that men withhold the world from men.
No ship nor shore for him who drowns at sea.
No home nor grave for him who dies on land.
To this we’ve come:
That man be born a stranger upon God’s earth,
That he be chosen without a chance for choice,
That he be hunted without the hope of refuge.
Composer and lyricist Gian Carlo Menotti wrote these lines in 1950 for his Pulitzer Prize-winning opera in three acts The Consul.
This “tragedy of the meek who, far from inheriting the earth, live desperately beneath the burden of man’s inhumanity to man”, as the synopsis inside my 1950 edition of the libretto states, is a tale of revolutionaries and refugees at the mercy of bureaucracy.
Set in a nameless European country, the drama tells the story of men and women caught in the red tape and official papers of a Consulate which bars their escape to freedom.
The plot follows the vicissitudes of John Sorel, a freedom fighter who must flee an unnamed dictatorship, his wife Magda, their child and John’s mother, yet the action mainly focuses on Magda’s efforts of getting a visa from a consulate so that she can join her husband. At the consulate she is confronted by the Secretary who keeps on asking her and the other applicants – Mr Kofner, a Foreign Woman, Magadoff the Magician and two other women – applications, request forms and endless documents.
Though the tragedy was written over 50 years ago its main themes – flying from one country to another in despair, being trapped in the spires of a powerful system that uses bureaucracy to crush people, and living in despair surrounded by the indifference of other human beings – are still as vital now as they were then.
Menotti’s tragedy had a resonance in the fashion world: Elsa Schiaparelli mentioned it in Chapter Nineteen of her book Shocking Life – The autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli.
Deeply touched by the the opera, Schiaparelli wrote:
"By the time The Consul reached Paris, Menotti’s operas were being played in five theatres in the city of New York. I went to the Paris first night at the Champs-Élysées Theatre with a diplomat who had once been a consul, and I was both physically and spiritually moved by this opera that dealt with the imposition by passports and red tape of degrading restrictions on human liberty and self-respect. Always having trouble myself with these official documents, of which I invariably forget the most important, and thus hating them with unsurpassed violence, I was particularly receptive. I resent these intrusions into one’s privacy that are made for the sake of filling up official files. My mind revolts against having to ask permission to wander on this earth which should be free and the property of all men. (…)Papers, more papers, papers….papers. The robot secretary of the consul flings them round and stamps them automatically, and when the woman who is rejected commits suicide and tries to get to heaven, she is asked for more papers. In her eagerness she loses them and remains with no place to go.
I turned to my friend the diplomat.
‘Do not say a word,’ murmured his wife. ‘A man to whom he was once obliged to refuse a passport while he was acting as consul killed himself just as this woman killed herself on the stage.’Though the diplomat had acted on orders, he was clearly suffering. Later the entire operatic company came to my house for supper as others had come before, ballet companies and Virgil Thomson’s troupe of Four Angels in Three Acts, and many more. On this occasion the cast and the author of The Consul appeared with serene faces. Only Patricia Neway was paler than nature, because of the intense effort of her part. After so much emotion I had difficulty in realizing we were comfortably in my house, drinking champagne and eating mousse de foie gras. The realization of this potent inner fear of being crushed and deprived of one’s personality, and the obligation of baring one’s inner life to strangers, left my soul wrapped in distress.”
I recently found another interesting connection between The Consul and fashion: a sort of image led feature entitled “There’s Magic in Velvet and Crystal” published in a 1950 issue of Harper’s Bazaar:
Tenor Andrew McKinley who interpreted the “illusionist, telepathist, and prestidigitator, hypnotist, ventriloquist, electrolevitator” Nika Magadoff who, in Menotti’s musical drama, tries to obtain a visa by impressing the Consulate’s Secretary with his feats of prestidigitation and hypnotism, is photographed as he takes out of his hat umbrellas, shoes, bags and other assorted accessories.
I found it interesting to see how 59 years ago fashion magazines would be keen on using a tenor from a prize winning musical drama for such a piece and I would love to see fashion magazines setting their eyes upon more intelligent icons rather than just taking a retouched picture of a famous model or celebrity and surrounding it with shoes, handbags, jewellery or make-up. I guess that would definitely stimulate readers to think a little bit more and encourage them to discover new icons of fashion and style.
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