Lieder takes a lot more subtlety than most opera, and in that way, it presents a really interesting challenge to me. It uses the finest poetry, and is usually set in a way that honours the text much more than opera does. In this way, it is actually something of a literary adventure.

Today, I spent some time after lunch in the Kunsthaus, Graz's very own modern art gallery. I must say that the architecture of the building was the most interesting part of the visit. The art inside was "minimalist" and "conceptual," and often consisted of things like randomly placed driftwood, and a series of scattered incomplete cubes. One piece was part of a larger piece that was seeking to take pictures of every kind of person there is on earth: "A person who is beautiful but dumb." "A person who is unhappy in their marital situation." "A person who would rather be almost anyone else." "A person who is poor, but happy." I thought to myself, Christ, you don't need to go to an art gallery to meet these people. They're living next door to me in the Studentenheim! Eventually, I made it up to the top of the gallery, which was filled with brightly upholstered couches, where various gallery visitors sat, looking out upon the city of Graz. A few televisions showing random voyeuristic pictures of rooms, or a woman walking in the street in some unknown town sat there, but no one was really paying attention to them. (Though I did have to laugh at the one showing nothing other than a hard rocker type in a long blonde wig sitting in a chair popping bubble wrap.) Looking out the window at the people on the street below, their interactions, where they were going... Looking at the incredible beauty of the city of Graz, I couldn't help thinking to myself that real life is much more interesting than the art in that gallery. Everything in there seemed so stale and imitative... if you're looking for great revelations, you're much better off living your own life, and observing yourself and others than looking at pieces of driftwood on a linoleum floor.