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From the bank he borrows 10, rupees, on which he pays rupees in interest. From his pesticides merchant he borrows rupees, on which he pays rupees in interest.

His total costs including interest come to 41, rupees. This year he will grow, by his estimate, an average of 22 kg bags of rice per acre, against the 30 bags an acre ought to produce in a decent year. His earnings, then, are: He sells the bags at an average price of rupees per bag, for a net total of 42, rupees. His yearly profit is rupees. Completing the story, he smiles—the smile of a man living half by wits, half by the graces of his creditors, some of whom, like Hanumanta Rao, are also his patrons in the traditional paternalistic sense, and almost his friends.

In his smile I can see what successful small farming means: I go to visit Sitaramayya, manager of a local gramani or agricultural bank. He speaks to me about changes in irrigation. Most of the mid-coastal lands of Andhra Pradesh, he says—in East and West Godavari Districts, and in Krishna District east of Vijayawada—have been irrigated in the past thirty years, and have been among the most productive ricegrowing areas in India.

The rest of Andhra, including Nandigama mandal, where we are, relies on rain. In a branch of the Nagarjuna Sagar canal was completed through Nandigama mandal as far as the riverside village of Eturu, 20 kilometers from Punnavalli. The coming of partial irrigation affected the agriculture of the area dramatically. As irrigation brought higher land prices, commercial crops—vari rice , michi chilies and patti cotton —began to replace the traditional crops of jonna millet , pesara green gram and kandi red gram.

The commercial crops demanded greater capital for production, in the form of pesticides and fertilizers, which rapidly became the most lucrative local trade. He tells me that his own bank is due to close in the villages and shift its operations to the towns. Egregious levels of default, lack of discipline among small farmers. This is a wrongful use of money, he cries!

It is, he insists, because small farmers waste money that they must turn to landlords, merchants and dalaris—credit brokers—for loans at high interest rates. His speech is a curious mixture of anger and triumph. I leave feeling shaken by his vehemence. The fields are quickly drying out. The last cotton of the three month harvest is poking up; the first blush of red is on the chilies, and the sturdy branches of the green and red lentilbushes are growing heavy.

The ricefields have been drained and the stones exposed, and the plants: Soon vamilu dot the fields: The paddy, in its initial gesture toward its names: It is hard to describe the immanent meanings of the waiting crop, pendant in the pallor of the Punnavalli sun. There is something indomitable, a kingliness about rice in its procession from incipience to nutrience, something extraordinary about the immense, productive sundering it commands: An intricate process of incision and recuperation follows, exciting the tiniest creatures of the soil, as well as human beings, and making vacancies for the next crop, its rain and rings and its vowels and satisfactions.

Within weeks it is the time of threshing and winnowing—the time of rice made into flocks of flying kernels and chaff. To thresh in Telugu desham: Particles of dust and freed seeds cling to the pores, penetrate the eyes, roll off in the scratching of hands. Sweat comes in unnatural abundances. The threshing floor is a tumult, a place of extreme exertion on the margins of ordinary physical activity, demanding a special concentration to harness a continuous violence. The sweet pungency of country cigars—whole dried tobacco leaves torn into strips and rolled thick—mixes with the ambient vapor of the new crop, which hangs freshly in the threshing floor.

The women dolefully and with extraordinary economy of movement carry basketfulls of kernels to the edge of the threshing area—to winnowers who lightly and expertly shake the baskets into the wind, which carries dust and debris back into the field, leaving the kernels to drop again at the feet. At the end of the day, the men and women pack and tie kg burlap sacks, and the men load them onto bullock carts or loaned tractors, and ride them intently to the godowns and compounds and cloisters of landowners and middlemen, or sometimes directly to the village mills where all such sustenance eventually travels and where the great burlap weights are borne on shoulders slowly and assiduously and made into shipments for central markets close and distant, which in time return them in divers grades and in stages of smaller and smaller quantities.

Early on another morning I meet Gangiraju at his home in the village of Bellamkondavirapadu. He is landless tenant farmer, father of three. He owns no land but leases-in 2 acres, on which he grows cashcrops, an acre of chilies and an acre of cotton.

For supplemental income he runs a small shop in the village, which brings about rupees per year, and works occasionally as a field laborer, which brings the family about rupees per year. His wife and daughter likewise work in the fields: His two boys attend school, and do not bring in money.

He says that 10, rupees is the minimum necessary yearly income to avoid having to take loans for food. He farms with the hope of saving money to buy land. But the farming is tough. His production costs for 2 acres amount to rupees: The rural banks in Konayapalem village nearby charge interest of 1 rupee per per month to the persons in the village they extend loans to. Bank loans, however, are not given for people like himself, with no land. Bankmanagers, Gangiraju retorts, require bribes from small farmers—which they pay by taking high interest rates from the dalaris.

His only option, he says, is to take his production loans from fertilizer shop owners, who charge double the official bank interest rate, 2 rupees per per month, totaling for him rupees. In Bellamkondavirapadu, he says, some landless people take such loans to cultivate land, including 20 members of his caste, which he names as Harijana. He takes no loans from landlords for cultivation, he tells me, but many Harijanavallu do, at an interest rate of 3 rupees per per month, triple the bank rate. He speaks bitterly about price fluctuation: But five years ago, chilies in Guntur were only rupees per kintal, which made for huge losses.

That year, he says, his family nearly starved, and many others did die of hunger. This year, the relatively higher prices enabled him to pay something on his loan, leaving him 6,, rupees in debt. He tells me that he has tried to farm for the past ten years, each year relying on loans from dalaris, but has never been able to save anything. But he believes that farming might pay off.

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And sometimes, ironically, wages can be lower than the penalty for a bad debt: Hard labor, I ask? After two years, he says, if there is no payment on a loan of 10, rupees or more, a debtor must sell the equivalent number of acres of land he rented, if he owns them, to the dalari. If he is landless, he works two years without wages. And if he refuses, I ask? Then, he says quickly, the gondas—thugs—will come. I am again walking the track to Punnavalli with Hanumanta Rao. Here, on the porch of the ancestral home, time moves furtively: There is only a hint of the meetings of iron and earth, of hoof and cot, of sickle and stalk, of heel and water, of shirts on and off shoulders, of hands to plates to mouths, and the movements of oral deeds, and the movements of contemplation—the movements through which the village endures.

By the end of the day, only some ricekernels remain on the tiles from when the middleman, the dalari, came and scrubbed them hard between his palms, dehusked them, examined their quality, and set his price. Hanumanta Rao gazes quietly into the large courtyard of the compound. He is lean, and strong, even into his fifties. His face is tense and proud, but not arrogant. He is not a sage: He knows the difference between indulgence and pleasure, and prefers pleasure, which is to say simple pleasures: Bring us your Mozart.

Bring us your weird. Or, work on your upcoming roles for the Season.

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Friday, May 25, at midnight EST. Candidates will hear back from AtG by June 1.

Remainder due July Joel Ivany knows you, and our cast, have a lot of questions about our ambitious undertaking electric instruments! April 26, 27, 28 at 8 p. I just saw your performance at the Gala for Opera Columbus. You were singing, spinning and making it look so so so easy. Is it constantly switching? Singing is always the most important. My priority is that if you close your eyes, it sounds just as perfect and beautiful as if I were just standing there. It is inevitable that sometimes you hear heavier breathing because of the physicality and I do have to breathe more frequently.

Which defeats the purpose in my mind—I want the combination to elevate the singing and music and make it even more beautiful and transportive. The key is really making any transitions between phrases so as not to bump the vocal line, or to know which transitions are possible to do in the middle of a line without disturbing it. I do have a lot of control, yes!

I am thankful for it of course—I started studying pole and acrobatics almost eight years ago, and the control comes over time like with dance or any other physical skill I guess! I also love the stand-and-sing concert format as well or fully staged operas — at that point, it is all about the character or musicality. I think it would be boring to not have that variety! Do you think all the elements virtual chorus, aerial and burlesque performance, digital orchestra, projections are too much?

We enjoy stimulation and details subconsciously in a weird way, which still allows us to focus on the dominant voice. What does the underworld look like? How do the Company XIV dancers come to play in that space? We know in the opera he descends to the underworld to retrieve his lost lover, Eurydice. In any case, love IS a powerful thing.

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He stitched together a work that has since become standard repertoire of opera houses worldwide. His mourning is expressed traditionally through music, word, movement, and now technology. For more information, please visit AtG online at www.

Feb 1, 9pm at the The Amsterdam Bicycle Club. Making it free and intimate is showing to ever-larger groups of astonished newcomers how thrilling it is to hear a beautiful trained voice singing a famous work of art. Ventures like these, as they pop up around the world, are the best way of publicizing this most secret of pleasures. Quite a few hands went up when asked who had never seen an opera before. Martha Burns has performed leading roles at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals and at theatres across the country. A founding member of Soulpepper Theatre, she developed their youth mentorship and Soulpepper in School programs.

She currently teaches acting at the National Theatre School. This production features a new electronic orchestration, baroque burlesque dancers, sopranos singing from silks and hopefully you, part of our Global Virtual Chorus. We need you to record your voice to three excerpts from the opera. Submitted videos will be stitched together with hundreds of other videos and projected onto our set, and your voice will be mixed to sync with our LIVE Opera orchestra cool, right? When is the deadline for submissions? Where do I submit my video s?

Can I submit a video for just one chorus section? Will I get credit for my piece? The programs of each performance will have the names listed inside.