Stand Up Straight and Sing! (22 page)

As it happened, in just three short years after her defection, Claudia would be reunited with her mother—a reunion that came not from any clandestine arrangements, but from a much greater miracle: the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I happened to be performing in Taiwan when suddenly, seemingly without fanfare, it was announced that after years of being trapped within the borders of East Berlin, people could now “cross the street” freely. At the time, the Chinese government in Beijing (or Peking, as we called it then) was inviting people from the West to observe innovative surgical procedures that were reportedly being performed without anesthesia, utilizing only acupuncture and the music of Mozart to control pain. The science fascinated me, and I was doing everything I could to get there to witness one of these operations. But the United States was having its usual troubles with the Chinese government at the time, which made it very difficult for Americans to get to Beijing. Due to the political stalemate between China and Taiwan, there were not (and still are not) any direct flights from Taiwan to Beijing. It would have been necessary to fly through Hong Kong. And even if I
could
have secured a flight, the all-important visa for entering mainland China remained elusive. Still, though, the procedure was very much on my mind.

The person who arrived to escort me to the concert that evening called my hotel room to say that I was to be ready in thirty minutes. Then, minutes later, the phone rang again and I, thinking it was the same person, answered, “No, no, I know—I’ll be down in thirty minutes.” To my surprise, the call was from a friend of mine in Germany. I became concerned immediately, fearing that it was bad news or yet another story of injustice in this divided nation. Instead, he declared simply: “The wall is coming down.” Honestly, at first I thought he was talking about the Great Wall of China! He said, “No, no, the
Berlin
Wall.”

I turned on CNN and saw a crowd of people tearing down the wall, some, it seemed, with their bare hands, others with hatchets. I was so excited that I went downstairs, telling everyone I saw, “Do you know what is happening in the world? Do you know what is happening in Germany?”

Singing that night was a great relief, while the extraordinary was happening in a city where my performance life had had its birth. My accompanist on this tour was Phillip Moll, who lived in Berlin. When I told him what was happening, he was incredulous and asked me to repeat what I had said. That night, the music poured through us and from us. The excitement, the music, the knowledge, the fact that the two of us—two Americans—had this connection with Berlin was amazing in every way.

I traveled to Berlin soon after and went to Potsdamer Platz, where I was able to find a small piece of what had been the Berlin Wall. I took it and held it in my hands, and then thought,
I’ll take this back to the States with me.
I often say that I grew up in Berlin, because I went to live in this country at such an early age, thinking at the time that I knew something about the world. But it was here that I came to understand something of the vastness of this planet, the gulfs that exist among us. There were people who lived behind a wall that had been erected in their lifetime. A person living in Berlin in 1960 could move about the city without a great deal of difficulty. And then, an international political decision divided this city in 1961. Now, some of these same people lived to see the Wall and the political stance that had created it collapse. Germany would be reunited. At least that one gulf had been bridged.

I was in Germany in November of that wonderful year, 1989, to make a recording. The Wall had begun to crumble just two weeks earlier. By chance, a recording had been scheduled to take place in this period two years prior to this monumental happening, and it would take place in Dresden, which was suddenly no longer behind a wall! The recording was of Beethoven’s only opera,
Fidelio,
the theme of which is political persecution.

The timing was impeccable. The streets were full of people simply meeting and hugging one another. Some, from the former West Berlin, carried crates of fresh fruit that they offered to all whom they passed, as they knew all too well that months and even years could pass with their East German families and friends not having sight of fresh grapes, for example.

I witnessed a young boy on the street showing an adult man how to first peel and then eat a kiwi. As simple as that; as momentous as that.

In complete contrast to my many other visits to the eastern part of this country, there were copies of newspapers from the West left lying around on tabletops. Freedom has many faces, many expressions. There were copies of the
Economist, Time,
and
Der Spiegel
sitting nonchalantly on a table. Such publications were seeing the light of day legally for the first time in this part of the country. Just a few weeks earlier, one could have been fined or even jailed for subversion for spreading ideas contrary to the communist system that had long since failed, but which had refused to lie down and die.

THE RECORDING SESSIONS
produced some wonderful results, especially from the marvelously trained men’s chorus. At one point in the opera, the male chorus sings of the glory of release from imprisonment. In the Dresden recording session one day, the singing of just one word—
Freiheit
—freedom, was done with such power by this chorus as to have almost shattered the walls of the hall. Imagine singing this word and meaning it, truly, for the first time in your life! Of course the sound would originate in the deepest part of you and ring out like no other in such a moment in time.

People were joyful and open and smiling from a real place in their spirits, not a pretense, not to cover extreme distress, but genuine happiness. It was truly something to witness, and it was easy to feel like a bit player in the tremendous drama of those days: a country reunited and a world observing the stunning shattering of an old order.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

And so with whatever hammering and cutting tools they could find, quickly and with their bare hands, the symbol, the enshrinement of this horror, was beaten to the ground.

O namenlose Freude
, Fidelio 
•
 L
UDWIG VAN
B
EETHOVEN
 • Oh, Joy Beyond Naming

***

The author at age thirteen.

All photos from the author’s personal collection, except where otherwise noted.

With other finalists of the Bavarian Radio International Music Competition, Munich, September 1968. I was honored to be awarded first prize.

The front page of the The Augusta Chronicle, reporting that local philanthropist Peter Knox IV had donated the building that would house the Jessye Norman School of the Arts in Augusta, Georgia, my hometown.

The Augusta Chronicle

With President Barack Obama and Ben Vereen at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C., 2009, for a concert commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

Performing the role of Sélika in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera L’Africaine at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, 1971.

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino