Tristan and Me; 9 December 2022 talk by Martin Handley

 

The assembled Lit. Soc. who gathered for the Wagner-themed evening in the reassuringly warm space of the Court Hall were gratified to hear our speaker, Martin Handley, approvingly liken it to the Gibechung’s Hall which received Siegfried’s corpse in the Ring Cycle. He was to regale us with the account of the role played by the eponymous hero of the opera Tristan und Isolde in his own life.   Something of a musical Renaissance man, Handley has merged his violin and piano playing, conducting and acting skills into a love of that marriage of music and theatre which is opera.  An Oxford-born, Cambridge graduate Martin started his professional musical career as a répétiteur in Germany for 6 years, following that with 3 years as Chorus Master and conductor at Australian Opera before a 6-year stint as Chorus Master with English National Opera.  This laid the foundation for a national and international career as a freelance conductor and he took his first steps on his road to broadcasting on the BBC’s World Service.  1997 saw him begin a 2-year spell as Conductor of Music for Royal Danish Opera. 

Tristan und Isolde began as light relief for Wagner from the rigours of penning both the libretto and the music for the Ring Cycle but became hugely influential; inspiring Mahler, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and Britten and according to our speaker exerting a wider cultural influence on a par with the contemporaneous Das Kapital of Marx and Darwin’s Origin of Species. We were told the work is an inscape, a drama of the soul. The libretto was based on a 12th century account by Gottfried von Strassburg although oral versions were thought to have been around for centuries before that. The tale is set in a triangular, Celtic twilight of Ireland, Brittany and Cornwall and is a commitment to love and sexual passion with the eponymous protagonists experiencing the Liebestod or erotic death and then eternal union in death in a Valhalla of the lovestruck. The cast comprises kings, warrior knights, noble women and dynastic marriage arrangements which are strained by an emotional cocktail of revenge, atonement, duty and love all further complicated by the substitution of a potent and highly efficacious love potion for a lethal draught. These plot lines may have echoed Wagner’s own love life at the time when, in Swiss exile, his growing disenchantment with his first wife, Minna, was further fuelled by his infatuation with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a Zurich silk trader, and the presence of his future mistress and wife, Cosima von Bülow, in the wings. Martin interspersed music from the opera to add colour to the narrative.

We then learnt of Martin’s more personal involvement with this opera.  As an adolescent at his co-educational boarding school, his first love, Sally, and he were wont to retreat to the school’s “listening room" on Sunday afternoons to listen to a box set of Tristan und Isolde and we were treated to the pair’s favourite track from Act II:

Isolde: Herz an Herz dir, Mund an Mund      (Heart on your heart, mouth on mouth)

Tristan: eines Atems ein'ger Bund  (The single bond of a single breath)

Together: Niewiedererwachens wahnlos hold bewusster Wunsch (The sweetly conscious undeluded wish never again to waken)

At the end of this duet, Tristan and Isolde collapse onto a flowery bank but Martin did not reveal how he and Sally closed the scene.  The school clearly had an enlightened attitude to developing higher culture among the more cerebral pupils, but you have to admit the German Department must have been outstanding.   

Tristan und Isolde has a reputation in the world of opera similar to the Scottish play in the world of drama and it duly brought our speaker bad luck when he was called on at no notice at all to substitute for an indisposed Tristan on the production’s first night in Copenhagen.  He told us he managed to soldier through the ordeal and thinks he actually enjoyed about 2 minutes of the unsought assignment.  The Swedish dramatic soprano, Birgit Nilsson, has appeared in 33 productions as Isolde and admits the role made her famous, so Martin recounted how he managed to cajole her into granting him an interview when she retired to her native Skane district, north of Malmö.  Birgit had emulated another Swedish diva, Greta Garbo, in her dedication to post-retirement solitude and Handley had to follow a complex set of instructions, more like a demonstration of “tradecraft” for a le Carré novel, before finally coming face to face with his quarry.  He did learn that she felt Wagner required thoughtful, patient and methodical people and that the secret to singing Isolde was “comfortable shoes”.

As befits a Radio 3 presenter Martin wove the thoughtfully selected musical excerpts expertly into his very personal narrative leaving the audience suitably educated and entertained.

William Doherty       

Literary Agents; an author's and an agent's perspective

 In her November talk to the Literary Society, on Crime Writing, Aline Templeton touched on the role of a Literary Agent, which gave rise to some discussion. As I thought it might be of wider interest I asked Aline to write a piece on the role of an agent, from the writer's perspective, and a Literary Agent, Holly Faulks,  to write one from the agent's perspective. LY

The Literary Agent, by Aline Templeton

Being able to drop the words ‘my agent’ into a conversation for the first time – very casually, of course – is a great day for an author.  This is a rite of passage: up to that point you may in your heart believe you’re a good or even a great writer, and your mother and perhaps even some indulgent friends may go along with that, but when an agent offers you her – or his - time, advice and expertise for nothing because she considers that it will pay her to do it, you have the most convincing form of professional approval.

Her judgement may, of course, be wrong.  Her high opinion may not be shared by publishers, but even so many agents persist because they still believe in the book and work tirelessly with their author to get it into print.

It’s an enormously important relationship and there are as many different ways of conducting it as there are authors and agents, and there are bad ones as well as good.    I have had several agents in my time; the first one who approached me on the basis of some short stories I had written gave me such bad advice that I only got my first book published after I left her, and she was later thrown out of the Association of Authors’ Agents.

My next one was wonderful.  I approached her and she would only take me on after very hard work and accepting a lot of criticism on the next book, but the pain was worth it. More books followed, but she made everything enormous fun too.  When one of my books was coming unstuck, she said, ‘Come and stay. We’ll work hard all day to get it into shape, and then we’ll drink and gossip all evening.’  We did,  the book was sorted out and then the other books followed.

All her clients adored her and we were devastated when she decided to retire.  I’ve been grateful to agents since, but I’ve never had that sort of closeness with anyone else.

I’m not good at talking about what I’m planning to write. I have author friends who talk over their plans with their agents before they write them and look to them for plot suggestions but after outlining in some detail the book I was planning on one occasion, I found the drive had dissipated when I sat down to write it and the book never got itself written.  I’ve never done that again.

It's once it’s safely in manuscript form that I look to my agent to be cruel enough to tell me what’s wrong with it and how to put it right.  I hate this stage, but I know I need it; I have also learned to ignore the first paragraph says that she absolutely loves it and it’s brilliant,  and go straight to the ‘But..’ in the second one.  I had one agent who was neither cosy or supportive but I was grateful for the talent she had for spotting exactly what was going wrong and spelling it out despite my squirming. 

Not being meticulous by nature, I need an agent when it comes to checking contracts with publishers and dealing with the intricacies of foreign rights.  Then after publication, the  agent acts as a buffer between you and your publisher; when you’re quite sure that your assigned editor is completely wrong, and the changes being demanded will ruin your book, it is your agent’s job to convince the publisher that he’s wrong, or alternatively to convince you that you are – possibly using the phrase, ‘The person who has the chequebook is one who’s right.’

That brings us to one of agent’s most important duties -  getting the publisher to pull out that metaphorical chequebook, and haggling about what should be written on it. A fair bit of that involves explaining that the book is so brilliant that he can’t afford to miss it and with luck managing to lure other publishers into a bidding war; that’s the highest degree of agenting skill – and then the sky’s  the limit.

It hasn’t happened to me so far, but a girl can dream.  I have no doubt about their value to an author and have no doubt that the percentage taken off my earnings in agents’ fees has been more than covered by the rewards their skills have brought me.

The Literary Agent, by Holly Faulks

A literary agent is involved in every step of an author’s career. When we first take on a client they may only be at the very early stages of an idea. We work together with the author to prepare their work for submission to publishers. This might be a proposal for a non-fiction book or the complete manuscript of a novel. We will then draw up a list of editors at the various publishing houses that we think might be interested in the work. A big part of our job is staying up to date with all the editors and knowing what exactly they’re looking for. We send the author’s work to the editors along with a submission letter and with luck we receive an offer of publication (or more than one offer!) for the author. We then negotiate with the editor(s) to ensure the author is given the best possible offer and guide the author through the process of selecting their new publishing house. We will then go on to negotiate the full contract between author and publisher. At this point, the author will begin to work directly with the publisher’s editorial, marketing, publicity and sales teams to prepare the book for publication, but we will continue to support them through this process, especially if there are difficulties or disagreements between the author and the publisher. We will also ensure that the author is paid correctly and promptly by the publisher, chasing advance payments and checking royalty statements. This support continues beyond the publication of the first book as the author’s career grows. We try to help authors achieve their long-term career goals whether that means negotiating new contracts with an existing publisher, seeking out a new editor when necessary or changing writing direction entirely. Literary agents will also aim to sell translation rights in the work throughout the world as well as TV and film rights. Some agencies will do this directly and others will work with co-agents and sub-agents. Literary agents may also act as speaking or broadcast agents and can handle all sorts of non-book work for their clients.