Tag: Tel Aviv

Aida in Old Tel Aviv

On By Martin Kramer

Some years ago, I purchased a delightful 1924 poster at auction, advertising a performance of Verdi’s opera Aida by the Eretz-Israel (Palestine) Opera in Tel Aviv. The date of the performance? Exactly a century ago: November 18, 1924. The poster reads: “The Opera ‘Aida’ will be performed for the second time under the Direction of Mr. M. Golinkin at the Eden Theatre… beginning (spelled as ‘begining’) at 8 p.m. sharp.” The poster’s three languages are arranged in blocks, with Hebrew at the top, English in the middle, and Arabic at the bottom, likely reflecting the expected audience interest in the production.

I was drawn as much to the aesthetics of the poster as to its content. The Giza Pyramids, the Sphinx, an obelisk, and green palm trees dominate the background, evoking the exotic landscape of Egypt. The poster features a limited palette of pastel green and black on a white background, now yellowed with age. The pastel green complements the palm tree imagery. A riot of fonts and typographical elements in all three languages—along with misspellings and unusual spellings—further enhances its charm.

Aida promotional poster, 1924. Photo by author.

Mordechai Golinkin was a trailblazer for opera in the Yishuv. Born in the Russian Empire, he displayed exceptional musical talent from an early age and earned widespread acclaim as a conductor. Inspired by the Balfour Declaration, Golinkin founded a Jewish choir that toured Russia to raise funds for establishing an opera in Palestine. In 1923, he arrived in Tel Aviv and founded the Eretz-Israel (Palestine) Opera. Despite precarious finances and makeshift venues, he staged eighteen Hebrew-translated productions during the Opera’s four years under his leadership. When the funds were exhausted, opera largely disappeared from Mandatory Palestine. However, in the 1940s, Golinkin encouraged the revival of the genre by successors, and at the age of 73, he conducted the inaugural performance of the Israel National Opera in 1948.

The 1924 performance advertised on my poster was held at the Eden Theater, then a silent movie house in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighborhood. Opened in 1914, the original (“winter”) theater was a concrete marvel of its time, seating 800 people under one roof. (The long-abandoned Eden is now slated to become a luxury hotel.) The poster’s warning that the performance would begin at 8 p.m. “sharp” was no mere formality. Golinkin later lamented that Tel Aviv’s residents were “unused to punctual theater attendance,” arriving late and having to stand in the corridor behind the doors for the entire first act of the Opera’s premiere performance.

I attempted to find information about the performance of Aida at the Eden Theater but couldn’t locate a review. However, I did come across an amusing piece in the Ha’aretz daily, published the morning after the November 18 performance, offering readers tips on how to enjoy the next performance for free. The advice appeared in an “About Town” column, credited to a pseudonym I couldn’t decipher. My translation follows.

Aida on the Cheap

Anyone who cannot afford three liras for a room, a penny for an egg, pennies for a glass of milk, a few coins for a loaf of bread that doesn’t quite meet weight standards, a lira for a minor luxury, or earns 25 mils a day in torn trousers, or generally anyone who either wishes but cannot or can but does not wish to buy a ticket for the opera Aida and listen to Radamès, is invited to come tomorrow to the Eden (but not all the way in) and secure an appropriate spot around its perimeter. The grounds are expansive and welcoming, the walls of the Eden are thin, its upper windows are wide open, and the voices of the singers are powerful enough to reach every heart. The visitor will assuredly hear the opera in all its precision. And if the cries of the boy hawking the daily Do’ar Hayom don’t shake the foundations of the temple while the priests are performing their rituals, the ballet is dancing, and the trumpets are blaring, it will still be possible—even for an untrained ear—to distinguish between the cracking of sunflower seeds and the shelling of pistachios in some discreet corner of the Eden, or hear the sound of the libretto’s pages being turned by the audience, and even the beating hearts of the new singers making their debut in Tel Aviv for the first time—not to mention clearly hearing, very clearly indeed, the tapping rhythm of Golinkin’s right foot or his soft whisper, like a pssst, directed into an ear:

“Play forte, my friends. Softly now, thieves.” In moments of anger: “Pianissimo, you devils!”

Those who wish may also bring ladders (as is customary), lean them against the walls, and climb higher and higher to the small windows, enhancing the experience by adding sight to sound.

The opera management may rest assured that this reverent audience will examine every detail with a precision finer than a hair’s breadth, interpreting everything beyond the strict letter of the law. The gathering will arrive at the Eden an hour before eight and remain outside until midnight, even though the press of people will be great, the winds cold, and the rains dripping—and, of course, no one will have a raincoat.

Source: Ha’aretz, November 19, 1924. Header image: Original Eden Theater in 1914.

Bernard Lewis rests among the greats

On By Martin Kramer

Today would have been the 102d birthday of the historian Bernard Lewis. He died in New Jersey on May 19, and was laid to rest on May 24 in the old cemetery on Trumpeldor Street in the heart of Tel Aviv, only a short distance from the seaside apartment he kept for many years.

Trumpeldor cemetery is, to Tel Aviv, what the Père Lachaise cemetery is to Paris. Here, mostly in the southwestern corner, are the graves of the great lights of Hebrew letters: Ahad Ha’am, Bialik, Tchernichovsky, Brenner. Alongside them are Zionist luminaries: Nordau, Arlosoroff, Sharett, Dizengoff. Here also lie Israel’s two most renowned artists, Rubin and Gutman, as well as the singer Damari and the satirist Kishon. And many more.

The Trumpeldor cemetery filled up long ago. The late poetess Dalia Ravikovitch, in “The Hope of the Poet,” wrote these lines:

The best of all possible worlds,
Is a grave they’ll dig for you,
After lobbying in the mayor’s bureau,
In the cemetery on Trumpeldor Street
At a distance of sixty meters
From Bialik’s grave.

This is exactly where Bernard Lewis was laid to rest a week ago, in the furthest corner, by an old tree. I gave one of the several eulogies, a short one, and it follows below.

• •

One of the things we shall all miss most about Bernard is his storytelling. He was of course a historian, but he was also a raconteur of a very high order. As it happens, he used to tell a story, preserved in his memoirs, that connects to this place. It’s about his first love: the Hebrew language.

Bernard famously would say that he became enamored of Hebrew while preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. When it was over, he insisted on continuing his Hebrew study, and his father obliged by finding him a tutor. Thus did Bernard become a budding Hebraicist. As a teenager, he translated into English “quite an immense quantity” of modern Hebrew poems. “I think there must have been hundreds of them,” including Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter” and “The Dead of the Desert.” Most went unpublished, but not all, although Bernard often signed them with a pseudonym.

And now, the story. We return to the year 1932, to a Bohemian spa resort. I quote from Bernard’s memoirs:

During the summer of my sixteenth year I went to Karlsbad with my mother, who wanted to take the waters. One of our fellow guests at the hotel was a lawyer from Tel Aviv. This was a golden opportunity to speak Hebrew, and I jumped at it. We had some conversation, not always easy, but on the whole fairly successful. He asked me if I were reading any Hebrew books, and I mentioned that I was an avid reader of the poems of H. N. Bialik and had, in fact, brought my copy with me.

“Oh,” he said, “Did you know that Bialik is in Karlsbad now at a hotel not far from here? I know him. Would you like to meet him?” I was ecstatic at this opportunity to meet the greatest living writer in the Hebrew language. A meeting was arranged and, trembling with excitement, I was brought into the presence of the poet.

Bialik had no great interest in our conversation and, looking back over the years from the other side of the fence so to speak, I can sympathize with his boredom. But he was gracious and was willing to sign my copy of his book. It remains one of my treasured possessions.

Bialik died two years later, and he’s lain in this cemetery, right over there, for the last 84 years. I never asked Bernard why he wanted to be buried here, although it’s a wish that goes back a good while. The obvious explanation is that it’s close to his apartment by the sea, where he felt so at peace. But I wonder whether it’s also because it’s near to the resting place of Bialik and the other Hebrew greats, and that here he would be reunited with his first love: Ivrit, Hebrew. He mastered many languages. But Hebrew he loved, and from it stemmed the love for his people and this land.

Some of you will recall the New York gala in his honor a few years back. There Bernard made a reference to a Hebrew mutation that had impressed him.

“There is a common Israeli phrase,” he said, “when offering birthday greetings to the elderly, to say ad meah v’esrim, ‘to a hundred and twenty.’ Sometimes nowadays they modify it by changing one Hebrew consonant and saying ad meah k’esrim, ‘to a hundred like twenty,’ which I think on the whole is a more attractive proposition. I am approaching that rapidly. I have been in my long life, and remain, very fortunate.”

Bernard came closer than just about anyone to fulfilling the “more attractive proposition.” He was very fortunate—and so were we. He always reserved the best of himself for us. So let us offer thanks for the good fortune that not only gave him to us, but did so in such abundance.