Thursday, March 31, 2022

Remembering an old friend

Here's a photo of an old acquaintance, Curtis Ether, who just popped into my head this morning, seemingly out of nowhere, sending me directly from my bed to Google to look him up. In the only photograph I could find, he's posed next to famed Brazilian soprano, Bidu Sayao, and the acclaimed portrait he did of her many years ago.The painting was an important commission: Sayao was a huge Metropolitan Opera star and the first to perform and record Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachanias Brasileiras #5. This portrait is presently hanging in the National Gallery, and a reproduction of it graces the cover of one of Sayao's albums (see 2nd photo). As it turned out, there is nothing online of any extraordinary interest about Curtis except for this photo, so I consider myself very lucky to have found it, even more so because it includes a picture (a nice remembrance for my failing memory), and a record of one of his fine accomplishments as an artist. From other scraps of info I found online, the following tidbits: evidently, he passed away at the age of 53, in 1997 (Sayao outlived him by two years).

Perhaps it's my imagination, but I think there's something exquisitely unearthly about him, something soft-edged, almost Renoiresque--particularly his aqueous blue eyes, just as I recall them, enchanting and calm. (Am I insane, or does the portrait look more like the painter than the subject?) I understood this morning that I had lost something and didn't know it until I looked for it.

When, I wondered, was the last time I saw him? It turned out to be easy to pinpoint that because, quite by coincidence, we bumped into each other in the railroad station in Nice, France one September afternoon long ago. After we got over our surprise about the strangeness of our crossed paths, we decided to be tourists together for the day and headed for the Leger Museum at Biot (outside Antibes). Upon arrival there, we were bummed out to learn that the museum was closed for renovation. This morning, a little extra elbow grease applied to my internet digging turned up the year of the renovation: 1987. Curtis lived only ten years beyond our failed visit to the Leger Museum. All these details, pieced together, meant that the last time I spent any time with Curtis Ether was almost 35 years ago (no reason why: that's the way life is!), and our afternoon in France was quite unplanned.

Hunting a bit further (there was so little to be found and I was hungry for more), I discovered that he was born on April 1, 1944 (April Fool's Day). April 1st happens to be my mother's birthday, so in life they shared a similar astrology, the same show-stopping diamond birthstone, and perhaps a lot more. It also happens to be tomorrow. That's another crazy coincidence.

In any case, I was planning to light a remembrance candle for my mother, and decided to light one for Curtis as well. It seemed fated to be so. Considering how little there was to be found online this morning, I might be the only person to be commemorating Curtis' birthday. Whenever I have experiences of memory like this, I remind myself that in commemorating others in some small way, I am celebrating the fact that I've had an absolutely amazing life, filled with unexpected spills and chills and twists and turns and adventures, and all in a world, for all its hills and dales of fortune, populated by some truly amazing people. Can it be possible that I am two degrees of separation from Bidu Sayao, and three from Villa-Lobos?

By the way, if you want to hear her sing her lovely bit from Bachanias Brasileiras, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jihLlZ0bPAY



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