AndrewAndJoshua

“Looking For Any Kind Of Work”

2012-01-28T18:22:00.024-05:00

August Sander’s “Unemployed Man”, a photograph taken on a Cologne street corner in 1928.

“Unemployed Man” is one of the most renowned Sander photographs. It captures the subject’s utter hopelessness as well as his essential dignity. From the photograph, the viewer can see that the man appears to be gentle, kind and civilized—and yet the viewer wonders whether the man has acquired such a saintly aura simply because he is a creature beaten down, drained not only of a present but of a future.

Such sight was common in Germany in the 1920s. It was to become more common still after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, an event that affected Germany far more profoundly than the United States. Banks and governments everywhere cut off credit to Germany shortly after the Crash, a move that resulted in chaos and despair on the widest possible scale throughout Germany. The ultimate impact of the credit revocation became apparent little more than three years after the Crash: a totalitarian government was installed in Germany.

Twenty-four years after Sander took his famous photograph in Cologne, Henri Cartier-Bresson snapped one of his most famous photographs in Hamburg.

“Hamburg, Germany: 1952-1953” was one of many scenes Cartier-Bresson captured in December 1952 and January 1953 at or near the main harbor of Hamburg, then and now North Europe’s largest and most important port.

The Cartier-Bresson photograph is even more complicated than the Sander, largely because the viewer is presented with substantial contradictory evidence about the intelligence and character of the subject. There are numerous indications that the young man in the photograph possesses great intelligence, yet there are numerous indications that the young man in the photograph is not intelligent in the least—and, moreover, is a ruffian. This tension is what makes the photograph so powerful.

No matter how deeply one studies the photograph, one cannot decide what sort of person is the young man.

“Looking For Any Kind Of Work” is the signage around the young man’s neck.

More “Menschen Des 20. Jahrhunderts”

2012-01-27T15:34:00.016-05:00

August Sander’s “The Road Workers”, from 1924.

Probably Our Only Basketball Game Of The Season

2012-01-26T14:02:00.016-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, all the men in my family—including my nephew—went to Williams Arena to see the Golden Gophers play Northwestern. Minnesota won the game, 75-52.

It was my nephew’s first basketball game, and he was very excited. The Northwestern game was the only conference game of the season in which the starting time—3:00 p.m.—was appropriate for a six-year old. All other home conference games this season are night games.

We have not been attending Golden Gopher games this season; there have simply been too many other things on our schedules.

We would not have attended the Northwestern game, either, except it was the only game of the season suitable for my nephew. When we had asked him whether he wanted to go to a basketball game, he quite naturally had answered, “Yes”—so we obtained tickets to the lone afternoon game on the schedule. It may turn out to be the only game of the season for all of us.

My nephew enjoyed the game. It was the venue and the atmosphere and the noise and the band and the excitement of the large crowd that most appealed to him. The athletic contest itself was of much less interest to him; the rules and finer points of basketball are too arcane for a six-year-old.

We left the game midway through the second half. My nephew, who had missed out on his afternoon nap, was growing tired, and he had seen enough of the game. By 4:30 p.m., he was ready to go home and have his dinner—which he was able to eat at the normal hour.

“Menschen Des 20. Jahrhunderts”

2012-01-25T17:40:00.040-05:00

The photograph above is iconic in Germany, and well-known in the United States.

The photograph was taken by German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) in the summer of 1914 in the Westerwald, and was part of Sander’s “People Of The 20th Century” project, a project Sanders began in 1911 and continued well into the 1920s.

In Germany, the photograph is known simply as “Young Men”. In the U.S., the photograph is often titled “Three Young Farmers On Their Way To A Dance” or some variant thereof.

I do not understand why the photograph has become iconic. It is, by and large, a pretty unremarkable photograph.

The photograph caught my eye when I saw a high-quality print for the first time at Hamburg’s Museum Of Arts And Crafts in 2006. It is one of few photographs from a large display of German photographs we viewed that I remember vividly more than five years later. Nonetheless, I have not a clue why the photograph somehow became embedded into my brain.

The photograph may be seen as representing the end of an era—everything was to change in August 1914—and yet the photograph has absolutely nothing to do with the forces of history or social change or the coming cataclysm. It depicts three not particularly interesting and not particularly intelligent and not particularly characterful and not particularly appealing young men posed stiffly for the camera on a rural pathway while attired in their Sunday best. To read more into the photograph, including any sweeping historical themes, is not justified.

Someone that appreciates the photograph more than I, New York-based cultural writer David Propson, has written the following of the photograph:

Yet through Sander's camera we also see more. His famous "Young Farmers On The Way To A Dance", their cravats carefully tied and canes in hand, look far more like dandies than men of the earth. There is comedy in the affected seriousness of these youths, whose frames don't quite fit their pretensions. Sander's idiom may have been the individual portrait, but his theme was man in relation to his society.

I remain unconvinced. I do not see Propson’s proposed theme in the photograph.

And yet the photograph continues to stick in my mind.

Berlin’s Deutsches Opernhaus In 1935

2012-01-22T23:40:00.023-05:00

Berlin’s Deutsches Opernhaus in 1935.

The theater opened on November 7, 1912, and was in use only for thirty-one years. The Deutsches Opernhaus was destroyed by Allied bombs on November 23, 1943.

The Deutsches Opernhaus was not rebuilt after the war.

Its company was to become today’s Deutsche Oper Berlin.

More Brahms, No Stare, No Caesar

2012-01-21T23:54:00.123-05:00

Last evening’s Minnesota Orchestra concert, part of the orchestra’s two-week, four-program Brahms project, was very fine. One of two Brahms programs offered to local concertgoers this week, last night’s program featured music not often played by professional ensembles.

The concert began with five Hungarian Dances, taken from the set of twenty-one. The orchestra did not play any of the three dances orchestrated by Brahms or any of the five dances orchestrated by Dvorak. Instead, it offered five lesser-played dances orchestrated by other hands: numbers 4, 8, 11, 14 and 5. The performances were perfectly acceptable if hardly the last word in Hungarian fire and dazzle.

Two choral works completed the first half of the program: the great Nänie and the even greater Schicksalslied, in both of which the Minnesota Orchestra was joined by the Minnesota Chorale.

These two choral works are very seldom encountered in concert halls, yet the Minnesota Orchestra had offered both works as recently as May 2008, when the orchestra had performed Nänie and Schicksalslied under Helmuth Rilling. Although Joshua and I had attended one of those May 2008 performances, we were happy to hear Nänie and Schicksalslied again.

Music Director Osmo Vanska turned the conducting duties in the two choral works over to the Director of the Minnesota Chorale. Vanska’s presence on the podium was not missed. Vanska is not a particularly penetrating or insightful Brahms conductor, and I doubt that his readings of Nänie and Schicksalslied would have been superior to the ones we heard. Both works are primarily contemplative—and it was with painstaking contemplation that both works were performed last night.

After intermission, the orchestra played the Serenade No. 2, another work very seldom programmed. Oddly, we had heard the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra play the Brahms Serenade No. 2 in November. I doubt whether both local ensembles have ever previously offered this rare work in the same season (the Brahms Serenade No. 1 also appears on the schedules of both local orchestras this season).

Last night’s performance of the Serenade No. 2, alone, made the concert worthwhile. The players were on excellent form, and Vanska conducted the score “straight”. It was as fine a performance of the Serenade No. 2 as I am ever likely to hear in the United States—and much finer than the entirely capable performance we had heard in Saint Paul two months ago. The Minnesota Orchestra winds were livelier and more expressive than their Saint Paul counterparts, and that probably accounted for the difference.

I am pleased we caught two of the four Minnesota Orchestra Brahms programs. The program we caught last week was excellent, and the program we caught last night was excellent. It was, for us, a case of two evenings well-spent.

Before the concert, we ate dinner at a fine seafood restaurant. For soup, we ordered lobster bisque. For salad, we ordered spinach salad with roasted mushrooms and hot bacon. For main course, my mother ordered California white bass, my father ordered Nova Scotia swordfish, and Josh and I ordered Canadian walleye. We thought the food was good.

________________________________________________

We had planned to attend a concert by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra this evening—but, after learning a few days ago that scheduled conductor Asher Fisch had cancelled, we cancelled, too.

Soprano Christine Brewer is this week’s SPCO guest soloist, engaged to sing Beethoven’s “Ah, Perfido!” and Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder”. This is ideal repertory for Brewer, but the conductor engaged as a last-minute replacement, Ward Stare, is both novice and nonentity, always destined to be best-known for his role as the former boyfriend of soprano Renee Fleming (who is two or three decades older than Stare). With Stare on the podium, it would have been impossible for us to take the concert seriously—and we decided to stay home.

Brewer received good notices for the Friday night performance.

Stare did not.

In its coverage, the Pioneer-Press pointedly failed to identify—or even mention—the conductor, devoting its entire review to Brewer, and Brewer alone. In fact, the Pioneer-Press did not even note that there were two orchestral works on the program in addition to the two vocal works. A reader unaware that the concert was devoted to four compositions would have been justified in concluding that only two scores had been performed, and that Brewer had conducted the orchestra herself.

The Pioneer-Press, in ignoring the presence of Stare, may have committed an act of kindness.

The Star-Tribune DID mention Stare—and the Star-Tribune had little good to say about him, remarking that the level of ensemble Stare obtained was poor and wryly noting that Stare was utterly lost in the two orchestral works on the program, Mozart’s Symphony No. 17 and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

I am pleased we did not venture out into a cold night.

________________________________________________

The Acting Company is currently in residence at The Guthrie Theater, offering a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in the smallest of The Guthrie’s three venues. This is the fourth consecutive year in which The Acting Company has settled into The Guthrie for a three-week run.

Josh and I had contemplated attending a performance of “Julius Caesar” next weekend, but we have been warned off by knowledgeable Twin Cities theatergoers. The production is apparently a disaster—and has aroused much negative comment as well as outright ill will.

We have been told by persons in a position to know that there is NO TALENT WHATSOEVER to be seen in the current Acting Company. The cast members onstage in “Julius Caesar” are said to be so profoundly lacking in basic stage skills that audience jaws literally drop at every performance. The onstage proceedings are so bad, they are said to be as cruel to members of the audience as they are to the fools and dumbos that inhabit the stage—and “fools and dumbos” was the precise pejorative phrase used to describe the “Julius Caesar” cast members by the most sophisticated theater professional I have ever had the pleasure of knowing on a personal basis (and a person widely admired for whole-hearted generosity).

The production itself is apparently no better than the untalented assemblage of players. According to the accounts I have received, a severely-trimmed, dumbed-down-beyond-belief “Julius Caesar” is what The Acting Company is currently presenting at The Guthrie. The managing partner of my firm, a gentleman of extravagant intellectual accomplishment, referred to the “Julius Caesar” production as “less learned than the worst soap commercial ever seen on network television”—and he referred to the “Julius Caesar” director as “a man of undoubted if not immeasurable stupidity”.

Whatever the cause, The Acting Company’s “Julius Caesar” has been accorded the status of a major mistake, unworthy of occupying the smallest stage of The Guthrie and unworthy of The Guthrie imprimatur.

In a rightful world, there would be repercussions.

And there may have been repercussions already.

Something clearly is going on at The Guthrie. The official in charge of programming for the small Guthrie venue quietly stepped down in recent days, with no advance warning and without explanation. The official’s departure became effective on the very day it was announced. No one is saying anything for public dissemination, but it appears that the official was relieved of his duties—without notice and without recourse.

I wonder what role The Acting Company production of “Julius Caesar” played in the official’s departure—and I wonder whether The Acting Company has played its last in the Twin Cities. If the “Julius Caesar” production is as bad as everyone claims, The Guthrie must wash its hands of The Acting Company without delay.

(I also wonder what Josh’s sister will make of the “Julius Caesar” production when she sees it next month at Vanderbilt. The production will soon be inflicted upon a plethora of cities, large and small, coast-to-coast, and Josh’s sister will be one of the individual victims.)

In The Ardennes Forest

2012-01-21T18:56:00.013-05:00

22 December 1944: German soldiers in The Ardennes Forest during The Battle Of The Bulge.

Treblinka Station 1943

2012-01-19T23:01:00.010-05:00

Johannes Brahms And Joseph Joachim

2012-01-16T20:20:00.022-05:00

Johannes Brahms (age 22) and Joseph Joachim (age 24) in 1855.

It was twenty-three years after this photograph that Brahms was to write his Violin Concerto for Joachim.

Osmo Vanska And James Ehnes In Brahms

2012-01-16T19:17:00.045-05:00

Saturday night’s Minnesota Orchestra concert was very fine. Given that we do not live in an age of Brahms conductors and given that only the orchestras in Berlin, Cleveland, Dresden, Leipzig and Vienna can, on occasion, display themselves as genuine Brahms ensembles, the concert was a success.

Vanska, an interventionist conductor, played too freely with tempi and dynamics, as is his wont, and was prone to exaggeration in passages that speak for themselves, such as the Andante of the Third Symphony, which only need be played simply and eloquently in order to come off. There is a fine line between Classicism and Romanticism in Brahms, and it was Classicism that suffered in Vanska’s hands.

The performances, nonetheless, were serious ones—and often satisfying. Vanska knows how to maintain tension, perhaps his greatest gift, and he knows how to secure a high standard of execution from his ensemble.

The Third Symphony, the most difficult Brahms symphony to bring off, was wholly successful, quirks and all. I was riveted by the performance, even when Vanska pushed the level of expression to extreme or adopted an uncalled-for new tempo or unduly emphasized inner voices or drew triple fortissimo from the orchestra when single fortissimo would have done. No doubt Fritz Reiner, had he been in Orchestra Hall, would have been scathingly dismissive of Vanska’s interpretation—yet, as a one-off performance, it worked perfectly well.

The first movement of the Brahms Violin Concerto was a joy, probably because the players were fully engaged (not often true in standard concerto literature). There were some slips in ensemble, and the orchestra’s sound quality became strident at climaxes, but Vanska and the orchestra offered a successful reading of the first movement. Indeed, Vanska and the orchestra carried the first movement, not the soloist.

Ehnes does not possess an individual sound, and he did not display much personality. He offered a dry, academic performance of what I believe to be the greatest of all violin concertos.

Ehnes never once turned the concerto into a profound personal statement. He did not soar in the first movement, as the soloist must, and he brought too small an array of expressive devices to all three movements. This shortcoming became critical in the third-movement Rondo, the dullest I have ever heard, in concert or on disc.

I last heard the Brahms Violin Concerto in the hands of Vadim Repin. Repin operated on an entirely different—and higher—level than Ehnes. Repin shaded and colored his tone all evening, phrased with great freedom and specificity, and offered the widest possible range of expression, all without violating the core Classicism at the root of Brahms—and Repin did so without satisfactory orchestral support and without a sympathetic conductor. Repin had been vital, and urgent, and commanding; Ehnes was none of those things.

Johannes Brahms

2012-01-13T21:08:00.022-05:00

Johannes Brahms in 1853, at age twenty.

This week the Minnesota Orchestra embarked on a two-week Brahms project during which the orchestra will present four different all-Brahms programs. The orchestra offers two Brahms programs this week, and will offer two Brahms programs next week.

Tomorrow night my parents and Joshua and I will hear one of this week’s programs. We will hear Music Director Osmo Vanska lead the orchestra in the Haydn Variations, the Violin Concerto (James Ehnes will be guest soloist) and the Symphony No. 3.

Reynaldo Hahn

2012-01-13T01:43:00.022-05:00

When God created Venezuela, he made such magnificent flowers, birds, fruits, trees, gold, diamonds and so on that the angel Gabriel asked the Lord if He wasn’t giving the country too much. “Have patience,” replied the Creator. “I haven’t created the Venezuelans yet.”

Composer Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), born in Caracas but resident of Paris from the age of three, was prone to offer this joke whenever he was asked about the country of his birth. Hahn’s family fled Venezuela in the late 1870s to avoid political turmoil, settled in Paris, and never returned to South America.

A modest revival of Hahn’s music began three decades ago, sparked by the worldwide publication in 1983 of EMI’s recording of Hahn’s 1923 operetta, “Ciboulette”. The Hahn revival has not yet abated.

In many ways, Hahn’s life was very sad.

Hahn lost his looks by his mid-30s—the photograph above was taken in 1898, when Hahn was only 24—and, as a result, he became a less attractive artifact for Paris’s salons, where he had first gained notice as a young man.

Further, the loss of his looks impacted Hahn’s search for romantic companionship. After his two-year relationship with Marcel Proust ended (a relationship already over by the time of the 1898 photograph), Hahn entered a protracted series of short-term relationships with persons who provided little or no intellectual stimulation. Such unsatisfying relationships clearly took a toll: by his early 40s, Hahn looked like an old man.

Hahn disliked most music composed after the 19th Century—yet he was acutely aware that the future belonged to Debussy and Stravinsky. Even when his own stage works achieved a moderate level of popular success in 1920s Paris, Hahn was depressed. He knew that his own music was not the best music of his time, and was only of ephemeral interest and appeal.

Hahn’s popular—and commercial—success was over by the early 1930s. Both composer and music were largely ignored by the French music establishment for the rest of Hahn’s life.

In 1940, Hahn was forced to flee Paris with the onset of the German occupation (Hahn was one-half Jewish). Already 66 years old, Hahn never expected to be able to return to The City Of Light.

The year after Paris’s liberation, Hahn—unexpectedly—was named head of the Paris Opera, the most important music post in France. Hahn’s appointment came about in large part because he was in no way tainted by whispers of collaboration, something that could not be said of most who had remained in Paris during the occupation and continued to participate in the city’s musical life. The Paris Opera appointment, the capstone of Hahn’s career, was short-lived: already in failing health, Hahn died less than two years later.

In Recital: Jordan Baker

2012-01-11T20:30:00.049-05:00

Last night my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear mezzo soprano Susan Graham in recital.

It is difficult for me to pinpoint why the recital was so unsatisfying, but it proved to be a totally disappointing evening.

Graham is now in her fifties. Her voice has lost much of its luster, which was certainly part of the problem last evening. Graham always had a rich yet not particularly distinctive voice, but the former richness is no longer much in evidence. There was a parched quality to her vocal production last night, as if her vocal chords were in need of oiling. Further, Graham displayed a tendency to flatten.

None of this would have made any difference if Graham were a great interpreter, but Graham has always been a generalized singer, unknown for any particular deep insight. Graham is a capable but bland artist, uninteresting in a peculiarly American way, like the woman golfer in “The Great Gatsby” (whom Graham portrayed in the Harbison opera based upon Fitzgerald's novel). A large and robust woman, Graham missed her true calling: she should have been a high jumper.

On paper, last night’s program was ravishing; in execution, it was dull.

Music of Purcell began the evening. “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation”, perhaps my favorite Purcell composition, did not strike me as deeply-felt.

The “La mort d’Ophélie” that followed suffered from the same deficiency. Graham has been heralded in some quarters as a notable Berlioz singer, but I have never heard anything to be acclaimed in Graham’s work in Berlioz. Graham’s Berlioz singing is monochrome.

Six Goethe Wilhelm Meister songs completed the first half of the program, one each by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Duparc and Wolf. At the conclusion of the group, I had no idea why this particular singer had selected these six particular songs—other than as a program concept.

Six Poulenc songs came after intermission. I have never understood why Graham has been deemed an accomplished singer of French repertory, as her work in the French song literature has always struck me as unstylish and lacking in personality, penetration and imagination. Nothing last night caused me to change my view.

Before the Poulenc, Graham sang “Lady Macbeth” by Joseph Horovitz, a British composer born in Austria (and a composer best-known for his theme music for “Rumpole Of The Bailey”). I am clueless why the song appealed to Graham.

The program concluded with popular French and American fare.

The audience responded warmly to Graham all evening, as if it were hearing something notable. However, the audience was being subjected to the work of a manqué artist. A manqué artist will do when the real thing is unavailable, but there was no doubt in my mind that the woman onstage last night, possessor of a fine instrument in her prime, was never anything more than a garden-variety musician incapable of delving deeply into any material.

Malcolm Martineau was the accompanist.

In Recital

2012-01-11T18:18:00.028-05:00

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
The Pathetic Song
1881
Corcoran Gallery Of Art, Washington

Oil On Canvas
45 Inches By 32 3/16 Inches

________________________________________________

Another time after a concert, Prokofiev told a famous singer, who had just performed a few of his songs, that she did not understand anything about his music and had better stop singing it. He said it in the presence of a large group of startled onlookers and in such a boorish way that he brought the poor lady to tears. “You see,” he continued reprimanding her, “all of you women take refuge in tears instead of listening to what one has to say and learning how to correct your faults.”

Nicolas Nabokov, writing in 1951

Contemporaries II

2012-01-06T16:06:00.040-05:00

Suzanne Farrell during a stage performance of George Balanchine’s “Vienna Waltzes” in 1977, the year of the ballet’s creation.

Farrell gave her final performance in 1989, choosing “Vienna Waltzes” as her farewell vehicle.

Farrell was Balanchine’s last muse.

Cynthia Gregory in a studio photograph as Raymonda in 1975. American Ballet Theatre mounted a full-length production of Marius Petipa’s “Raymonda” for Gregory that year.

Rudolf Nureyev, who staged ABT’s 1975 “Raymonda”, called Gregory “America’s prima ballerina assoluta”.

Gregory gave her final performance in 1992.

My parents insist that neither ballerina, since retirement, has been superseded by succeeding generations of ballerinas, whether from America or elsewhere. As my father wryly notes, no one in his right mind will be talking about Darcey Bussell, Sylvie Guillem or Kyra Nichols thirty years from now.

Farrell and Gregory were the last of a long line of great ballerinas dating back to the 19th Century, technically superior to all that came before and after, with stage presence and glamour in abundance. Images of Farrell and Gregory performances are burned upon the memories of those who were fortunate enough to have caught them in their primes.

Farrell and Gregory were, quite simply, the apex, unmatched in their greatness, making both their contemporaries and their successors—whether from Britain, Denmark, France or Russia—look inept and plodding (and often faintly ridiculous) in comparison.

Contemporaries

2012-01-05T21:35:00.072-05:00

According to my maternal grandmother, by age thirty, one acquires responsibility for one’s own face.

Suzanne Farrell (born 16 August 1945) has not aged well. In fact, she looks awful.

When I was in law school in Washington, a friend and I attended a performance of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center Opera House. During an intermission, someone sitting next to us pointed out that a particularly frumpy-looking woman nearby was Farrell herself.

We were dumbfounded. We would never have guessed, in a million years, that the woman in question was the very same woman as the glorious ballerina seen in countless classic photographs from three decades earlier.

The woman we observed that night was a woman who did not know how to present herself offstage. She did not know how to dress, how to arrange her hair to advantage, how to apply makeup, or how to carry herself.

With her hardened facial muscles, she looked, that night, as if she were a battered woman ready to head off to WalMart to stock up on shotgun ammunition.

In contrast, Cynthia Gregory (born 8 July 1946) looks absolutely smashing today, if recent photographs may be used as guides.

Gregory understands the value of simplicity and understatement.

Her hair is elegant, her makeup is elegant, her attire is elegant—and yet everything is very minimal, and very natural.

She remains an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

Above all, she knows how to carry herself.

Her innate beauty and classic elegance remind me, a million times over, of my mother, who is more beautiful today than ever.

I never had the chance to see Farrell or Gregory onstage—but my parents, who saw both dancers many times, insist that both ballerinas were great and wondrous artists, if entirely different.

Gregory’s face reveals that she has enjoyed a happy and rich post-dancing life.

Farrell’s face reveals something else.

Eva Braun Does Al Jolson

2012-01-03T17:46:00.014-05:00

Eva Braun offers her immortal Al Jolson impersonation in 1937.

Once In Love With Amy

2011-12-31T22:24:00.039-05:00

The broadly-played, dumbed-down and horseyed-up "Charley's Aunt" at The Guthrie Theater.

Sufferance

2011-12-31T22:09:00.027-05:00

This afternoon my middle brother and Joshua and I went downtown to attend a matinee performance of “Charley’s Aunt” at The Guthrie Theater. The classic comedy by Brandon Thomas was The Guthrie’s popular holiday offering this year; the production has played since late November, and will continue until mid-January.

The production was dreadful. The actors were a troupe of hams, grossly overplaying their parts. Of style and wit—and Englishness—there were none. The production was one of the most depressing things I have ever seen on the Guthrie stage. Summer stock in the Pocono’s surely is better than what we observed this afternoon. The director and cast members should be mortified over the vaudeville shtick they delivered to a paying audience.

There is something wrong with The Guthrie, and I have concluded that a change in management is necessary.

Guthrie productions are always beautifully designed. Stage design, costume design, lighting design: all are invariably exquisite. Current Guthrie management seems to have adopted a policy of “show them the money”: the company’s physical productions are lavish if not ostentatious.

However, the company increasingly seems to believe that a theatrical production begins and ends with the design team. If the public is presented with a conspicuously-costly production, The Guthrie views its mission as largely accomplished. Poor casting and poor direction, in the company’s eyes, are minor considerations if the physical production is sufficiently complex and sufficiently expensive-looking.

In this afternoon’s “Charley’s Aunt”, not a single actor onstage should have been cast in the play. No one onstage had a clue how to bring off a 19th-Century British comedy of manners. No one delivered dialogue skillfully, no one knew how to shape 19th-Century British prose, no one understood the class distinctions at work—and no one knew how to move onstage in a manner appropriate for his or her role.

The director was equally clueless. He had directed the production as if it were a television situation comedy, which led me to believe that he did not even understand the material. What is the point of presenting “Charley’s Aunt” if the production is directed like “The Odd Couple”?

It was a dispiriting afternoon.

My parents and my older brother and my sister-in-law had attended a performance of “Charley’s Aunt” earlier in the week. (My middle brother had stayed home to watch my nephew and niece that evening.) They had disliked the production, too, but they had been circumspect in articulating their thoughts about the production, not wanting to ruin the performance for us even before we had a chance to experience it and form our own opinions. In hindsight, I wish they had been forthcoming, and recommended that we stay home.

Like me, my parents are of the view that The Guthrie needs new leadership—with the proviso, in my father’s words, “Be careful what you wish for” (by which my father means that The Guthrie might end up with worse leadership than it has now).

Myself, I have witnessed my quotient of elaborate Guthrie physical productions in which the actors, ambling through massively-impressive stage settings, are insufficiently talented and insufficiently guided to warrant continued employment of either cast or director. A top-notch British director needs to be called in to get The Guthrie house in order, even if that would rile up a portion of the current Guthrie constituency (and would inevitably result in the wholesale dismissal of the current directorial house staff, none of whom would be missed).

Tonight’s New Year’s Eve Dinner was built around Norwegian fish balls. It was the second time this winter my mother has prepared Norwegian fish balls, which are not particularly easy to make, and we were all pleased to eat them a second time.

Our dinner began with lobster bisque, and continued with a minced-salmon/pasta salad, served cold. With the Norwegian fish balls we ate riced potatoes with cream and chives and a vegetable casserole made with fresh vegetables, cream, cheeses and bacon.

The dog was given beef tips and a serving of potatoes for his dinner. As a general rule, he does not like seafood, and we wanted to give him a dinner he would enjoy, especially since tonight was New Year’s Eve.

For dessert, we had Breudher (a Dutch New Year Cake made with cream, butter and raisins) for the second night in a row. My mother had baked eight Breudher cakes yesterday, three for the family and five as gifts—already delivered—for friends from church.

Tomorrow we shall have Norwegian fish chowder, another dish that is not particularly easy to make, for a special New Year Lunch. My mother made the chowder this afternoon while my brother and Josh and I were downtown suffering through “Charley’s Aunt”.

Happy 2012

2011-12-31T22:06:00.006-05:00

As 2011 Comes To A Close . . .

2011-12-30T23:34:00.016-05:00

Two of the finest websites on the worldwide web are no longer in existence, and with great sadness I have had to remove them from my blogroll. Both websites were sui generis, and irreplaceable.

“The Art Of The Great War” was a scholarly website devoted to painting and sculpture created during and in response to World War I in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia. The demise of the website is a great loss to history scholars and art scholars. The website’s originators were, I believe, cultural affairs officers from various countries, all working at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Texts were written by art professors from ten nations. The website, extravagantly and beautifully designed, was an offshoot of a major art exhibition, ten years in the making, that toured prominent European art museums approximately one decade ago.

“Samuel Beckett In Hamburg 1936” was a scholarly website devoted to examining exhaustively Beckett’s travels to North Germany in 1936. Each day of Beckett’s travels was documented with photographs, letters, diary entries, newspaper and magazine articles, and annotated text. The author of the website was a Professor Of Literature at a university in Hamburg—and the website, once again, was imaginatively and beautifully designed. I hope the author is in the process of turning the contents of the website into a book, because the website was both a work of scholarship and a work of art.

Thought For The New Year: “Epicurean Chaos”

2011-12-30T22:07:00.009-05:00

The decline of a particular civilization is a culmination of the strife between religion and secular intellectualism, a strife that inevitably topples the precarious institutions of convention and morality—and, ultimately, the society itself.

Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief that seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness. Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a "conflict between science and religion." Institutions that were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and—after some hesitation—the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization.

Will Durant

Dutch Treat

2011-12-30T22:04:00.019-05:00

A treat for the New Year, a couple of days early: Breudher, a traditional cake for the New Year from the Netherlands.

Civilization Is Not Inherited

2011-12-27T21:01:00.011-05:00

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

Will and Ariel Durant

Dvořák’s Funeral Procession

2011-12-27T00:19:00.021-05:00

Prague, 5 May 1904: Antonín Dvořák’s Funeral Procession

The Adoration Of The Magi

2011-12-24T23:13:00.051-05:00

Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734)
The Adoration Of The Magi
1726
The Royal Collection, London

Oil On Canvas
130 5/16 Inches By 116 5/8 Inches

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T12:43:00.010-05:00

Carl Maria Von Weber

2011-12-20T21:57:00.009-05:00

Our Final Outing Before Christmas

2011-12-20T21:25:00.060-05:00

This past weekend was totally devoted to Christmas-related activities and preparations, with one exception: on Sunday afternoon, Joshua and I took my mother downtown to view a small art exhibition and to attend a concert.

At the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts, we attended “Bonjour Japon: A Parisian Love Affair With Japanese Art”, an exhibition devoted to the influence of Japanese art on the art of France during the late 19th Century. Most of the important Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists were represented—the exhibition involved a case of rounding up the usual suspects—and most of the works on display were very minor. “Bonjour Japon” is the kind of exhibition that dedicated museum visitors have experienced a hundred times: yet another recycling of popular Impressionist/Post-Impressionist works under the pretext of a fresh perspective.

The current major exhibition at MIA is devoted to Japanese prints, and “Bonjour Japon” is one of two small pendent exhibitions to the main affair. We have not attended the major exhibition, and probably shall not.

In all, there were seventeen temporary exhibitions on display at MIA during our visit (with another two MIA exhibitions on view at other sites). The MIA has a tendency to saturate art lovers with small-scale exhibitions, and I am not confident that this is a wise practice.

From the museum we drove to Ted Mann Concert Hall to hear the Sunday matinee concert by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The SPCO has had to vacate its regular home, The Ordway Center in Saint Paul, for most of the month of December due to popular Christmas programming at The Ordway (including a two-week run of the uninspired Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Cinderella”).

Mann, which opened in 1993, is a beautiful concert hall—it probably is my favorite concert hall in the Twin Cities—and I much prefer it to Ordway. However, Mann’s capacity is just over 1100 persons, while Ordway’s capacity is 1900 persons. The SPCO loses revenue every time it must book Mann. This surely must grate on SPCO officials, since a primary reason for building Ordway was to create a permanent home for the SPCO. Alas, since The Ordway opened in 1985, the SPCO has had to contend with an Ordway administration that tries to keep the hall booked with touring and self-produced musicals and dance events year-round, a practice that often deprives the SPCO of its home concert hall.

A resolution is in the works: groundbreaking for a second hall at The Ordway is scheduled for the very near future. The new hall is supposed to be in place by 2014, and will be devoted exclusively to concerts. The price tag for the new hall is $75 million, and most of the money has already been raised.

At the very same time that a second hall at The Ordway will be rising from the ground, the Minnesota Orchestra’s home, Orchestra Hall (which opened in 1974), will undergo an extensive two-year renovation costing $90 million. As is the case with the proposed new venue at The Ordway, most of the money for the renovation of Orchestra Hall has already been raised. Orchestra Hall is scheduled to close at the conclusion of the current subscription season and to reopen in 2014. (For the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 seasons, the Minnesota Orchestra will occupy a specially-created temporary concert hall at the new Convention Center).

The SPCO has an annual budget of $10 million. The organization announced last week that it would balance its budget during the current fiscal year.

The Minnesota Orchestra, however, announced last week that it would incur a deficit of $2.9 million during the current fiscal year (the Minnesota Orchestra has an annual budget of $30 million). Oddly, the orchestra announced an increase in ticket revenue over the preceding fiscal year, and blamed the deficit on a smaller-than-expected draw from its endowment (the Minnesota Orchestra has one of the six largest endowments among American orchestras). The numbers add up only if one takes into account the rolling-average method for determining the permitted draw from an endowment—and, I submit, it is irresponsible for a non-profit organization to use rolling-average accounting during periods of adverse market conditions. Doing so merely renders permanent the loss of value in the corpus of the trust—with the inevitable result that allotted annual draws two and three years into economic downturns are significantly reduced, precisely the situation the Minnesota Orchestra faces at present.

Sunday’s SPCO concert was pleasing. I am glad we attended.

Christian Zacharias was back on the podium (Josh and I had heard Zacharias lead the orchestra two weeks ago). On Sunday, Zacharias conducted two Haydn symphonies, supplemented with Stravinksy’s Danses Concertantes and Weber’s Konzertstück. It was a delightful program.

Zacharias is not a profound conductor of Haydn, but he is a satisfactory one. Zacharias’s Haydn is plain, not stylish, and Zacharias displayed more earnestness than imagination in shaping Haydn’s themes—yet Zacharias kept things moving and he never distorted tempi or musical line.

Symphony No. 42, from 1771, was played first. Scored for two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, Symphony No. 42 bears many of the hallmarks of Haydn’s late style, including a false recapitulation in the first movement and a fully-developed Rondo in the fourth movement complete with unexpected starts and stops.

Symphony No.100 (“Military”), composed for Haydn’s second trip to London in 1794, was played last. On a much grander scale than its 1771 predecessor (although shorter in length), the “Military” adds two flutes, two clarinets, two trumpets and timpani, triangle, cymbals and bass drum to the Haydn orchestra heard in Symphony No. 42. The “Military” is one of Haydn’s greatest—and most popular—symphonies and has occupied a central place in the repertory since the day of its premiere.

We enjoyed the Haydn performances, although we remained fully aware that we were hearing nothing exceptional. The performances displayed little warmth and little wit. Nothing miraculous occurred. The slow movements tended to trudge. We do not live in an age of Haydn conductors.

Stravinsky’s Danses Concertantes was written in 1940—it was the first Stravinsky composition written, start to finish, after Stravinsky had emigrated to the United States—and came immediately after the composer’s Symphony In C. To my ears, Danses Concertantes is a weak piece; it has always struck me as a recycled version of the much finer Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, which premiered in 1938. Perhaps because of the international situation, the year 1940 was not a good one for Stravinsky; his writing that year was impersonal, dutiful and professional, as if achieved on automatic pilot (the Symphony In C is also a rote work).

The SPCO performance of Danses Concertantes was accomplished—but there is little that can be done with the piece aside from playing the notes.

Weber’s Konzertstück—in which Zacharias served as both conductor and pianist—was the highlight of the concert.

The Konzertstück was Weber’s final significant work for orchestra. Premiered in 1821 (one week after the premiere of “Der Freischütz”), the Konzertstück came long after the composer’s early symphonies and clarinet and piano concertos. I believe it is Weber’s finest piece of absolute music (although the composer apparently had a programmatic scheme in mind while writing the Konzertstück). The Konzertstück possesses a depth and an originality otherwise absent in Weber works for the concert hall (the composer’s works for the theater are another matter entirely).

A veritable piano concerto in one movement (in four distinct sections), the Konzertstück is the most concentrated and most overtly dramatic of Weber’s orchestral works. Perhaps of greater importance, the work coheres—which cannot genuinely be said of the composer’s symphonies and concertos. It is as finely wrought and as deeply expressive as anything Beethoven or Schubert wrote in 1821.

The Konzertstück was a mainstay of the orchestral repertory in Europe and America until the middle of the 20th Century, at which point the work began to fall from view. Its neglect in recent decades has not been deserved.

I thought Sunday’s performance was excellent, both from orchestra and pianist. In fact, I wished the musicians had ditched the Stravinsky and played the Weber twice.

We had a lovely afternoon in what was our final outing before Christmas. My mother enjoyed the exhibition and the concert, and Josh enjoyed the exhibition and the concert (and it was Josh’s first visit to Mann, which he very much appreciated).

On Thursday, Josh and I will fly to Oklahoma to spend Christmas with Josh’s family. We shall return on the 29th.

Christmas Poinsettia Snowflake Cookies

2011-12-16T19:41:00.025-05:00

The fruits are they of holy Christmas tide,
But baked indeed, for children's use designed.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A Very Special Player

2011-12-15T20:42:00.029-05:00

He was, indeed, a very special player.

I am sorry I was too young to see him in his prime—and I am not even a baseball fan.

Anton Chekhov In 1901

2011-12-14T14:45:00.008-05:00

Chekhov In Repertory

2011-12-11T23:02:00.022-05:00

Yesterday we did something fun: my mother, my sister-in-law, and Joshua and I went to the Rarig Center on the main campus of the University Of Minnesota to see two Chekhov plays, “Uncle Vanya” and “The Cherry Orchard”. The plays, presented by the University Of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts And Dance, had been running in repertory for the previous ten days, and yesterday’s performances marked the final day of the repertory run. We caught “Uncle Vanya” at the 2:00 p.m. matinee and we caught “The Cherry Orchard” at the 7:30 p.m. evening performance.

The student actors were taken from the BFA Actor Training Program jointly sponsored by the University Of Minnesota and The Guthrie Theater. The casts were directed by two out-of-town professional stage directors known for expertise in Chekhov.

We enjoyed the performances. They were high-quality student performances, nothing more, but the plays came across fully. Texts had been discreetly pruned, and the stage designs were not particularly good and not particularly imaginative, but the productions were definitely worth experiencing. The “Uncle Vanya” production was better than the production of “The Cherry Orchard”.

It had been a long time since any of us had attended a production of “Uncle Vanya”. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I saw “Uncle Vanya” on stage.

My mother and Josh and I had most recently attended a performance of “The Cherry Orchard” in London in August—and, further, Josh and I had seen “The Cherry Orchard” in Baltimore in March 2009. Yesterday having been our third “Cherry Orchard” in less than three years, Josh and I intend now to give the play a rest.

Between performances, we ate dinner at a Greek/French restaurant within walking distance—a long walk—of the Rarig Center.

Like the restaurant itself, we mixed Greek food and French food. Since we had plenty of time on our hands, we ordered four courses: Phyllo triangles with three different Greek fillings; Greek salad; Bouillabaisse; and Baklava. Our dinner was slightly disappointing, especially the Bouillabaisse, but we did not go hungry.

Everyone else in my family camped out at my parents’ house yesterday.

They did not go hungry, either.

Prior to the Chekhov performances, we all sat down to a lunch of homemade tomato-cream soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

For dinner, my mother left behind chickens ready for roasting, vegetables ready for steaming and new potatoes ready for boiling, along with a fresh cranberry salad and a Boston Cream Pie. It was a snap for my father and my brothers to do what little additional preparation remained.

From The Dutch Golden Age

2011-12-08T18:18:00.037-05:00

Pieter Janssens Elinga (1623-1682)
The Reading Woman
Date Unknown (Probably Circa 1657)
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Oil On Canvas
30 3/16 Inches By 25 3/8 Inches

Potsdam 1945

2011-12-06T15:03:00.020-05:00

A group portrait of the principal players at the Potsdam Conference, held at the Cecilienhof Palace in July 1945.

Truman looks ridiculous. His attitude and demeanor are those of a puffed-up penguin, a hick newly-released from the boondocks, with no idea that he reveals himself to be both boob and buffoon.

British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, not the sharpest tool in the shed, does not come off much better.

Standing are American Admiral William Leahy, British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, U.S. Secretary Of State James Byrnes, and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.

Leahy was the least prepossessing of American admirals of the World War II era. Bevin, not the brightest bulb in the closet, and Byrnes, a lightweight whose tenure—happily—was very brief, were singularly under-whelming administrators of foreign policy and international affairs.

It is frightening to think that this group of men was responsible for the post-war direction of Europe.

Stalin and Molotov, a couple of dismaying criminals, appear to be the only competent persons in the photograph.

That, too, is frightening.

Towers Of Angst

2011-12-04T16:52:00.025-05:00

Last evening, Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in music of Beethoven and Frank Martin.

Pianist Christian Zacharias was both guest conductor and guest soloist.

Josh and I last heard Zacharias in November of last year, when he had appeared with the Boston Symphony as conductor and pianist.

That 2010 occasion had not been a happy one. Zacharias, making his Boston Symphony debut as a conductor (Zacharias had debuted as a pianist with the Boston Symphony in 1979; that 1979 Boston appearance had marked his American debut), had been assigned two late Haydn symphonies and two Mozart piano concertos, far too heavy a remit for a conductor working with an orchestra for the first time. In hindsight, I am surprised that those Boston performances did not fall apart (which they came close to doing).

Zacharias was on much friendlier turf last evening, because he has worked successfully with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in the past. Last night, it was clear from the start of the program that Zacharias and the musicians worked well together.

Martin’s Etudes For String Orchestra began the concert (and was the attraction that got us into the concert hall). Composed in 1955 and 1956, the composition is just one of many masterpieces that flowed from Martin’s pen, starting when the composer was in his early fifties and ending with his death at the age of 84.

It took Martin a long time to acquire his individual voice, longer perhaps than any other major composer. Martin was fifty-one or fifty-two years old when his individual voice finally emerged during the early years of World War II. That he lived and worked in neutral Switzerland enabled Martin to write without letup during the war years. Once he found his voice, Martin’s output significantly accelerated; almost all Martin works performed today come from the last thirty years of the composer’s life.

The Etudes For String Orchestra are marvels of invention. It would be accurate to classify the composition as Neo-Classic in the Stravinksy mode, but such is a very limiting—and almost misleading—classification. Martin was one of the century’s great masters of counterpoint (he studied the music of Bach his entire life), and he was one of the century’s great masters of serial writing. Both disciplines are on ample display in the Etudes.

Martin was a mathematician and physicist by training as well as a devout Calvinist. His music is both innately logical and deeply spiritual, qualities entirely in keeping with his scientific background and deep religious faith.

The SPCO performance of the Etudes was technically brilliant, but it shortchanged much of the expression written into the score. I suspect the SPCO does not play enough Martin to come to grips with the full range of content in Martin’s music. The Etudes sounded impersonal in the Saint Paul performance, as if the musicians had accepted the work’s title at face value.

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 followed the Martin.

The orchestra’s playing in the Beethoven was, once again, impersonal—but this may have been the fault of the conductor, who could hardly play the piano part while looking out for the orchestra at the same time.

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 may be performed with a single conductor/pianist because it is very much an on-the-surface piece. Beethoven’s last three piano concertos, however, require both a conductor and a pianist—and a conductor and pianist with distinct personalities, personalities strong enough to realize fully the tension and battle of wills Beethoven consciously wrote into the concerto form in his mature efforts. To call upon a single musician to perform both roles will, inevitably, limit the scope of the performance—and, on occasion, even trivialize it.

The orchestra was a non-factor in last night’s performance. The notes were played, beautifully, but nothing happened. The orchestra provided a supporting, not a contrasting, presence.

It was, nonetheless, an interesting performance, but only because Zacharias the keyboard artist had very definite ideas about how to shape the piano part.

Zacharias dispensed with the niceties of Classicism. His tempi were all over the place, and his very pronounced and very personal use of rubato would not have been unwelcome in the music of Chopin. Zacharias played the piano part as if it represented Early Romanticism, where deep expression and heightened drama count for more than classic equipoise. Significantly, I thought that Zacharias was trying to find outright tragedy in a piece where there is none.

Zacharias certainly held my attention—but any musician that offers a highly unusual reading of a standard work will, by definition, hold the listener’s attention. Such cannot be the sole—or even the primary—standard by which a musician’s work is to be judged.

Simply put, Zacharias’s too-Romantic style of play shoved Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 thirty or forty years into the future. The result was that the work’s formal perfection disappeared, its chaste qualities swelling to towers of angst. Zacharias’s interpretation would have been better suited to the Schumann Piano Concerto.

After intermission, the orchestra played excerpts from Beethoven’s “The Creatures Of Prometheus”, one of the composer’s least interesting compositions. Played complete (overture and sixteen numbers), the score takes approximately 70 minutes to perform. Happily, the selections offered last night required only half that time—yet the work nonetheless seemed to go on forever.

It is easy to understand why “The Creatures Of Prometheus” is seldom encountered in concert halls. The music is not inspired; the composer seems stuck in his early contredanse mode of writing.

What is not easy to understand is why the SPCO placed “The Creatures Of Prometheus” last on the program. It was the weakest music of the night. It should have served as the concert’s opening work.

Zacharias will return to the SPCO in two weeks time, conducting music of Haydn, Weber and Stravinsky. Josh and I may try to attend one of those concerts.

In the meantime, Zacharias will make his long-overdue Carnegie Hall recital debut on December 13, a debut that should have occurred thirty years ago. When I read, a day or two ago, that Zacharias had never previously been invited to perform a solo recital in Carnegie’s main auditorium, I was dumbfounded. Zacharias has been an important pianist for more than three decades. He should have logged a dozen Carnegie recitals by now.

Herbert Von Karajan Directs Anna Tomowa-Sintow

2011-12-04T16:33:00.023-05:00

Herbert Von Karajan directs the Elsa of soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow in "Lohengrin" at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1976.

Dining

2011-12-03T08:12:00.067-05:00

Theater In The Round is not having a good season.

Last evening, my middle brother and Joshua and I stayed downtown after work and attended a performance of Theater In The Round’s current production of A. R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room”. It may have been the weakest presentation I have ever encountered at Theater In The Round.

“The Dining Room” is more series of vignettes than fully-formed play. The script presents several different families from several different time periods (the early 20th Century through the late 1970s) in several different scenarios experiencing several different family problems, all set in the same dining room. The author’s theme has often been interpreted as depicting the decline of WASP America and the corresponding deterioration of the American upper-middle-class, but I am not so certain that such was the author’s intent.

“The Dining Room” was written in 1980, just as The Reagan Revolution was gathering steam, and premiered on January 31, 1981, ten days after President Reagan’s inauguration. Under such circumstances, for theorists to attribute to “The Dining Room” an examination of the decline of WASP America and the deterioration of the upper-middle-class is a case of grievous mistiming of circumstance at best or boneheaded misreading of history at worst.

In all likelihood, Gurney, in “The Dining Room”, was writing about his own family, as has always been Gurney's practice in his plays (as the playwright has admitted on multiple occasions). Gurney no doubt took as his starting point various family dramas he personally witnessed or heard about, and used his imagination to proceed from there.

Many of the vignettes are funny, but more than a few leave a sour aftertaste. I suspect that Gurney, in his private life, was caught between loving his family members and loathing them.

The play calls for six actors to play fifty-some roles ranging in age from small children to elders in their dotage. The vignettes are played without pause, and on occasion overlap. What with all the role-switching, “The Dining Room” is not an easy play for actors—and this is especially so since the scenes are too short for any of the characters to emerge as anything other than archetypes. Actors, I believe, must find the play as much frustrating and pointless as challenging to their craft.

The play is frustrating for audiences, too, because there is no depth underlying its rapid-moving surface. The charm of the play quickly pales as the vignettes go on and on (and I believe that at least one of the vignettes was cut from the Theater In The Round production). Sitting through two-and-a-quarter hours of thin vignettes is akin to dining on course after course of puff pastry.

For “The Dining Room” to succeed, the play must be expertly cast and expertly directed. The play must also move with great swiftness, because audiences cannot be allowed an opportunity to analyze the play as it unfolds or else the play fails miserably.

The cast in the Theater In The Round production was not good. None of the actors was up to the many demands called for by the playwright.

The director of the Theater In The Round production did not know how to shape the material or bring it to life. There was silent thud after silent thud as each vignette ended. Some scenes were ponderous, others were too cute by half, most simply fell flat.

In short, everyone associated with this production seemed to be wrong for the project. I had seen productions of “The Dining Room” before last night, but until last night I had never seen a production in which literally nothing worked.

This was the third consecutive Theater In The Round production we found acutely disappointing. Earlier this season, we sat through Theater In The Round’s “Bus Stop” and “The Reluctant Debutante”, productions that were not necessarily embarrassing but productions that had little to recommend them. “The Dining Room” production, in contrast, was very much an embarrassment. Something has gone wrong with the company—Theater In The Round is the oldest repertory theater company in the Twin Cities, preceding The Guthrie by well over a decade, and has a long and distinguished history and tradition—and something must be done to right the ship.

Before the performance, we ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant downtown.

We started with fresh corn chowder with roasted Poblano peppers and queso fresco, and continued with tomato salad with watermelon, queso fresco and red chili vinaigrette.

We ordered (and shared) three different plates of seafood: crab empanadas with salsa verde and avocado; red snapper ceviche with avocado, radish and orange; and sugarcane-skewered tequila shrimp with lemon-ginger mojo.

We finished with grilled chicken quesadilla with roasted corn and Poblano peppers.

Our food was pleasing, but we shall never return to the restaurant. The servers were aggressive liquor-pushers, and would not take “no” for an answer.

After we declined to order cocktails upon sitting down, our waiter informed us that he would bring us tequila cocktails anyway, but that he would remove them from our bill if we found them displeasing.

“If we want cocktails, we will be sure to let you know” was my brother’s response.

The waiter nevertheless promptly brought us cocktails. As the waiter placed them on our table, my brother told him, very quietly, “You can remove these, or I can remove them. If I remove them, you will need to call a busboy to clean up the mess on the floor.”

The waiter lowered his eyes, and said, in a very smarmy tone, “Teetotalers, are we?”

My brother looked him right in the eye, and responded, “Minimum-wage employee, are we?”

My brother’s response froze the waiter in his tracks, which had been my brother’s intent. After more than thirty seconds of total silence, my brother motioned at the cocktails and, without again looking at the waiter, said, “Remove these. And send a different server to our table.”

The waiter complied—and, five minutes later, we were greeted by a different waiter.

The second waiter started out just as smarmy as the first. In a high-pitched, singsong voice, drawing out his syllables to interminable lengths, he said, “OK. I understand NO COCKTAILS here. No cocktails AT ALL. OK. We can work with that.”

My brother looked the new waiter in the eye, and asked, very pointedly, “Do you always talk like this?”

My brother’s question froze the second waiter, too. My brother allowed the waiter to stew in his discomfort for thirty seconds, and then my brother, without again looking at the waiter, said, “Give us five minutes, and we’ll be ready to order.”

When the waiter returned to our table, precisely five minutes later, he did not say a word. He stood, in silence, and waited for my brother’s instructions.

My brother placed our order, telling the waiter what we wanted, in what sequence we wanted the courses, how many minutes we preferred between the various courses, and what—if any—beverages we wanted with each course.

The waiter said nothing, but he nodded—and the waiter followed my brother’s instructions to the letter. The waiter served us, faultlessly, for the rest of our meal—and he never said another word.

When we were done with our dinner, we demonstrated noblesse oblige, and tipped the waiter 50 per cent of the bill.

This morning we will all go to the local nursery/greenhouse and pick out our Christmas tree. In my family, my mother has the privilege of selecting the tree.

At the nursery/greenhouse, we will meet up with my older brother and his family, because they, too, will be selecting their Christmas tree.

Once the trees have been selected, we will take my parents’ tree home and place the base in water, after which we will all go over to my older brother’s house and spend the day.

We shall help my older brother and his family trim the tree and hang evergreens (they will return the favor at my parents’ house tomorrow). My mother and my sister-in-law plan to bake a few Christmas cookies, simply to add to the kids’ excitement about the Christmas season getting underway. A dinner of prime rib is planned.

Dinner will be over by 6:30 p.m., because Josh and I plan to attend tonight’s Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert, which starts at 8:00 p.m.

Mitchum, Miles And Lean

2011-12-02T15:49:00.018-05:00

Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles confer with director David Lean during the filming of "Ryan's Daughter".

Andre Watts In Liszt

2011-11-30T22:42:00.031-05:00

On Tuesday night, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear pianist Andre Watts in recital at the Ordway Center. Watts’s Twin Cities appearance, sponsored by The Schubert Club, was devoted to the music of Franz Liszt. The program Watts offered local audiences was identical to the all-Liszt program he has been playing throughout the country since the beginning of the year.

Watts is a natural pianist, with a beautiful and refined technique. His hands and arms are “placed” naturally and gracefully at all times; his upper body remains erect and relaxed while he is at the keyboard; his finger work is superb. Watts was clearly the beneficiary of excellent basic instruction when he was a child. It was a pleasure to observe him in action, because one may no longer assume that pianists possess classic technique, as we observed only a few nights ago when we saw and heard Jeremy Denk come to grief in the music of Beethoven in the very same hall.

While Watts is a commanding pianist, I am not confident that Watts is a commanding musician. He is a fine but perhaps not considerable interpreter of mainstream piano literature. In a career nearing the half-century mark, Watts has never asserted unique authority in the music of any particular composer or period (although he has devoted much time and attention to Schubert and Liszt in the last two decades). Watts plays a broad range of repertory, and he plays it well—but he plays none of it memorably.

The music of Liszt is not important to me. I very seldom listen to Liszt, although I happen to like and admire the tone poems for orchestra—remaining fully aware that they are, by and large, problematic works. I even enjoy the tone poem, Festklänge (a work Robert Craft has singled out as one of the worst compositions ever penned by a major composer), although I realize that the piece is free of content.

The piano music of Liszt is another matter. On the whole, I am indifferent, although some of the late pieces are, admittedly, fascinating. The merits and demerits of Liszt’s piano compositions have been debated endlessly for well over a century, and I am familiar with all the arguments—and I remain largely uninterested in the arguments, and largely uninterested in the music.

One fact I have always found odd: Pierre Boulez, of all persons, performed a great deal of Liszt in his early years as a conductor. In the early 1970s, Boulez even devoted an entire season at the New York Philharmonic to an exploration of Liszt (Boulez has since dropped Liszt from his repertory).

Contrary to my expectations, I enjoyed Watts’s recital. Watts tended to overplay, and he did a bit of showboating, but I enjoyed the recital because I enjoyed the music.

Watts began with the familiar Concert Etude No. 3 (“Un Suspiro”), a warm-up both for the pianist and for the audience. Watts continued with an excerpt from Années de pèlerinage, troisième année, the beautiful Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este.

The Sonata In B Minor concluded the first half of the program. Watts held my full attention in this much-performed work, something I did not anticipate—and which I held in high regard.

The second half of the recital was even better. Watts began with five late pieces, all gems—Bagatelle Ohne Tonart; Nuages Gris; En Rêve; La Lugubre Gondola II (which American composer John Adams has arranged for orchestra); and Schlaflos! Frage Und Antwort—and concluded with three show-stoppers: the Etude No. 2 from Six Grand Etudes After Paganini; the Transcendental Etude No. 10; and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13. All were handsomely if not quite brilliantly played, and I can imagine only half a dozen living pianists that might be superior in this repertory (starting with Pollini and Kissin).

I was not bored for one minute all night, either with Liszt or with Watts.

That renders the concert a great success in my eyes.

(My parents and Josh, however, were less impressed than I. Perhaps I experienced an odd night on which I was somehow susceptible to succumbing to Liszt.)

In the days before the concert, we had been prepared for a cancellation. Watts has cancelled several recitals this year on short notice, including one recital only a week or two prior to his appearance in Saint Paul. On Tuesday afternoon, my mother confirmed that the recital would proceed as scheduled—and my father confirmed that Watts, indeed, was in town.

Without such confirmations, we would not have left home.

The Good . . . And The Bad And The Ugly

2011-11-26T22:15:00.020-05:00

The University Of Minnesota Marching Band (“The Pride Of Minnesota”) in its fixed pre-game presentation, a complicated set of maneuvers based on variations of the letter “M” that has been performed for what must be generations. No matter how many times I see it, it always gives me chills. It may be the best block-formation routine ever created, and is 100 times more sophisticated than the silly spelling routine for which the Ohio State Marching Band is renowned.

The faintly ridiculous if not borderline grotesque Jeremy Denk, mooning for the audience at a recent New York recital.

Dink Thenk

2011-11-26T09:14:00.057-05:00

Last night, after a full day of playing with the kids (and the dog) as well as having a go at the mountains of food left over from Thanksgiving, my parents and Joshua and I went to Saint Paul to hear a concert by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. It was the first Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert of the season for all of us.

It was the music that drew us to Ordway Center, not the guest artists. British conductor Douglas Boyd, a very minor talent who has worked with the SPCO on and off for years, was on the podium. Pianist Jeremy Denk, an even more insignificant figure, was guest soloist.

The concert featured one modern work: Australian composer Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony, a one-movement quarter-hour work for chamber orchestra. Written in 2000 and premiered in 2001, the Pastoral Symphony incorporates taped sounds: birdsong “dramatically contrasted with industrial and mechanical sounds of environmental degradation”, i.e., the sounds of chainsaws chopping down trees.

The work is as deadly earnest and dreadfully clichéd as the composer’s program notes suggest. Quiet birdsong begins the piece, after which volume mounts until what is supposed to be a climax is reached—this is where the chain saws come in—after which the piece ends in what is, I believe, supposed to be an elegy. Any competent composer could write a devastating parody of the piece without altering a single gesture.

In comparison to the sheer silliness and utter ineptitude of Dean’s Pastoral Symphony, George Antheil’s feeble Ballet Mecanique and Einojuhani Rautavaara’s even-more-feeble Cantus Arcticus—two unsuccessful compositions that bear some surface programmatic similarities to Dean’s effort—become incomparable masterpieces.

Dean, a violist as well as composer, writes well for violin and viola—at least from a technical standpoint. Practitioners of those instruments relate that Dean knows how to write idiomatically and gratefully for solo violin and solo viola. Violinists Midori and Frank Peter Zimmermann, among others, have taken up various Dean compositions for violin.

Dean’s orchestral music, however, is another matter. Dean’s orchestral music is unimaginative and unoriginal. It lacks ideas, it lacks profile, it lacks personality, it lacks character. In fact, Dean does not even write competently for orchestra: his orchestral music does not “sound”. In all of these respects, Dean strikes me as Australia’s answer to American composer Stephen Hartke, whose bland, faceless music shares the same attributes.

Indeed, Dean’s Pastoral Symphony has numerous—and eerie—parallels with Hartke’s 1988 composition, Pacific Rim: both works strive so hard to be trendy, using every popular device of the moment, that both were incongruously—and gruesomely—outdated even before final drafts were sent to copyists.

Dean is not very talented. His composition ideas are thin—if they can be called ideas—and he does not know how to work them out. Dean’s music does not develop, it does not attain climaxes, it does not resolve, it does not cohere. It’s thin, tonal stuff, without rhythmic interest, without complexity, without strong organizing principles, and might as well have been written in 1890 for all the interest in modernism it displays. (Dean does, however, know how to write a satisfactory chromatic harmonic progression, about the only thing he does well.)

Simon Rattle is the single conductor of note who has taken up Dean’s music—Dean for years played in the viola section of Rattle’s Berlin Philharmonic—and Rattle’s advocacy is not particularly meaningful, since Rattle has never shown himself to be a good judge of contemporary composition. No other high-profile conductor has ever touched Dean’s work-list.

Boyd and the SPCO gave a clean performance of the Pastoral Symphony, cleaner than the Swedish Chamber Orchestra performance recorded for the BIS label and issued a few years back. However, the SPCO musicians revealed no surprises and no unexpected depths in the score.

Programming Dean’s Pastoral Symphony was a waste of the orchestra’s and the audience’s time. In a concert otherwise devoted to music of Beethoven and Brahms, the orchestra should have programmed a fifteen-minute piece by Luciano Berio instead of Dean. Berio’s music can stand up to Beethoven and Brahms; Dean’s music cannot.

The Serenade No. 2 of Brahms opened the program. It was the highlight of the evening.

Scored for violas, cellos, double basses, two flutes (with one flautist doubling as piccolo in the final movement), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and two horns, the Serenade No. 2 has a dark, solemn coloration, seemingly not in keeping with the serenade form. Brilliance is not allowed. High strings are omitted from the instrumentation, as are high brass and percussion.

And yet the work is charming, ear-beguiling and radiant, surely standards by which a serenade may be judged. Brahms enlarged and deepened the serenades of Mozart, but he did not abandon the requirement that serenades, above all, be pleasurable.

Two years ago, Orrin Howard captured the essence of this early five-movement work of Brahms in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

The lilt, the warmth, the gracious melodies, and the enlivening cross rhythms [are what] give distinction to a work that ESSENTIALLY fits the definition of a serenade.

A solemn and extended sonata-form Allegro begins the serenade; a brilliant and extended Rondo concludes it. At its center lies a profound and extended Adagio, framed by a brief Scherzo and a brief Minuet. The Adagio has the gravity and simplicity of Bach, and is the heart of the Serenade No. 2.

Boyd and the SPCO offered a plain, surface performance of Serenade No. 2, missing opportunities to revel in luxuriousness of sound and ignoring undercurrents of melancholy that permeate the work.

Nevertheless, I am always happy to hear the Brahms Serenade No. 2—the work is not often programmed—and I was happy to hear it last night.

Oddly, the Minnesota Orchestra will play the Brahms Serenade No. 2 in the third week of January, less than two months from now. I doubt that the Serenade No. 2 has ever previously been programmed by both local ensembles in the same season.

The Brahms should have been played last on the SPCO program, but the SPCO placed the Brahms before intermission, offering Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as the concluding work of the evening.

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1 is a very easy piece to play—it is easy for the orchestra, easy for the conductor, easy for the pianist—but it is also one of the most appealing of Beethoven’s early works. The Concerto No. 1, buoyantly infectious, brims with energy and high spirits and good humor. One need simply play the notes on the printed page, and the full effect of the work comes across. It was not until his Concerto No. 3 that Beethoven wrote a piano concerto in which the notes themselves are merely the starting point.

Alas, few of the attractions of the Piano Concerto No. 1 registered last night because the pianist was inadequate.

No one claims Denk to be a virtuoso—he does not possess even a satisfactory technique—but his playing last night was shockingly poor. Any competent pianist can toss off the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 while sleeping, but Denk was operating at the outer reaches of his technical capacity in the most rudimentary passagework. Even simple scales were not delivered cleanly and evenly.

The first movement of the concerto was singularly lacking in drama, weight and forward propulsion. There was a choppy, start-and-stop quality to Denk’s playing, and no interplay with conductor and orchestra. Denk had trouble finding and keeping a basic pulse, and demonstrated a pronounced tendency to rush things whenever a moderately demanding passage approached.

Denk made absolutely nothing of the slow movement. It was interminable in his hands—shapeless, wandering, expressionless—and lacked tension and lyricism.

The final movement had no rhythmic bite, no sense of momentum, no suggestion of having reached a resolution at its conclusion.

One of Denk’s technical problems is that he places his bench too far from his keyboard. This unsuitable placement affects his shoulders, upper arms and lower arms, none of which are relaxed enough to produce a pleasing sound from his instrument and none of which are in the proper placement for producing power without strain. I could not help but notice that Denk frequently turned his upper body from side to side whenever he had to address the far ends of his keyboard—a pedagogical issue that should have been addressed before he was ten years old—and I could not help but notice that Denk had to stretch and contort his entire body (Denk has very short legs) in order to reach his instrument’s pedals. The latter absurdity produced several delicious moments of comedy during Denk’s performance—moments that were, according to my father, well worth the price of admission.

I had not seen Denk since February 2008, when I had heard him in joint recital with Joshua Bell in the same hall in Saint Paul. Denk, not a handsome man, has put on weight in the last forty-five months, and is starting to develop an alarming if not frightening facial resemblance to James Levine.

On our way back to Edina after the concert, my father said, “Well, I suppose we’ll have to put on the Kempff/Van Kempen the very minute we get home to get this disaster out of our minds. Otherwise, we’ll be prone to nightmares.” My father was referring to the celebrated early-1950s Wilhelm Kempff/Paul Van Kempen/Berlin Philharmonic mono recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, perhaps my father’s favorite recorded account of the work.

When we arrived home, however, we did not bother to cleanse our minds and souls with Kempff/Van Kempen—it was getting late, and the dog wanted some attention, and we were ready to eat more Thanksgiving food (cold turkey and cold Brussels sprouts) before turning in.

Today is the final game of the season for the Golden Gophers. Minnesota will host Illinois this afternoon, and the game will be played in the Twin Cities.

My brothers will attend the game, but my father has decided to skip the game and to stay home and to play with his grandchildren.

In my father’s place, my sister-in-law will attend her very first American college football game. She has no interest in sports, and she knows next-to-nothing about American college football, but she decided on Friday that she would like to go to one college football game to see what all the excitement was about. My brothers will take good care of her.

I predict she will enjoy the pre-game ceremonies and festivities, and the halftime show.

After all, The University Of Minnesota Marching Band (“The Pride Of Minnesota”), marching since 1892 and performing block-formation halftime shows since 1910, is very, very good.

I doubt, however, that my sister-in-law will be impressed with blocking and tackling, passing and punting, or first downs and field goals.

Tebow

2011-11-24T23:34:00.004-05:00

Eager To Keep Going

2011-11-24T23:26:00.052-05:00

We sat down to eat Thanksgiving Dinner at 5:30 p.m.

My mother (with help from numerous hands) had prepared:

A honey-glazed baked ham
A giant-sized roast turkey with herb stuffing
Two large-sized roast chickens with herb stuffing
Oyster-herb stuffing, baked separately
Homemade butter noodles
Mashed potatoes
Candied sweet potatoes
Whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple
Fresh green beans, with almonds
Shoepeg white corn
Fresh baby carrots
Fresh parsnips
Brussels sprouts
Red cabbage baked in cream and butter
Fresh cranberries in light syrup
Cranberry-orange relish
Cranberry-tangerine-cream cheese-nut salad
Homemade dinner rolls
A relish tray of Amish pickles
Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin-custard pie
Pecan pie
Cranberry-walnut pie
Sour cream-raisin-brandy pie

The Amish pickles were the only items not made in my mother’s kitchen. My mother orders Amish pickles year-round through the mail, liking always to keep some on hand.

Everyone ate only a tablespoon of everything. Nevertheless, when it came time for dessert, everyone had already had enough to eat. As a consequence, everyone ate one tiny sliver of pie, and called it a day.

Leftovers (including leftover Dutch Chowder, which we had for lunch) will carry us through the rest of the weekend.

When we eat Thanksgiving leftovers, we reheat nothing. We eat everything cold. As a general rule, cooked food tastes better chilled than reheated, and is not as prone to dry out.

The kids enjoyed their Thanksgiving Dinner.

The dog enjoyed his Thanksgiving Dinner.

And we enjoyed ours, too.

(Of course, the dog was cheated out of turkey, as dogs cannot be fed turkey. He was, nonetheless, quite happy with his chicken and ham—and he was the only one in the household eager to keep going when it came time for dessert.)

“Heap High The Board With Plenteous Cheer . . .”

2011-11-23T12:43:00.008-05:00

Emmy Göring On Trial

2011-11-22T17:31:00.018-05:00

Emmy Göring at her 1948 de-Nazification proceeding.

Fast And Furious

2011-11-20T22:09:00.020-05:00

On Friday evening, Joshua and I and my middle brother remained downtown after work and attended a performance of Doug Wright’s play, “I Am My Own Wife”, at Jungle Theater.

For Josh and me, it was our second encounter with this one-actor play about an East German transvestite who survived both the Nazi and Communist regimes—but at a price: by serving as an informant for the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police. Josh and I had attended a performance of “I Am My Own Wife” in February 2010 at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia.

The Signature Theatre production had not been good. The actor in the Arlington production had proven himself inadequate to the assignment; he was simply unable to carry the show (although we saw the same actor portray a more than creditable Frank in “Educating Rita” thirteen months later in Boston). In Arlington, the entire production had reeked of a small-college drama project.

The Jungle Theater production of “I Am My Own Wife” has received much acclaim, and has set the Twin Cities theater community abuzz (not always a good sign). Because word-of-mouth has been so positive, Josh and I decided to see the play again—and my brother decided he wanted to see the play, too.

Although the same actor and same director had been involved in an earlier Jungle Theater presentation of “I Am My Own Wife”, both have claimed in recent press interviews that the “new” Jungle Theater production is not a revival of that earlier production but a fresh examination of the same material.

Whether revival or new production, the current “I Am My Own Wife” at Jungle Theater is very fine, and vastly superior to the Signature Theatre production we attended twenty-one months ago. The actor onstage at Jungle Theater was seamless in moving from character to character (he is called upon to portray almost forty different characters). As a result, the pace of the show was much quicker at Jungle Theater than at Signature Theatre. The stage design, lighting design and sound design were much better in Minneapolis, too; all conspired to assist the single actor in portraying numerous roles and in holding the audience’s attention for two hours.

The same actor had portrayed Claudius in Jungle Theater’s recent production of “Hamlet”, which Josh and I had seen last month. An undistinguished if not unsatisfactory Claudius, the actor was a joy to watch in “I Am My Own Wife”.

Before the performance, we ate dinner at a nondescript Chinese restaurant. We ordered egg rolls and General Tso’s Chicken.

On Saturday, Joshua’s birthday, Josh and I stayed in, doing work around the house.

My grandmother has been fussing of late at the care facility, and my mother has been spending a good portion of recent days at her mother’s side. On Saturday, both my mother and my father spent most of the day with my grandmother at the care facility.

My older brother’s family stayed home Saturday, too, as did my middle brother. It was a day for everyone to stay home and catch up on household chores.

My parents came home from the care facility at 5:00 p.m.—and, as soon as I saw my mother’s face, I knew it was impossible to contemplate attending that evening’s performance of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” at University Opera Theatre, for which we had tickets.

“Let’s 86 the opera and go out to dinner” were my first words to my parents.

My father slowly shook his head and, after a pause, said, “I think your mother wants to stay in.”

So we stayed in Saturday night, and had a very quiet evening. I made a light supper of salmon-sour cream-onion omelets, and an hour after the omelets I made crepes, which we ate with strawberry jam.

Sunday had been set aside for birthday celebrations: Josh’s (who turned 28 on Saturday) and mine (I shall be 31 on Tuesday).

After Sunday service, everyone in the family went to Edina Grill to eat pumpkin pancakes with praline butter and whipped cream.

We spent the rest of the day at home.

Josh picked the menu for Sunday night’s birthday celebration. We had a garden salad, followed by baked steak, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli and corn. My mother made a white birthday cake with raspberry filling between layers, and we ate the cake with homemade ice cream.

In another three weeks, we have more birthday celebrations in store: the birthdays of my niece (who shall turn three) and my older brother (who shall turn 37).

Next weekend: Thanksgiving, with my parents’ 38th wedding anniversary two days later.

Celebrations are coming fast and furious.

Riefenstahl On Trial

2011-11-20T22:06:00.015-05:00

Leni Riefenstahl in 1948, at one of her de-Nazification proceedings (there were to be four).

Winifred On Trial

2011-11-19T15:31:00.023-05:00

Winifred Wagner in 1947, at one of her de-Nazification proceedings (there were to be two).

Georgiana, Lady Greville

2011-11-16T19:55:00.019-05:00

George Romney (1734-1802)
Georgiana, Lady Greville
1772
Courtauld Institute Of Art, London

Oil On Canvas
30 1/2 Inches By 25 3/8 Inches

Veterans Day Weekend

2011-11-14T22:22:00.035-05:00

We very much enjoyed our three-day Veterans Day Weekend.

On Thursday night, my middle brother and Joshua and I went to Bloomington to see Bloomington Civic Theater’s production of the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields-Neil Simon musical, “Sweet Charity”. None of us had seen a staging of “Sweet Charity”, and none of us had seen the film version.

“Sweet Charity” is very much a second-rate musical. The score has a couple of familiar and pleasant numbers, but Coleman was more manufacturer of music than genuine composer for the stage. His music has the surface appeal—and the character and depth—of television jingles.

Simon’s book for “Sweet Charity” is poor. The dialogue is both glib and protracted—not a happy combination—and the characters are not allowed to register as three-dimensional human beings. Simon’s book is also insufferably 1960s.

Bloomington Civic Theater’s production was not especially strong—the stage design was not as fine as the company frequently offers and the choreography was, I thought, entirely lame—but the show held together because the young woman playing the lead was very fine. She sang well, she danced well, and she displayed a very beguiling stage personality. Had it not been for her, we probably would have departed at intermission.

Unaccountably, the Star-Tribune had singled out this young actress as the chief weakness of the production, claiming that her portrayal was not well-rounded and that she lacked the necessary vulnerability to bring the character to life. Whatever may have happened on opening night, the presence of this same young actress was the only thing that made the performance endurable on Thursday night.

Before the performance, we ate dinner at a barbecue place in Bloomington. We ordered pulled-pork sandwiches with baked beans and coleslaw.

On Friday morning, my brothers and Josh and I took my niece and nephew to Saint Paul to visit the Science Museum Of Minnesota.

The main interest—for us and the kids—was the dinosaurs. The Science Museum Of Minnesota is renowned for its dinosaur collection.

The museum owns one of only four Triceratops in the world, and its Triceratops is the largest and most complete anywhere.

The museum owns an Allosaurus and a Camptosaurus, the latter the largest ever discovered. The two are displayed together, in combat.

The museum also owns a Stegosaurus and a Diplodocus. The Diplodocus is 82 feet long, and was actually discovered in Minnesota. I believe it is the largest dinosaur skeleton on display anywhere.

My niece and nephew were awed by the dinosaurs, as children generally are. We spent an hour and a quarter walking around the skeletons and examining other dinosaur parts and fossils, at which point the kids had seen enough and were ready to leave.

On Friday afternoon, Josh and I checked the progress on our house. We do not believe the house will be ready for settlement this coming Friday—and this will create no problems for us.

My mother made a special dinner on Friday night. Her supplier had located for her a large and beautiful fresh carp, so she built a dinner around baked carp. We started with homemade tomato-cream soup, and continued with an elaborate garden salad. Next came individual cheese soufflés, for which I was responsible. The main course was baked carp, redskin potatoes, fresh green beans and a white grape salad. Dessert was custard-rhubarb pie.

The dinner was excellent—and the kids liked the carp (but, as a precaution, my mother had had boiled chicken standing by).

Minnesota hosted Wisconsin on Saturday, and on Friday Josh and I decided to accompany my father and my brothers to the game. Minnesota had played well the previous two weeks, and we had hoped that a rejuvenated Golden Gopher squad might create some problems for the mighty Badgers, especially since the game was in Minneapolis.

Our decision was not a wise one. Wisconsin showed up ready to play ball, and the game was effectively over at the end of the first quarter, with Wisconsin leading, 14-0. Minnesota had zero first downs and three yards of offense in the first quarter; Wisconsin had nine first downs and 198 yards of offense in the first quarter. The latter figures, and not the first-quarter score, told the story of the game.

We remained for the entire debacle—we were too embarrassed to go home early, since my mother had warned us that we had signed ourselves up for a grievously disappointing afternoon—yet at least we were able to witness Minnesota’s special teams score twice in the second half (while Wisconsin was playing its reserves).

Our disappointment in the game was tempered by the splendid Norwegian peasant dinner my mother had waiting for us when we returned home: homemade beef barley soup; tomato-onion salad; and minced Norwegian fish, riced potatoes and sour mixed vegetables (including beets) soaked for twenty-four hours in a special Norwegian brine before being quick-fried with bacon. I would not want to eat the sour mixed vegetables often, but I can handle them once every five years, which is about how often my mother prepares them. For dessert, we had slices of buttercream Dobish Torte, which my mother had picked up at a bakery.

My mother, my sister-in-law and the kids had eaten their dinner at the normal hour. They had enjoyed the very same dinner foods—except they had eaten NORMAL mixed vegetables (and with no beets).

On Sunday, we stayed in all day after service.

We had a big post-service breakfast: Eggs Benedict, followed by buttermilk pancakes and sausages, followed by cranberry-orange muffins.

When the kids woke from their naps, we helped my nephew play with his BluTrack for a couple of hours. BluTrack was one of my nephew’s birthday gifts, and BluTrack has become one of his favorite toys.

He has learned that he can create all sorts of twists and contortions with the track, and that the cars will nonetheless continue to glide on the pathways. He will set up BluTrack in a particular configuration and run the cars a few times, after which he will devise a new configuration. The process repeats itself endlessly.

My niece watches with interest while her brother plays with and rearranges BluTrack. Even the dog finds himself fascinated with the cars gliding on BluTrack—although we have to restrain the dog from acting upon his natural inclination to pounce on the cars when they glide by him and to grab them with his teeth and run across the room.

It is easy to understand why BluTrack has become so popular with young children. BluTrack encourages creativity and use of imagination while providing an hour or more of pleasure and fun at a time.

We had a good Sunday night dinner: pumpkin-poppy seed soup; pasta and Cayenne shrimp in a Cayenne cream sauce; and chicken quarters baked with an apple-cranberry glaze, succotash, glazed carrots and an apple-cranberry salad. We had cherry crisp for dessert.

At church on Sunday morning, we learned that we were wise to have skipped this weekend’s Minneapolis performances of Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The company had brought its full-length Alice In Wonderland ballet to the Twin Cities—the ballet was titled “Wonderland”—and we were told by persons that had attended the production on Saturday night that “Wonderland” had been God-awful.

We have decided to skip the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s ten-day Bach Brandenburg marathon currently in progress all around the Twin Cities. For some reason, the prospect of sitting through five Brandenburg Concertos in a single evening (the SPCO is omitting Brandenburg Concerto No. 2) does not appeal to us at present. Further, Josh and I have some interest in attending four consecutive weeks of SPCO subscription programs beginning in another two weeks, and we do not want our musical appetites to become satiated before the stimulating late November/early December programs commence.

We are contemplating attending University Opera Theatre’s production of “Cosi Fan Tutte” at the University Of Minnesota next weekend, but we will not make a firm decision until the weekend draws near. We attended Minnesota Opera’s production of “Cosi Fan Tutte” only six weeks ago—and there are reasons in favor of, and reasons against, attending a second production of the opera in such close succession to the first.

Nikisch

2011-11-13T17:10:00.022-05:00

The mesmerizing Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922), the greatest figure of the podium that ever lived.

Orchestral musicians throughout Europe were willing to die for Nikisch.

Antic Meet

2011-11-08T13:49:00.010-05:00

Kabuki

2011-11-07T14:24:00.027-05:00

On Friday night, Joshua and I joined my parents for a Minnesota Orchestra subscription concert. The orchestra played music of Britten, Sibelius and Debussy. Music Director Osmo Vanska was on the podium; guest soloist was Midori.

“Four Sea Interludes” from “Peter Grimes” opened the program. The Minnesota Orchestra was on good form in the Britten, although Vanska—as always—was prone to overstatement if not fierceness. Subtlety is not Vanska’s strong suit. The man invariably delivers high-octane-grade fuel, even when high-octane power is neither needed nor desirable.

In the Britten, the orchestra’s playing was more well-drilled than atmospheric, yet I suspect I heard about as fine a performance of the “Sea Interludes” as one is ever likely to hear. Truly great orchestras find Britten’s music unremarkable, unimaginative and unrewarding—and, as a result, are unable to deliver Britten compositions with much style or conviction. Over the years, “Four Sea Interludes” has become something of a concert potboiler, one of those pieces beloved by provincial ensembles, capable of fully realizing the music, yet ignored by the very finest orchestras.

Figures as diverse as Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, Herbert Von Karajan and Pierre Boulez sniffed at the score of “Peter Grimes”, and it is easy to understand why they thought so little of the opera: Britten’s musical ideas are paper-thin, and not worked out as skillfully—or as seamlessly—as his writing would later become in “Billy Budd” and “The Turn Of The Screw”.

The storm music that comprises the final “Sea Interlude” is emblematic of the weakness of Britten’s score: the four note/five note motif is bizarrely unimaginative, and Britten does absolutely nothing to develop this most insipid of themes. The composer offers repetition, re-orchestration and ever-rising volume, and little more, to keep the storm music going. As conclusion to an orchestral piece, the storm music is undeniably loud, but it has little else to recommend it. The storm music is closer—dangerously so—to bad 1940s film music than most Britten advocates would ever be willing to admit.

The Sibelius Violin Concerto followed the Britten. It proved to be the most satisfying performance of the evening, and credit for the success of the performance must be given to violinist Midori.

Over the last fifteen years, Midori has developed into a great artist. She is one of the finest musicians before the public today, with a very personal sound and a very personal way of making music. Twenty years ago, music-lovers would not necessarily have predicted that Midori would make the successful transition from youthful virtuoso to profound artist. For the first ten years of her public career, Midori was a faceless virtuoso whose music-making lacked character, personality and deep insight. Something happened to Midori in the second half of the 1990s, however, and her performances have become increasingly interesting over the last decade-and-a-half. Her appearances now are virtual red-letter events.

Midori has a unique gift: she can project calmness and anxiety at the same time. I know of no other violinist, past or present, with this remarkable gift.

Midori produces a sound of great sweetness, perhaps the sweetest sound among the many excellent violin virtuosos that bless the present age. Her phrasing is very precise—controlled, detailed, elegant—and she is capable of creating genuine radiance in performance.

Midori’s phrasing in the first movement of the Sibelius was sublime. She did nothing unusual, nothing bizarre, but the way she caught and shaped each phrase utterly commanded the listener’s attention. In the two first-movement cadenzas, her playing was inspired. In fact, the first-movement cadenzas were the high points of her performance.

Tempi in the second and third movements were slower than the norm (the third movement was the slowest I had ever heard, live or on disc), yet Midori never allowed concentration to lapse or tension to dissipate. The leisurely third-movement tempo did, however, remove some of the excitement inherent in the concerto’s final movement.

After intermission, the orchestra played Debussy.

Two orchestrations of piano works were played first: Andre Caplet’s orchestration of “Clair De Lune” and Bernardino Molinari’s orchestration of “L’Isle Joyeuse”. Myself, I wished the orchestra had programmed Leopold Stokowski’s marvelous orchestration of “La Cathedrale Engloutie” instead.

“La Mer” concluded the program. Vanska’s was a big-boned, primary-colors “La Mer”—and successful on those terms. His was not a French-tinged reading nor a performance of subtle shades and tints. “La Mer” as Russian-style orchestral showpiece was what Vanska delivered, and the audience appeared to be perfectly happy with such conception of the work.

Before the concert, we ate dinner at an American restaurant only a couple of blocks from Orchestra Hall. We were disappointed in the food, but it must be acknowledged that the restaurant was phenomenally busy early Friday evening. The kitchen staff may have been strained by the crowd of early diners.

We ordered wild mushroom croquettes as a starter course.

For main course, my mother ordered salmon, asparagus and a cheese-apple salad.

My father and I ordered chicken roulade (chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes, all wrapped in pastry) and garlic mashed potatoes.

Josh ordered Cajun-broiled walleye, Rosemary potato terrine, and carrots and green beans.

We skipped dessert. Service at the restaurant was unreliable, and we feared we might be late to the concert if we proceeded with dessert.

On Saturday, we did outdoor work until early afternoon. Saturday was probably our final day of outdoor work at my parents’ house until next Spring.

In the middle of the afternoon, we cleaned up and split into two groups. My brothers and my niece and nephew went over to my older brother’s house, where they were to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening. My parents, my sister-in-law, and Josh and I went downtown to The Walker Art Center, where we were to view an exhibition and attend a dance performance.

The exhibition was devoted to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg. The exhibition included costumes, set designs, full-scale stage backdrops, videos and other artifacts from Rauschenberg’s years designing for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Earlier this year, The Walker purchased over 2,000 items from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The institution intends to mount a significant number of Cunningham-related exhibitions between now and 2015. The just-opened Cunningham/Rauschenberg exhibition is the first such exhibition in the multi-year series; a second exhibition is due to open shortly.

In walking through the exhibition, I was immediately struck by how cheap and shoddy were the materials used for the actual stage sets and stage costumes. I doubt that Rauschenberg intended his work for Cunningham to be viewed at close range. Further, I doubt that Rauschenberg intended his work for Cunningham to be anything other than of temporal value. In fact, I do not believe for a minute that Rauschenberg, in designing for Cunningham, believed he was designing for posterity.

The dance performance, held at The Walker’s theater, was by Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This weekend’s four performances at The Walker signaled the final appearance by the company in Minneapolis. The company will permanently disband at year-end.

Cunningham’s troupe has been a regular visitor to the Twin Cities for over half a century, offering performances at a large number of local venues, everywhere from Northrop Auditorium to The Guthrie Theater to The Walker Art Center to parks and civic plazas. As a general rule, the company's many Minneapolis appearances have been sponsored either by The Walker or the University Of Minnesota, and Cunningham visits, roughly, have been at five- or six-year intervals.

My parents had attended company performances a couple of times over the years, but I had never seen Merce Cunningham Dance Company until Saturday night—and neither had my sister-in-law, and neither had Josh.

The works on the program were “Antic Meet” from 1958, “RainForest” from 1968, and “Pond Way” from 1998. The respective designers were Raushenberg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein; the respective composers were John Cage, David Tudor and Brian Eno.

I have a limited appreciation for modern dance—for me, much of it is as strange as Kabuki—and I derived limited enjoyment from Saturday evening’s performance.

To begin, I was startled by the absence of beautiful bodies onstage. None of the thirteen dancers possessed what might be termed “dancer” bodies. The odd proportions of the dancers induced disbelief. The lack of muscle tone was particularly shocking.

Matters were not helped by the fact that the dancers, without exception, were singularly unattractive. I could not help but think, the entire performance, that the dancers onstage were rejects from Paul Taylor and David Parsons.

One of the dance works, “Antic Meet”, was a comedy, but the humor was exceedingly obvious and heavy-handed, as if the choreographer did not trust his audience to comprehend the jokes. I found the entire work eyeball-rolling.

The other two works often invoked animal behavior, some of which was mildly amusing but most of which was not. I have no idea whether the works represented typical Cunningham pieces.

At the conclusion of the performance, I asked three questions: (1) did Cunningham have any depth?; (2) did his work exhibit any development?; and (3) was Cunningham a genius or a weirdo? The consensus answer to the first question was that Cunningham had no depth at all, but that depth was never his objective. The consensus answer to the second question was along the same lines: development of craft was probably irrelevant, since the artist was nakedly anti-intellectual and worked purely from instinct. Answers to the third question were all over the place—Cunningham was certainly a weirdo, but different viewers find vastly different degrees of genius in his work.

Myself, I could not get beyond the Cunningham weirdness, either of the man or the work. The sheer weirdness of everything, including the weirdness of the odd-looking dancers, trumped all other considerations. I immediately understood—fully—why Cunningham, after sixty years of creating dance, was never able to develop a significant audience for his work.

Over much the same lifetime, George Balanchine’s audience grew and grew and grew. Indeed, Balanchine’s audience grew from absolutely nothing into the largest dance audience in the world: New York City Ballet performs—nightly—twenty-three weeks a year in a single theater in a single city for a single audience, a feat no other dance company anywhere has ever been able to achieve. By comparison, Cunningham found himself largely consigned to the modern-dance circuit, playing one-night stands in small venues across the country (most at colleges and universities) for decades.

Between the exhibition and the dance performance, we went to a nearby café to have a light dinner. We had two starter courses, seafood chowder and crab cake, and we had dessert, triple chocolate cream cake.

On Sunday, my parents had to attend an afternoon function, so after service Josh and I took the dog over to my older brother’s house, where my brothers and Josh and I worked in the yard all afternoon.

My parents were able to join us for dinner. We all sat down to a Sunday night dinner of pot roast, new potatoes, stewed tomatoes, green beans and corn pudding. We had Pepperidge Farm cookies for dessert.

Josh and I have tentatively scheduled settlement on our new house for Friday, November 18.

It will be interesting to see whether the builder can hold to that date.

The Issue: Determining What Constitutes “Culture” For Purposes Of Public Funding

2011-11-04T23:41:00.019-04:00

Well, I've seen Merce Cunningham dance (creepy), and I've seen [Minnesota Vikings Running Back] Adrian Peterson run, and what Peterson performs is a form of ballet.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune political columnist Jon Tevlin

Encounter With Cunningham

2011-11-03T14:01:00.038-04:00

Cunningham is a true artistic revolutionary. Since composing his first works in the 1940s, his innovations are many and radical. Perhaps most fundamentally, he has created a wholly new vocabulary of movement. Abandoning the established idioms of modern dance and ballet, he invents a lexicon of gestures that range from the most routine of urban-inspired activities to startlingly original, virtuosic sequences. He has introduced chance operations and made indeterminacy an important compositional device. He has crafted a dialogic relationship between dance, music, and visual decor where each is arrived at independently but performed simultaneously. He has “decentralized” performance space, dismantling the notion (derived from Renaissance perspective and the proscenium stage) that the actions of dancers radiate from a central point. In a Merce Cunningham work, the position of one dancer on the stage is no more important than that of another. Moreover, he has displaced the linear, plot-driven narrative of traditional dance with a dynamic, non-hierarchical field in which cause and effect no longer govern the performers’ movements. Since sequences are not rigidly thematized, they can easily sustain a myriad of interpretations, whose sheer variety celebrates the essential “singleness” of the moment in space and time.

John Rockwell (2005, in conversation at Stanford University)

________________________________________________

On Saturday evening, Joshua and I will see—for the first and last time—the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The company will offer a weekend of performances in Minneapolis as part of its farewell tour, after which the company will permanently disband.

Prior to the evening performance, we will visit The Walker Art Center in late afternoon and view the exhibition devoted to Cunningham. The exhibition includes full-scale stage settings for several Cunningham works, which The Walker recently acquired.

In preparation for Saturday’s performance, I have been doing some reading about Cunningham.

Alas, most of what I have read is sheer nonsense, entirely consistent with the cliché-ridden gibberish Rockwell uttered (as quoted above).

Downtown Minneapolis 1858

2011-11-01T21:21:00.007-04:00

Downtown Minneapolis 1908

2011-11-01T21:19:00.007-04:00

What A Nation Values

2011-11-01T21:17:00.022-04:00

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.

Somerset Maugham

A Night For Kids . . . And Cookies

2011-10-31T21:35:00.011-04:00

A Great Weekend

2011-10-31T00:01:00.033-04:00

On late Friday afternoon, my mother drove downtown to join my father, my middle brother, and Joshua and me for an evening out.

We had dinner at a nice restaurant, and afterward we attended Theater In The Round’s production of “The Reluctant Debutante”, a 1955 play by William Douglas-Home.

None of us had seen “The Reluctant Debutante”, and I had never before seen a Douglas-Home play. Douglas-Home plays have fallen by the wayside, other than very infrequent revivals of “Lloyd George Knew My Father”, and I was curious to see the work of a playwright whose plays held the London stage throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

“The Reluctant Debutante” presents the story of a family introducing its daughter to London society, trying to guide her through the thicket of social etiquette and propriety while attempting to identify prospective matches for her. Because of a misunderstanding, an unsuitable prospect is allowed to enter the picture, and the play traces the course of the daughter’s fascination and the parents’ dissatisfaction with the unlikely young suitor.

The comedy is a gentle one—it never veers into the territory of satire or truly sharp social observation—and, this being a 1950s drawing-room comedy, everything ends happily. I would characterize “The Reluctant Debutante” as the quintessential pre-John Osborne play.

Alas, the play is not very good. It is too long (almost three hours), very slow-moving, and not particularly imaginative. Perhaps the play’s most serious deficiency is that the dialogue does not sparkle. If the dialogue does not sparkle, why revive a tedious 1950s comedy of manners?

If “The Reluctant Debutante” represents the playwright at his best, Douglas-Home was little more than a bargain-basement Terence Rattigan—and Rattigan plays no longer hold the stage. Absent an extraordinary cast and an extraordinary production, “The Reluctant Debutante” is probably better off left on the shelf. I do not understand what Theater In The Round saw in the material, and I do not understand why Theater In The Round thought this particular play might appeal to audiences in 2011.

The production was not one of Theater In The Round’s finer efforts. I thought the debutante was miscast (as well as too old for the part) and I thought the mother was both miscast and misdirected. I found it impossible to accept debutante and mother as of the same bloodline—both actresses seemed to belong to separate solar systems—and it appeared that the father had even less in common with the two female members of his family. “Did these people just meet?” was a question I asked myself all evening.

The staging was obvious and “punched up”—the actors strained for laughs, and tried far too hard to create the illusion that something amusing was going on—and I suspect that the current “Reluctant Debutante” is one of those productions in which the stage director threw in the towel in the final week of rehearsals and told his cast to do whatever was necessary to enliven the proceedings. The final result was anything but a unified ensemble.

Ticket sales for “The Reluctant Debutante” have been poor, and word-of-mouth for the production has been poorer still. I suspect Theater In The Round made a mistake in selecting this play for its 2011-2012 season.

“The Reluctant Debutante” is the second consecutive Theater In The Round presentation in which demand for tickets has proven disappointing. The company’s previous production, “Bus Stop”, also did not generate robust ticket sales—and I have been told that “The Reluctant Debutante” is faring less well at the box office even than “Bus Stop”. It may be time for Theater In The Round to give 1950s plays a prolonged rest. (Theater In The Round is underwritten, and therefore not imperiled by box-office shortfalls.)

Anna Massey, who died four months ago, made her first professional stage appearance in the original 1955 London production of “The Reluctant Debutante”. The role made Massey a star (at least in Britain), and she was to repeat the role in the 1956 Broadway production.

MGM produced a film version of the play in 1958. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, the film starred Sandra Dee, who portrayed the debutante. I do not believe the film (which I have not seen) is considered to be one of the high points of the Minnelli canon.

Before the theater performance, we ate dinner at a restaurant not far from the theater. We enjoyed a very pleasing meal.

We all ordered the same soup: parsnip-green apple soup with crème fraiche and caviar.

For main course, my mother ordered grilled shrimp on roasted sweet potato, leek and speck, with a truffle broth.

My father and Josh ordered Angus filet, bleu cheese mashed potatoes, sun-dried tomatoes and Scotch bonnet peppers.

My brother ordered short ribs, mirepoix and pommes frites.

I ordered pan-seared wild duck breast, Belgian waffle and pomegranate, with sweet onion-coffee liqueur marmalade.

For dessert, we all ordered coconut cake and lemon sorbet, with rum caramel sauce.

The food was excellent.

Saturday was a big day for us because all the men in my family went to the Minnesota-Iowa game. It was my nephew’s first football game, and he was excited beyond words—indeed, he had been excited about the game for over a week, talking about it incessantly and asking thousands of questions. Happily, the weather on Saturday was beautiful—warm and sunny—and we did not have to bundle him up as if for a trip to the Arctic Circle.

My mother prepared a lunch for us to eat at 11:30 a.m. on the dot—homemade chicken noodle soup and tuna salad sandwiches—and we left for the game at 12:00 Noon on the dot. We took two cars to the game in the event my nephew wanted or needed to leave early.

The game started at 2:30 p.m., exactly in the middle of my nephew’s normal naptime, but my nephew’s excitement easily carried him through the afternoon. He loved the stadium and he loved the crowds and he loved the band and he loved the fans standing and cheering—and, since the game was televised, he thought his mother, grandmother and sister were somehow able to watch HIM on television at home.

The rules of football are too complicated for a six-year-old to follow, and the game itself was not of particular interest to my nephew. It was the sense of participating in a major sporting event, not the action on the field, that excited him.

In fact, he became bored by the game during the second quarter. By halftime, his interest in the athletic contest had completely waned. He stayed to observe the halftime show, which he very much enjoyed, but after the halftime festivities his father and grandfather took him home.

It was probably all for the best that he left the game early. The drive home was swift, avoiding game-end traffic, and he was able to eat his dinner at the normal hour, which is very important to him. (Throughout the game, he expressed great concern about missing his dinner, even though we told him over and over that his dinner would be waiting for him the very minute he got home.)

My middle brother and Josh and I stayed for the entire game. Minnesota was putting up a fight—the game was tied, 7-7, at halftime—but it looked as if Minnesota was starting to lose steam late in the third quarter.

My father, my older brother and my nephew arrived home just as the fourth quarter was beginning. Only seconds after they walked in the door of my parents’ house, Iowa scored a touchdown to take a 21-10 lead, and it appeared—both to them arriving at home and to us remaining at the stadium—that the game was over.

Minnesota, however, assembled its grit, scored twice late in the game, and won, 22-21. It was an amazing—and gutsy—fourth quarter for the Golden Gophers, and it was certainly the game of the year for Minnesota fans. This was the second year in a row in which a very weak Minnesota team had knocked off a heavily-favored Iowa team, and Josh and I were pleased that we had chosen this particular game as our only game of the season. It was a great game, and one with a happy ending.

As far as we know, no Iowa fans were charged with public lewdness on Saturday, although we shall have to keep our eyes on the news—after all, it was two days after the Minnesota-Iowa game a couple of years ago when local newspapers first reported that Iowa fans had been arrested and charged with lewd conduct during the game (the Iowa fans charged with lewd acts had pleaded guilty, were fined, and were sentenced to probation).

Sunday was an even bigger day in my family than Saturday, because Sunday was my nephew’s sixth birthday. It is very hard for me to believe that he is already six years old. It is equally hard for me to believe that he has not always been part of our lives.

At Sunday School, his classmates and teachers sang “Happy Birthday” to him and celebrated his birthday with cupcakes and fruit juices.

When we returned home from church, we had apple pancakes and apple sausage for breakfast—and an apple-walnut coffee cake. The food theme was apple pursuant to my nephew’s request.

While my nephew and niece were taking their naps, my mother made my nephew’s birthday cake. She made a carrot cake, because a carrot cake is what he said he wanted.

When the kids woke from their naps, we made Halloween cookies. Everyone worked on the project, including the kids, because we were making cookies for two households for trick-or-treating on Halloween night.

We made pumpkin-nut cookies, and sugar cookies in the shapes of pumpkins and ghosts.

After the cookies were baked and cooled, we had to decorate and package the cookies, the most fun part of the project. While the rest of us decorated and packaged cookies, my mother decorated my nephew’s birthday cake.

On Sunday night, we had my nephew’s birthday dinner. He picked the menu. We had thick-cut pork chops and stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, lima beans, corn and applesauce.

An hour after dinner, we ate birthday cake and homemade ice cream, and presented my nephew with his birthday gifts. He was happy as a lark, and so was everyone else.

It was a great weekend.

Floyd Of Rosedale To Remain In Twin Cities

2011-10-29T22:45:00.026-04:00

The honored and esteemed Floyd Of Rosedale will remain resident of Minneapolis for another year.

Lausanne 1915

2011-10-26T22:24:00.029-04:00

Leonide Massine and designers Natalia Gontcharova, Mikhail Larionov and Leon Bakst surround Igor Stravinsky at Bellerive, Serge Diaghilev’s rented estate near Lausanne, in July 1915.

The front lines were barely 100 miles away from this summer idyll, and July 1915 was the same month in which Germany launched its “Triple Offensive” and introduced the flamethrower into battle.

Eiji Oue Did It Better

2011-10-24T08:21:00.022-04:00

After work on Friday, Joshua and I and my middle brother went over to my older brother’s house in order to have dinner and to play with the kids.

For dinner, we ate breaded thin-cut pork cutlets—often referred to as “tenderloin” in Minnesota and other parts of the Upper Midwest—served with stuffing, peas, corn, carrots and biscuits. For dessert, we ate banana pudding. Friday’s dinner is one of the favorite dinners of my nephew and niece.

Until the kids’ bedtimes, we played games with them, including an animal board game that makes all of us laugh.

My parents attended a Minnesota Orchestra subscription concert on Friday evening. They heard Robert Spano lead the orchestra—without distinction—in music of Falla, Piazzolla and Copland.

According to my parents, the Copland—the Symphony No. 3—was on the verge of collapse in all four movements, with Spano totally unable to maintain tension or momentum. “Believe it or not, Eiji Oue did it better” was my father’s final verdict—and my father’s remarks were not intended as any sort of compliment to Oue, whom my father loathed. The Minnesota Orchestra needs to do something about its weak roster of guest conductors; the guest roster, grim by any measure, is the most critical issue currently facing the orchestra.

The soloist was violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. My parents said that Salerno-Sonnenberg is not aging well. She apparently looked awful—unattractive, overweight and outright dumpy, with a face (and complexion) that would frighten small children. Salerno-Sonnenberg is now fifty years old, and my parents said she looked as if she were sixty-five years old, perhaps seventy.

Josh and I never contemplated attending the concert. I would have to be paid to sit through Spano, and I would have to be paid to sit through Salerno-Sonnenberg—and I would have to be paid double to sit through Spano and Salerno-Sonnenberg sharing the same concert platform.

Minnesota hosted Nebraska on Saturday, but my father and my brothers skipped the game. They were wise to do so: the game was over early in the second quarter.

Many persons holding Minnesota season tickets are not attending games this year. In fact, game-by-game, they must be selling their tickets online to out-of-town fans from visiting teams. On Saturday, more than two-thirds of the persons in the stadium were Nebraska fans clad in Nebraska colors and Cornhusker regalia.

Minnesota may now have the most hapless major-college football program in the country. Things are so bad, the watchword in Minnesota in recent weeks has become: “Remind me again why we fired Glen Mason”.

Mason, former Minnesota coach who had achieved a winning record and seven bowl appearances in ten seasons leading the Golden Gophers, was fired in 2006 because the university athletic department had wanted to move the football program to “the next level”. Well, “the next level” has arrived—but it is not the level the university athletic department had envisioned back in 2006.

In retrospect, Mason’s tenure looks better and better with each passing year. Sadly, it may take years for the program to get back to the level of accomplishment it regularly displayed under Mason.

No one regretted missing the thumping Nebraska handed Minnesota.

In any case, we had more important things to do on Saturday. My nephew will celebrate his sixth birthday on Sunday, October 30, and we had birthday gifts to buy.

My middle brother and Josh and I decided to brave the crowds at The Mall Of America, as the toy selection there is indeed phenomenal, better than anyplace else we might have visited.

We checked out toys at The Mall Of America for more than five hours, looking for unusual and intriguing items. We did not arrive back home until almost 4:00 p.m.—but, once home, we had with us what we believed to be ideal birthday gifts for a six-year-old boy.

We had an activity planned for Saturday night: a performance by Scottish Ballet at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. My parents, my sister-in-law, and Josh and I attended the performance; everyone else spent the evening at my older brother’s house.

We bought tickets primarily because we were curious to see Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet, “Song Of The Earth”, danced to Mahler. None of us had seen the ballet—not even my sister-in-law, long resident in London and raised on MacMillan ballets, had seen “Song Of The Earth”—and we were mildly eager to see this seldom-staged ballet first presented in 1965 (in Stuttgart).

Only one American company has ever presented the ballet. In 1988, Houston Ballet mounted “Song Of The Earth”; last month, that company offered the ballet a second time.

After one viewing, “Song Of The Earth” struck me as typical MacMillan: strikingly uninventive choreography attempting to express what MacMillan believed to be deep and profound thoughts, in this case about life and death.

Of course, there is nothing in the least deep or profound about “Song Of The Earth” unless one has the mind of a high school sophomore. The ballet is entirely predictable as it unfolds, without a single surprise in store, and borrows heavily from Antony Tudor’s “Dark Elegies” (also danced to Mahler). As exercise in pure choreography, “Song Of The Earth” is spectacular failure; as onstage demonstration of Weltschmerz, the ballet is spectacular kitsch. It is easy to understand why American companies, Houston excepted, have never touched the work.

I thought the choreographer made a grave mistake in including a Messenger Of Death onstage. The presence of the Messenger Of Death transformed a painfully obvious ballet into an insufferably obvious one. That the Messenger Of Death wore a facemask not entirely dissimilar to the facemask worn in “Phantom Of The Opera” made it hard to stifle giggles.

It is possible the work might have been better-served in a better performance—but I remain skeptical that the work warrants revival. A long-forgotten ballet by Frederick Ashton should have been offered in place of the MacMillan.

Scottish Ballet is not a good company. Thirty-six dancers were listed in the program booklet, and not one of the dancers onstage would have made it through the first round of auditions for a corps position at New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre.

The company has no business making international tours. I hope Scottish Ballet’s overseers have the good sense to keep the company restricted to native territory in future. Whoever made the bone-headed decision to send this troupe overseas should be immediately discharged.

Preceding the MacMillan was a ballet by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo. Elo has been resident choreographer of Boston Ballet since 2005, yet Josh and I never saw any of Elo’s works during the three years we were in Boston. The one time we attended a Boston Ballet program on which an Elo work was included, we departed before the final work of the evening, which was the Elo. (The Finnish choreographer’s work on that particular program had been a new “Rite Of Spring”, uniformly and vociferously panned by Boston and New York critics—and the extremely dismissive notices had caused Josh and me not to want to waste our time on the ballet.)

I remember nothing about Elo’s ballet danced by Scottish Ballet on Saturday night except that dancers were continually running around the stage, to no discernible purpose. I saw nothing in the work that made me want to see the ballet a second time. Danced to music of Reich and Mozart, the ballet’s title was “Kings 2 Ends”. The work was so empty, I did not even bother to read the program notes to learn the rationale for the ballet’s title—the first time in my life such a thing has occurred.

On our way home, we all asked ourselves a question that arises after almost every Minneapolis dance event: “Why do we keep going to these dance things, when they always prove to be so disappointing?”

“Hope springs eternal” was more or less the consensus answer—but, after witnessing Scottish Ballet’s unfortunate local appearance, we are somewhat soured on dance at present.

While driving home, we decided to write off next month’s Minneapolis appearance by The Royal Winnipeg Ballet (I do not think any of us could make it through yet another Alice In Wonderland ballet). We nonetheless decided to stick with our plans to attend next month’s Minneapolis appearance by Merce Cunningham Dance Company (part of the Cunningham farewell tour, after which the group will permanently disband). What we truly crave, however, is a stiff dose of Balanchine to wipe away the aftertaste of the MacMillan.

On Sunday, we did nothing other than attend service. We stayed home all day and played with the kids.

It was the best day of the weekend.

“The Best Color Is The One That Looks Good On You”

2011-10-22T16:24:00.019-04:00

Coco Chanel’s maxim has apparently been banned in London.

This 2007 photograph presents Britain’s hideously overdressed Royal Ballet, the worst-costumed dance company on the planet.

Revolution

2011-10-20T20:03:00.080-04:00

Revolution in Hamburg in November 1918.

Immediately following The Sailors' Revolt, revolutionary movements broke out in most large German cities. The movements were not to be quelled until 1919.

The gathering in the photograph occurred in the very center of Hamburg.

The handsome Greek Revival structure in the background now houses a Burger King franchise.

An Email Message From The Past

2011-10-19T23:54:00.121-04:00

I sent the following email message to a former history professor of mine on October 19, 2008, exactly three years ago.

He sent me back my original message tonight, noting my prescience.

________________________________________________

The current contraction is different from the contraction of the 1930s, at least in terms of the attitude of the populace.

In the 1930s, the attitude of Americans was to seek work, and lots of it. Work was viewed as the ultimate solution to their own—and the nation’s—problems.

Today the attitude of too many Americans is to seek handouts, and lots of them. Handouts are viewed as the ultimate solution to their own—and the nation’s—problems.

I wonder whether such persons have any idea that they are held in contempt, even loathing, by much of the American populace.

To be honest, I don’t think such persons have a clue.

Among the uneducated, the unsophisticated and the unsuccessful, statism is now viewed as a viable solution to most problems, real or imagined. This attitude is destined to be a short-term phenomenon, clearly, but observing this temporary attitude is surely troubling to most Americans, who must be terrified every time they open a newspaper or switch on a news program or read a magazine.

We live in an era in which most persons who express opinions in public are obtuse. They seem never to have taken an elementary logic course, or a basic philosophy course, or a beginner’s economics course, or a fundamental history course.

They appear to live in perpetual states of seventh-grade infantilism, words and conduct guided by situational ethics, ignorance, blather and cant.

Is our body politic in a state of decay?

My father says that the short-term answer to that question is “Yes”, and that we as a nation have several years of ugly deterioration ahead. However, he is quick to add that the managerial class will be the one segment of the population to emerge unscathed from the coming maelstrom, and that it will be those in the bottom half of the socio-economic stratum that will take it on the chin, over and over, relentlessly, for the next several years, because this group is going to find itself in a near-permanent state of unemployment.

Cleopatra's Needle

2011-10-19T20:19:00.029-04:00

The ancient Egyptian obelisk in London known as Cleopatra’s Needle.

Cleopatra’s Needle is situated in The Victoria Embankment Gardens near the banks of The Thames.

The obelisk has nothing whatsoever to do with Cleopatra. It was already 1000 years old during Cleopatra’s lifetime.

It seems as if every time we visit London we stroll through The Victoria Embankment Gardens and take another gander at Cleopatra’s Needle. Most recently, we did so in 2007, we did so in 2008, and we did so again this year.

The London obelisk’s twin is in New York’s Central Park. Both obelisks were gifted by the Egyptian government to London and New York in the 19th Century.

Offer And Acceptance

2011-10-18T22:06:00.011-04:00

We stayed home this past weekend. Other than a brief house-hunting expedition on Saturday and attendance at service on Sunday, we remained in all weekend.

My mother has been busy devising ways to use the pumpkin pulp that had resulted from the previous weekend’s pumpkin project. On Friday night, she made pumpkin bread (with raisins and walnuts), one of my mother’s specialties. On Saturday afternoon, she made pumpkin cookies. Late Sunday afternoon, she made pumpkin soup. If we parcel things out properly, we shall have pumpkin pulp on hand through Thanksgiving—and, if we run out, we shall go buy more pumpkins.

On Saturday morning, everyone in the family went to examine a house Joshua and I were considering for a purchase. Josh and I had been looking at houses since Labor Day, and we had settled upon a house that we think is right for us. We wanted all family members to see the house in order to collect their opinions.

The exterior of the house is completed, but the interior has not been finished. Interior walls are in place, but the interior is otherwise a shell.

No one had any objections to the house other than my nephew and niece, who both thought the barren interiors very odd.

We discussed the matter for the remainder of the weekend—and we consulted about such matters as price and offer terms. At the conclusion of the weekend, our decision was to offer twenty-one per cent less than the asking price and await a response from the builder.

On Monday morning, Josh and I submitted a written offer and tendered earnest money.

Our offer was accepted within three hours.

Looting

2011-10-18T18:33:00.017-04:00

In the final days of World War II, there was widespread public looting in many cities of The Reich, as civilians attempted to obtain and stockpile whatever foodstuffs and consumer goods they could find.

The photograph above depicts looting in Vienna in April 1945.

The photograph below depicts looting in Munich in April 1945.

Munich 1945

2011-10-17T16:52:00.028-04:00

This aerial photograph of Munich was taken on June 19, 1945, six weeks after cessation of hostilities.

At the very top of the photograph may be seen Frauenkirche, although the photograph cuts off the towers.

At the right is Neues Rathaus, immediately below which is Peterskirche, with only the base of its spire intact.

The open area at the bottom of the photograph is, of course, Viktualienmarkt.

Vienna 1945

2011-10-16T22:28:00.011-04:00

The Danube Canal in central Vienna immediately after The Fall Of Vienna.

A Shakespeare Day

2011-10-11T18:53:00.016-04:00

We had a very good three-day holiday weekend.

On Friday night, my parents and Joshua and I ate out—we had a quick, simple meal at Edina Grill, where we ordered meat loaf, mashed potatoes and green beans—after which we did some serious food shopping.

For three hours, we visited food stores and specialty stores, and we stocked up on practically everything, including special October items such as pumpkins, ciders and Indian corn. When we got home, it took us almost an hour to store all the food we had picked up.

On Saturday morning, everyone came over early in order to eat breakfast at my parents’ house. I had alerted everyone that I was going to make waffles on Saturday morning, and apparently no one wanted to miss out.

We ate shredded wheat, bananas and cream, and tomato-onion-green pepper omelets before getting the waffles underway. I made waffles with walnuts, and we ate the waffles with fresh ground sausage. No one had cause to be hungry when breakfast was over.

We spent most of Saturday doing yard work and other outdoor tasks. My nephew and niece spent much of the day outside with us, observing and supervising our activities. It was a beautiful autumn day, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

For lunch, my mother made Norwegian fish chowder, a type of chowder made with assorted fishes and vegetables, all cooked in a cream base seasoned with several spices. My mother had not made this particular chowder for quite some time—Saturday was the first encounter with the chowder for Josh and my sister-in-law as well as my nephew and niece—and everyone loved it. The chowder is filling but not heavy, with subtle and refined flavors that belie its undoubted origin in ancient Norwegian peasant food (probably emanating from Bergen, where—owing to the town’s membership in the Hanseatic League—non-native spices would have been available).

We completed our outdoor work by the time the kids woke from their afternoon naps, at which point we all had a snack of poached apricots and gingerbread men warm from the oven.

After our snack, it was time for the main attraction of our day: preparing pumpkins.

First thing, we carved out four pumpkins, trying not to make too much of a mess in my mother’s kitchen. When we were done, my mother immediately began to cook the pumpkin pulp with spices in order to preserve the pulp, while the rest of us began to create Jack-O’-Lanterns from the pumpkin carcasses. For the sake of my nephew and niece, we tried to make the Jack-O’-Lanterns as interesting and as elaborate as possible while still maintaining structural integrity (after all, we do not want the pumpkin carcasses to collapse until Halloween has come and gone). Two Jack-O’-Lanterns were to remain at my parents’ house and two Jack-O’-Lanterns were to go home with my nephew and niece. The intended result: my nephew and niece will have personal Jack-O’-Lanterns at their grandparents’ house as well as at their own home.

We tried to make two Jack-O’-Lanterns look like males for my nephew, and we tried to make two Jack-O’-Lanterns look like females for my niece, but I doubt that anyone outside the family, seeing the results, would have a clue that we had tried to make such a differentiation. Nevertheless, we all had a ball with the pumpkins; there had been a purpose to our activity.

We had a major dinner Saturday night: homemade tomato-cream soup; grilled thick-cut pork chops, stuffing, escalloped cheddar potatoes, steamed lima beans, steamed parsnips, steamed white corn, red cabbage baked in cream and butter, and homemade applesauce; and blackberry cobbler with ice cream.

On Sunday morning, after church, we all had breakfast at my parents’ house: bacon, scrambled eggs, and fried potatoes. We were saving pancakes for Monday, a holiday—and, because we had afternoon plans, we had wanted a breakfast that involved very little preparation time.

After breakfast, my brothers took the kids (and the dog) over to my older brother’s house, while my parents, my sister-in-law, and Josh and I headed downtown to catch the 1:00 p.m. matinee at The Guthrie.

“Much Ado About Nothing” was on the bill. Directed by Artistic Director Joe Dowling, The Guthrie’s “Much Ado” was mostly a traditional production, with two wrinkles: the setting was updated to the 1920s; and the ages of the primary characters were greatly advanced. In this “Much Ado”, Beatrice and Benedick were in their late sixties while Hero and Claudio were in late middle age.

If Dowling believed that “Much Ado” would gain new perspective by advancing the ages of the main characters, he was mistaken. No new insights into one of Shakespeare’s best comedies were revealed. There had been no real purpose in making the two pairs of lovers much older than Shakespeare intended, any more than there had been a real purpose in updating the play’s setting to the 1920s (other than as a gift to the production’s design team).

The actor portraying Benedick had been imported from London, and the actress playing Beatrice had been imported from Dublin. Both were perfectly fine, but neither was in any way remarkable.

No one else in the production was remarkable, either. The Guthrie “Much Ado” was very much a standard Guthrie presentation: everything on a high level, nothing genuinely distinguished.

The physical production was lavish (and costly), but it was neither appealing nor elegant. In fact, I thought the physical production was outright unattractive, perhaps one of the least attractive Guthrie productions I have ever encountered.

Dowling has been Artistic Director of The Guthrie since 1995—he came to Minneapolis from Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, where his guidance of that famed company had been greatly acclaimed—and I have concluded, after sixteen years, that Dowling is a better administrator than stage director. The Guthrie has a reputation for being phenomenally well-administered under Dowling, but Dowling’s own productions have not, in my experience, been particularly stylish or penetrating.

I cannot name a single Dowling production I have attended that has been memorable. I cannot recall a single Dowling production that has caused me to rethink or reassess a play. There has not been a single Dowling production I have wished to see a second time.

Dowling is nearing retirement age. In my view, The Guthrie should allow Dowling to remain Artistic Director as long as he wants, but the number of productions Dowling personally directs should be sharply curtailed.

After the matinee performance, we returned to Edina. On our way to my older brother’s house, we picked up an early dinner—we stopped at Boston Market for the second time in a week and bought chickens, stuffing, mashed potatoes and vegetables—and, once at my brother’s house, we were all able to sit down to a decent meal without expending any effort.

As soon as we finished eating, my parents, my sister-in-law, and Josh and I said “Good night” to everyone, and got in the car and headed back to downtown Minneapolis. We had another Shakespeare play to see, “Hamlet” at Jungle Theater, and there was a 7:30 p.m. curtain.

Knowing we would have a rest day before and a rest day after, we had deliberately set aside the middle day of a three-day weekend to see the two current Shakespeare productions in town, both lengthy and both requiring the viewer’s full attention. By design, we had chosen to see comedy in the afternoon and tragedy in the evening. It was, as we called it, “A Shakespeare Day”.

The Jungle Theater “Hamlet” was odd. Set in the present, the Jungle production was a high-technology “Hamlet”, with cell phones, laptops, iPads, video cameras, large-screen televisions and other assorted technological devices always present onstage—and always in use.

Elsinore Castle had its own security center, where security personnel monitored movements throughout the castle on video screens. The theater performance of the visiting theatrical troupe was replicated in real time via giant digital images on digital screens. Ophelia used a microphone for one of her monologues. Hamlet’s soliloquy was supported by a PowerPoint presentation.

Some of the reliance upon technology was clever, but most of it was not. It was possible for me to enjoy the performance only by ignoring the nonstop barrage of technological gadgets and by pretending that I was seeing a bare-stage “Hamlet”.

The production was not a disaster. The play, more or less, came across—and this was so despite the fact that the production was totally bereft of ideas (technological gizmos are not the same things as ideas). I had never before seen a production of “Hamlet” in which the director exhibited not a single thought about the play’s meaning. I did not think such a thing was possible—until Sunday.

The young actor playing the title role did not embarrass himself. His name is Hugh Kennedy. In each act, there was a ten-minute stretch in which Kennedy was quite good. Alas, in each act, there was also a ten-minute stretch in which Kennedy was quite bad. All night, Kennedy veered between being captivating one moment and inept the next. It was very vexing. However, without Kennedy, the entire performance would have been unendurable.

The rest of the company was unimpressive. The ladies fared worst, with a truly dreadful Gertrud and an even worse Ophelia. Indeed, the young woman playing Ophelia was so bad, I felt sorry for her.

In hindsight, I am surprised I was able to make it through the evening. However, while the play was underway, my attention was mostly held. Bad production that it was, the Jungle “Hamlet” was not a waste of time.

We caught the closing performance of the six-week run. Although an hour of text had been trimmed, the performance nonetheless ran almost three-and-one-half hours.

Josh and I had last seen “Hamlet” in April 2006, over that year’s Easter Weekend. Josh had come to Minneapolis for the first time that weekend, and he and I had gone downtown that Saturday to see “Hamlet” at the old Guthrie. “Hamlet” had opened the old Guthrie in 1963, and “Hamlet” had closed the old Guthrie in 2006. I had wanted Josh to experience the old Guthrie before the building was demolished, and that 2006 “Hamlet” was Josh’s only opportunity. (The razing of the old Guthrie was a disgrace—it was probably the only occurrence in world history in which a state-of-the-art theater facility was deliberately destroyed after only 43 years of use. Once The Guthrie moved into its new complex, The Guthrie should have turned over its former theater to another of the repertory theater companies in the Twin Cities instead of calling in the wrecking-ball crew.)

My parents had last seen “Hamlet” six months ago, when they had attended a performance of “Hamlet” at Theater In The Round, which had presented a four-week run of the play in March and April. According to my parents, the Jungle production we attended Sunday night was superior to the Theater In The Round production they had attended in April, a prospect I find rather frightening.

My sister-in-law had last seen “Hamlet” in 2000, when she had seen the National Theatre production by Sam Mendes, a production featuring Simon Russell Beale as Hamlet. That 2000 production is recalled by some with fondness, but my sister-in-law insists that Beale was seriously miscast and seriously misdirected. She says that Beale virtually rewrote the character of Hamlet in order to get by in the notoriously difficult part, and that Beale’s conception of the part involved playing Hamlet not as prince but as down-market dip.

Our “Shakespeare Day” was fun, but I would not want to repeat the experience anytime soon. It was almost midnight by the time we arrived home, we were exhausted, and the productions and performances truly had not been fine enough to justify our significant expenditure of time and trouble.

Monday was a happier day for us. Everyone came over for breakfast. We ate Eggs Benedict followed by buttermilk pancakes.

After breakfast, we took the kids (and the dog) to the park. Otherwise, we did nothing but stay home and play with the kids (and the dog).

We had a lunch of grilled tuna steaks, homemade egg noodles and peas. We ate strawberries and cream and fresh scones in the middle of the afternoon. We had a dinner of pot roast, homemade stewed tomatoes, homemade macaroni-and-cheese, baked butternut squash and fresh green beans, followed by apples baked in pastry with cinnamon sauce.

We did not intend to starve on Columbus Day.

Jungle Theater's "Hamlet"

2011-10-11T18:48:00.031-04:00

Jungle Theater's high-technology "Hamlet".

In the photograph, security personnel are seen monitoring movements in the halls of Elsinore Castle.

Photograph by Twin Cities theater photographer Michel Daniel.

Orchestra Hall On A Thursday Morning

2011-10-08T10:38:00.029-04:00

On Thursday morning, Joshua and I sneaked out of our respective offices for an early and long lunch. We met at Orchestra Hall to hear the 11:00 a.m. concert by the Minnesota Orchestra.

Music Director Osmo Vanska was conductor, and pianist Simone Dinnerstein was soloist. On the program was music by Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss.

Milhaud’s “La Creation Du Monde” opened the concert. When he wrote this ballet score in 1922 and 1923, Milhaud thought he was writing jazz—but an American listener would never categorize “La Creation Du Monde” as jazz. It is 1920s French music through and through, insouciant and Neo-Classical, with a few jazz-like harmonies and rhythms weakly incorporated into the composition.

Before composing “La Creation Du Monde”, Milhaud had written an earlier ballet score, “Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit”, inspired by the popular music of Brazil. “Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit”, written in 1919, is much more successful in evoking the sounds of Brazil than is “La Creation Du Monde” in evoking the sounds of American jazz.

I have never believed “La Creation Du Monde” to be a successful composition. The basic materials are thin, the development cursory, the themes pedestrian. Passing incident is lacking. “La Creation Du Monde” does not work on any level and, to my ears, it lacks even an attractive surface sheen.

As a dance work for the theater, “La Creation Du Monde” disappeared instantly from the stage. To the extent it lives on, it lives on only in the concert hall—and performances in the U.S. are few and far between, probably because Americans do not perceive the piece as very jazz-like.

The Minnesota Orchestra performance was basically a throwaway performance. The performance had obviously been fully rehearsed, but there was nothing Vanska or the musicians could do to bring the piece to life.

The Piano Concerto of Ravel followed the Milhaud.

The orchestra played with tremendous accuracy and some brilliance in the Ravel, although the rhythms were a little stiff, especially in the outer movements. Blame for the rhythmic stiffness must be laid at the feet of Vanska—rhythmic stiffness is one of his most conspicuous and ever-present shortcomings.

The Minnesota Orchestra is not a “French” orchestra, and Vanska is not a “French” conductor, so there was very little French quality to the performance. In fact, the performance was as much Russian as French, always in search of color, boldness and the big gesture instead of fragrance, understatement and “chic”. That Ravel based much of the first movement of his Piano Concerto on Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka”—his was an act of grand larceny—only further emphasized the Russian quality of Thursday morning’s performance.

Dinnerstein’s playing was charming in the slow movement, and she held my full attention there. Such is an accomplishment, because the slow movement in the Ravel is notoriously difficult to bring off. Ravel worked on his Piano Concerto for three years (1929 to 1931) and it was the slow movement that caused him grief. Ravel wanted the slow movement to be effortless—and, after much toil, the composer succeeded in making it so, but often at the expense of ennui during performance.

In the outer movements, Dinnerstein had the notes down, but she did not do much with the movements compared to the leading exponents of this concerto past and present. In the first and third movements, Dinnerstein was proficient, not arresting.

I have no clue whether Dinnerstein is an important artist. I had never previously heard her, and the Ravel Piano Concerto—unless one is a Michelangeli—reveals very little about the pianist.

After intermission, the orchestra played Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben”.

The performance was very, very fine; the level of ensemble was very, very high. The Minnesota Orchestra may now be America’s fourth-finest ensemble, trailing—in order—only Cleveland, Chicago and Philadelphia.

The Minnesota Orchestra of today is an exceptionally-fine orchestra. When playing for Vanska, the musicians play with tremendous focus, energy and commitment. There is a vibrancy in the music-making that is not present in Boston or New York.

The orchestra has not, however, acquired greatness. Its sound remains generic as does its music-making.

The orchestra’s strings lack color and weight as well as a uniform quality of sound throughout the dynamic range. When playing at high volume, the strings lack transparency and become strident and glassy. When playing softly, the strings produce a wispy sound.

The principal winds are not a distinguished group, lacking character and personality. They do not compare favorably to the principal winds in Cleveland, Chicago and Philadelphia.

The orchestra’s brass section is very strong—but it is often allowed to overwhelm the rest of the orchestra.

The generic nature of the orchestra’s music-making was exemplified by the “Heldenleben” performance: phrasing was generalized; musical episodes were broad, not pointed and precise. Of subtle characterization there was none. It was a bold but ultimately bland “Heldenleben” that Vanska and the musicians offered. The piece was played purely as showpiece for orchestra.

And yet the performance was enormously enjoyable. Any music-lover would be happy to hear such a performance—but would be aware, the entire performance, that Fritz Reiner and Rudolf Kempe found much more content in the score than Vanska uncovered.

There was a large and enthusiastic crowd in the hall Thursday morning. I would estimate that eighty per cent of the seats were filled (Orchestra Hall accommodates 2500 persons). Free coffee and donuts were available for concertgoers. There was almost a festive air about the occasion.

It was on Wednesday night that we first discussed attending Thursday morning’s concert. When Josh mentioned this fact Wednesday night on his Twitter account, the Minnesota Orchestra replied to him—twice.

We thought that was a nice touch.

My mother came downtown for Thursday morning’s concert, too. After the concert, Josh and I took her out for a quick lunch. We went to a modest place and ordered club sandwiches.

Schwarzkopf And Callas

2011-10-07T20:37:00.019-04:00

Based upon no evidence whatsoever, I assume this photograph of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Maria Callas was taken in July 1957, when both singers were recording Puccini’s “Turandot” in Milan for EMI.

Schwarzkopf was 42 and Callas was 34 at the time of the “Turandot” sessions, and the singers in the photograph look, respectively, 42 and 34 years of age. Further, the two singers crossed paths relatively infrequently, as their careers took them all over the world in the 1950s, the peak decade for both artists. Schwarzkopf and Callas were seldom in the same city at the same time.

Schwarzkopf was a glamorous figure in her own right, but in this photograph she looks like a hausfrau when standing next to Callas—although it must be acknowledged that Callas, after her weight loss, became an expert in “posing” for the camera. If Callas was not “posed” for this photograph, I cannot imagine what she was doing.

Rehearsing “Cosi”

2011-10-05T19:43:00.021-04:00

Singers Elisabeth Schumann, Eva Hadrabova, Jarmila Novotna, Charles Kullmann, Alfred Jerger and Karl Bissuti rehearsing Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” in Salzburg in 1936, with conductor Felix Weingartner at the piano.

For the 1936 Salzburg Festival production of “Cosi”, Schumann sang Despina, a role she had first performed more than two decades earlier in Hamburg. Schumann had learned the role of Despina while a young soprano with the Hamburg Opera—and Despina was the only “Cosi” role Schumann ever sang onstage.

There were not to be many more opera performances for Schumann after the conclusion of the 1936 Salzburg Festival: Schumann was to remain a member of the Wiener Staatsoper company only for one more full season (1936-1937) and for a portion of a second (1937-1938).

Shortly before the March 1938 Anschluss, Schumann left Europe and sought shelter in the United States, where she was to reside for the rest of her life (Schumann became an American citizen in 1944). Although Schumann appeared widely in recital in America from 1938 until shortly before her death, she was not again to appear on the opera stage.

In A Pinch

2011-10-05T19:41:00.013-04:00

My grandmother was released from the hospital on Thursday.

By Wednesday, the swelling in her knee had largely abated and she was able to walk without pain. Tests administered at the hospital demonstrated that she had suffered no ligament or cartilage damage, and that there was no evidence of bone spurs.

The physician said my grandmother must have experienced a minor knee incident, nothing more, and that she would have been released from the hospital two days earlier were it not for her advanced age. Low-stress physical rehabilitation is the only medically-indicated course of treatment for my grandmother.

My mother spent every day last week with my grandmother, both at the hospital and back at the care facility. It was a wearying and depressing week for my mother.

On Friday night, we all gathered at my older brother’s house for dinner in order to wind up six very stressful days. My sister-in-law had prepared an excellent meal: chicken consommé; Caesar salad; grilled salmon with seasoned rice, steamed broccoli and grilled red and yellow peppers; and raspberry sherbet.

Since my mother was away from the house all day every day, the dog stayed with my older brother’s family last week. We did not want him to be without company and without companionship—dogs are pack animals—and we thought he would be happier spending the week with my sister-in-law and my niece and nephew rather than at home by himself. He is accustomed to spending time at my older brother’s house, and he had a good week.

On Saturday, my mother again spent the day with my grandmother at the care facility, and my father accompanied her.

My middle brother and Joshua and I decided to do something fun on Saturday morning: we took the kids to the aquarium.

As aquariums go, Sea Life Minnesota is pretty small potatoes, but it is probably exactly the right size for the attention spans of small children: one can see everything in ninety minutes or less.

My niece and nephew enjoyed seeing the sea creatures. They were most fascinated by the cownose stingrays, the green sea turtles, the colorful clownfish—and the sand tiger shark, which truly is frightening. It was a perfect morning out for them.

After our visit to the aquarium, we took the kids to lunch at Ruby Tuesday, where we ordered hamburgers—and, after lunch, we took the kids home for their naps.

We remained at my older brother’s house for the remainder of the day, helping my older brother with tasks around the house and yard—and NOT watching Minnesota get demolished at Michigan, 58-0.

On Saturday night, we again all ate dinner at my older brother’s house. We ate Italian white bean soup; chicken quarters baked in an apple-cranberry glaze, small new potatoes in butter, steamed green beans, steamed baby carrots, and a tangerine-black cherry-almond cream cheese salad; and butterscotch pudding.

After dinner, we brought the dog home for the first time since Monday morning. He appeared to be pleased to be back home.

On Sunday morning, we attended service for the first time in two weeks (on the previous Sunday morning, it was while we were preparing to leave for service that we had received the emergency telephone call from my grandmother’s care facility).

Our church has—once again—amended the start time for Sunday service. Just when we had become accustomed to the early 9:00 a.m. start, the church changed the start time for traditional service from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

We were always happy with the 11:00 a.m. start time, observed by our church for decades. An 11:00 a.m. start allowed us to eat a Sunday breakfast before service. With the change in service, we now eat a Sunday breakfast after service—with the result that the Sunday breakfast now serves as our Sunday lunch, too.

After our Sunday breakfast/lunch, my brothers and my niece and nephew (as well as the dog) went to my older brother’s house, while my parents, my sister-in-law and Josh and I went to Saint Paul to attend the Sunday matinee performance of Minnesota Opera’s new production of Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte”.

“Cosi Fan Tutte” is among my favorite operas—of Mozart’s works for the stage, only “The Magic Flute” has more sublime music—and I never miss a chance to attend a performance.

Minnesota Opera had opened its checkbook for its new “Cosi Fan Tutte”. The physical production was much more detailed and much more elaborate than most Minnesota Opera productions, signaling that the company intends to keep this production—its first “Cosi” in twenty years—in the repertory.

A very traditional production set in the time and place Mozart and Da Ponte specified, Minnesota Opera’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” was beautifully designed, offering a series of striking and colorful and handsome stage images. The costumes were of a standard seldom encountered at Minnesota Opera, and the lighting design was exceptional—the design team had clearly devoted hours and hours and hours to technical rehearsals and the complicated lighting plan.

The director of Minnesota Opera’s new “Cosi” was Peter Rothstein, the artistic director of one of Minneapolis’s many repertory theater companies. “Cosi” was one of Rothstein’s first forays into the realm of opera, and he chose to direct “Cosi” as a naturalistic and realistic theater piece. Nothing was exaggerated, nothing was overplayed, nothing was too obvious. Rothstein’s meticulous staging was the best-directed “Cosi” I have ever seen (“Cosi” being a new production, there was a longer-than-usual rehearsal period). Rothstein’s “Cosi” was as stage-worthy as anything to be seen on The Guthrie boards.

Musically, the presentation was not as notable.

The conductor, Christopher Franklin (a graduate of Saint Paul’s Macalester College who now lives and works in Italy), conducted the score as if it were Rossini. The great sadness and melancholy of Mozart’s score were not revealed in Franklin’s performance. Franklin’s was a very glib interpretation of what is, fundamentally, a very profound work. Franklin understood the comedy of “Cosi” well enough, but he was unable to realize the genuine tragedy that lies just beneath the surface. The best thing I can say about Franklin’s work is that he kept things moving.

In the past, Minnesota Opera has often used the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for its Mozart presentations. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra was not called upon to play in the pit for the new “Cosi”—and not engaging the SPCO may have been a mistake. The contract musicians used by Minnesota Opera played cleanly but without any real distinction. The notes were there, but not the music behind the notes. Of glorious interplay between pit and stage there was none.

Much the same was true of the cast members, all young and all exceedingly handsome. Their acting and stage deportment, faultless to a “T”, trumped their singing. From a purely vocal standpoint, the performances were of a standard to be encountered at a fine but not particularly topnotch music conservatory: good but not distinguished voices, well-drilled but not guided with great insight.

Next month, we may hear “Cosi Fan Tutte” again. University Opera Theatre of the University Of Minnesota will present four performances of “Cosi” the week before Thanksgiving, and I suspect we will try to catch one of those performances. I do not expect the vocal quality of the upcoming student presentation to be significantly inferior to what we heard on Sunday afternoon.

On our way back to Edina after the opera performance, we stopped at Boston Market to pick up a carryout dinner. We bought chickens, mashed potatoes, stuffing and several vegetables, and took the food to my older brother’s house, where we all were able to sit down to a decent Sunday night dinner without expending any effort.

Boston Market will always do in a pinch.

The Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra

2011-09-30T13:07:00.026-04:00

From 1952 until 1962, the U.S. Seventh Army maintained a full-time professional orchestra based in Stuttgart. James Dixon, Kenneth Schermerhorn and Henry Lewis were among the orchestra’s principal conductors.

The photograph below depicts Henry Lewis rehearsing the orchestra in Stuttgart’s then-new Liederhalle in 1956.

The Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra gave a regular concert series in Stuttgart, toured the continent annually (giving approximately 100 tour performances each year), appeared regularly on European radio and television, and participated in music festivals throughout the continent, often appearing in the pit for festival opera performances.

The orchestra befriended and attracted the patronage of Dimitri Mitropoulos, and engaged notable guest conductors such as Antal Dorati. The Seventh Army Symphony, in its brief lifespan, operated as a major institution.

On November 22, 1957, a bus carrying members of the orchestra, then on tour, overturned outside Phillipsburg, Germany (near Heidelberg). Five players were injured in the accident and numerous musical instruments were damaged or destroyed.

The remarkable color photograph below captures the immediate aftermath of that accident.

Family Issues

2011-09-27T17:57:00.011-04:00

On Friday night, Joshua and I, along with my parents and my middle brother, went to Bloomington to attend Bloomington Civic Theatre’s recently-opened production of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs”.

Bloomington Civic Theatre now has a second stage, the Black Box Theater. The Black Box Theater is reserved for drama productions while the main auditorium continues to be placed into exclusive service for musical productions.

Friday night was the first visit, for all of us, to the new Black Box Theater, which is more than serviceable for drama productions. Is there another civic theater company in the United States that employs the use of two new, state-of-the-art theater facilities year-round?

I have always thought that “Brighton Beach Memoirs” was Simon’s finest play. “Biloxi Blues”, by comparison, is boring, and “Lost In Yonkers” is irretrievably marred by the character of the crime-minded son, more dramatic device than genuine character.

“Brighton Beach Memoirs” successfully fuses comedy and drama, not an easy thing to do, and it presents well-formed characters caught up in serious family issues. I suspect “Brighton Beach Memoirs” will be the only Simon play still to be presented a century from now.

The Bloomington production was notable because the actors portraying brothers Eugene and Stanley are brothers in real life—and their father, an actor, portrayed Eugene in an early production of the play and went on to portray Stanley in a later production of the play. Portraying the Jerome brothers apparently has become the family industry.

We enjoyed the production of what must be acknowledged is a very over-produced play, perhaps the most over-produced play of our time. However, at no point were we suffering from the illusion that the production we were watching was a distinguished one.

My parents saw “Brighton Beach Memoirs” in its initial Broadway run (although my parents caught the production a couple of years into the run and did not see the original cast). They recall that production with fondness.

Friday night’s performance was a sign-language-interpreted performance. When we had purchased our tickets online, the calendar had specified that a different performance would be the sign-language-interpreted performance. As things turned out, the theater had changed the schedule for interpreted performances after we had purchased our tickets—and without informing patrons. It was only when we arrived at the theater that we learned that we would be sitting through a sign-language-interpreted performance.

We were slightly peeved, since we had attempted deliberately to avoid the sign-language-interpreted performance. The theater being so small, it was virtually impossible for us—or anyone else—to ignore the interpreter. The interpreter was so intrusive that the interpreter became an integral character in the drama. At times, it became difficult not to giggle.

Before the performance, we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in Bloomington, but we did not order Italian food. Our waiter recommended the Chilean sea bass, and we accepted his recommendation. We were assured that the sea bass was “certifiable sustainable”—but we did not ask for an affidavit or other written certification. It is time for restaurants to cease providing such meaningless and unverifiable information on menus.

On Saturday, Minnesota played its third consecutive home football game—but Saturday’s game was an early evening game, so my father and my brothers were able to spend most of the day at home, playing with the kids, before it was time for them to head to the stadium.

Minnesota played lowly North Dakota State on Saturday—and Minnesota lost, 37-24. My father and my brothers returned home disgusted. In fact, I think everyone in the State Of Minnesota was disgusted after the game.

The announced crowd was 48,000, but my father and my brothers said there were 35,000 persons at the game, if that, at least one-quarter of which were North Dakota State fans.

Happily, Minnesota will be on the road the next two weekends, signifying that my father and my brothers will not have to waste seven hours each of the next two Saturdays driving to the stadium, sitting through a game, and driving home, all for the purpose of supporting an historically-bad football program.

On Saturday night, while my father and my brothers were at the game, Josh and I went downtown because there was a play we wanted to see.

We waited until the very last minute to leave home, both because we wanted to make sure that football traffic had died down and because we wanted to eat dinner with my mother, my sister-in-law and the kids.

We went to Minneapolis Theatre Garage to catch Torch Theater Company’s production of Sam Shepard’s “True West”.

Thirty years ago, Shepard’s plays were apparently performed with some frequency, but productions of Shepard plays are uncommon now, probably because the plays more or less reek of the 1970s. There is something vaguely and unpleasantly counter-cultural, even decadent, about Shepard’s work, and I suspect that his plays may be deemed “Carter-Era Plays”, rendered largely irrelevant by The Reagan Revolution. Shepard’s plays began falling from view in the early 1980s, just as the national attitude and national outlook brightened, and Shepard’s work has never subsequently returned to favor.

“True West” is not a bad play. Another tale of brothers dealing with assorted family issues, “True West” is an oddball play about oddball characters, but the play holds up in a good production—and the Torch Theater Company production was better than anyone had a right to expect, especially given the company’s budgetary limitations as well as the significant shortcomings of its performance space.

I thought the production was faultless, and the cast superb. In my limited exposure to the work of Torch Theater Company, “True West” was by far the best thing I had ever witnessed at the company. The production was fully worthy of the New York or London stage. It is regrettable that the production was seen by relatively few people in its one-month run and it is regrettable that the production will not live on. Saturday night’s performance was the final performance of the run, and the production will not tour or transfer.

Sunday was to be a family day, but we received distressing news early Sunday morning from my grandmother’s care facility: my grandmother had been unable to walk when she rose that morning.

My parents immediately went to the care facility, while I telephoned my brothers to give them the news. After consultation, we decided to gather at my older brother’s house to await communication from my parents.

When my parents arrived at the care facility, they found that a physician had already been called in and was in the process of examining my grandmother. Something had happened to my grandmother’s left knee, and she was unable to use it.

The physician and my parents decided that my grandmother needed to be transferred to the hospital, with the result that my grandmother was immediately transported by ambulance, with my parents in tow. My grandmother has been in the hospital ever since.

My parents stayed at the hospital all day Sunday. My brothers and I visited the hospital for an hour Sunday afternoon. It was very sad. My grandmother was completely disoriented—she suffers from dementia—and she had no clue why her environment had been changed.

My grandmother kept asking my mother questions, which almost suggested that my grandmother recognized my mother (very unusual, as my grandmother generally no longer recognizes anyone). However, twice my grandmother called my mother “Momma”.

Tests were administered on Monday, and the results suggested that my grandmother had somehow suffered a severe knee twist or sprain. Her knee is swollen, and apparently causes great pain. Medications have been issued to reduce swelling and to ease the pain.

It is our hope that medication and moderate physical therapy will allow my grandmother to regain use of her knee. My grandmother is 96 years old—and, if it became necessary, knee-replacement surgery would probably not be advisable.

My mother went to the hospital yesterday and again today in order to be with my grandmother, who remains greatly disoriented and greatly distressed.

We hope that my grandmother will be able to return to the care facility before the week is out, both for her sake and for my mother’s sake (as well as for my uncle’s sake and for my aunts’ sakes—they, too, have been loyal visitors to the hospital).

Steady

2011-09-24T16:31:00.020-04:00

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.

Dwight David Eisenhower, 10 January 1946

I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.

Dwight David Eisenhower, 11 November 1963

A Composer Has Something Intelligent To Say!

2011-09-23T23:58:00.045-04:00

Professor William A. Jacobson of Cornell Law School deemed Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech today at the United Nations a “masterpiece”, and I suspect that Professor Jacobson is right: the speech was a model of clarity and directness, purpose and resoluteness. Netanyahu’s address was a hallmark of what an address by a head of state should be. The world may not have encountered such a landmark address since the days of Ronald Reagan.

In vivid contrast to today’s elevated words from Netanyahu has been the vile anti-Semitic ranting of London’s press and music establishment the last couple of weeks, all in response to a public protest against a concert in London by the Israel Philharmonic, a protest in support of which numerous persons had issued public statements calling for a British boycott of the Israeli orchestra.

Four of the persons calling for a boycott—and even an outright ban—of the Israel Philharmonic were themselves members of one of London’s major orchestras, the London Philharmonic. Alas, the four persons were stupid enough to include the name of the London Philharmonic in their diatribe calling for the Israel Philharmonic to be banned from concertizing in Britain. The four London Philharmonic players were, quite naturally, disciplined—it was perfectly acceptable for them to have uttered publicly whatever foolishness they wished, but it was not acceptable for them to have publicly invoked the name of their orchestra (a player-administered body) in espousing such foolishness.

The self-governing orchestra suspended the players for nine months, and then reduced the suspensions to six months—with the result that the virulently anti-Semitic British press is in an uproar, claiming that “a certain faction” of financial guarantors of the orchestra (i.e., persons of the Jewish faith) is behind the “retribution”.

To Americans, the rampant anti-Semitism in today’s Britain is simply incomprehensible. Even taking into account the fact that Britain is now a Third-World country with a Third-World education system, the swiftness of Britain’s descent into anti-Semitism has been chilling. The descent began in the mid-1990s, and has snowballed into widespread madness, with the Guardian newspaper—now frequently referred to as the Guardian/Der Sturmer—proudly at the forefront of Britain’s deplorable anti-Semitic wave.

Winston Churchill would be appalled at what his country has become—but Julius Streicher would be pleased.

Happily, not everyone in Britain has been susceptible to the lunacy—and intelligent words were offered this week from an unexpected source: a composer, member of a profession not often known for acuity and temperance.

Scottish composer James MacMillan, perhaps best known for “The Confession Of Isobel Gowdie” and “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel”, two works founded upon MacMillan’s devout Roman Catholicism, had the following to say:

The Israeli/Arab controversy is too complex for self-advertising dilettantes to weigh in with an unintelligent contribution. Nuance and subtlety go out the window when bullies barge in, bawling about boycotts and bans.

The "artistic community" is out of its depth and beyond its comfort zone on this one, and they have previous experience in getting it wrong, tending to follow fashionable trends that will gain them brownie points with the liberal and power elites. There is nothing challenging or brave about their herd instinct.

In the past the “artistic community", alongside many other privileged middle-class “rebels”, disgraced themselves with ready apologias for Stalinism and the evils of Soviet Communism. I would hate to see history repeat itself with artists offering succor to the Islamo-fascists of Hamas and Hezbollah.

You don't have to agree with everything Israel does, but it is a beacon and oasis of democracy in a desert of authoritarian viciousness and anti-Semitism. We need a bit of proportion in reacting to this situation.

While the week featured an all-too-rare occurrence of a composer having something intelligent to say, the week also featured an all-too-common occurrence of a weblog proprietor making an “unintelligent contribution”, trying to attract attention to himself by “bawling about boycotts and bans”.

A leading rabble-rouser fanning the flames has been Mark Berry, instructor at Royal Holloway, University Of London. For the last week or more, Berry has been leading a charge all over the internet criticizing the London Philharmonic for its “suppression of free speech”—and writing that he has heard “whispers” about the “motives” of that “certain faction” of financial guarantors of the London Philharmonic (i.e., persons of the Jewish faith).

Berry was also co-signer of a letter published this week in the Guardian/Der Sturmer, a letter that—quite naturally—portrayed the London Philharmonic as chief villain of the entire affair.

For years, I have been keeping a jaundiced eye on Berry’s relentlessly anti-Semitic weblog, Boulezian, which is rather a trial to wade through. Berry needs to take a series of remedial writing courses—his writing is appalling muck—and he needs to take a series of courses in elementary logic. Berry also needs to choose a subject for his weblog about which he has some knowledge. An avowed Marxist, Berry should probably confine himself to writing about the life of Vladimir Lenin, or the glories of Joseph Stalin, or some such. As it stands now, whoever reads Boulezian does so, like myself, not because Berry has anything intelligent or original or worthwhile to say, but because Berry’s weblog reflects the mind of a troubled, half-educated weirdo.

In his sashaying turn around the internet during the last week, one of Berry’s recurrent themes has been that “music is politics”. Such opinion may be widespread among Marxists, but such opinion is not held by intelligent persons—and I believe it may be gainsaid that today no intelligent person can possibly be a Marxist (unless that person has severe psychological problems, which very well may be the source of Berry’s misfortunes, as online photographs of Berry would tend to suggest). If music is politics, then cooking is politics, as is gardening, and walking the dog.

“Music making is by its very nature a political act”—Mark Berry

“It is difficult to think of a more inherently political act than that of music-making”—Mark Berry

“Any claim that music is apolitical should be contested, since such a claim is itself ideological through and through, a typical ploy by those in positions of power to repress those who are not.”—Mark Berry

When I play a Schubert piano sonata, am I engaged in political activity? When I listen to a disc of Beethoven string quartets, am I committing a political deed? When the Minnesota Orchestra plays music of Debussy, are the players involved in political shenanigans?

Is not voting a more inherently political act than making music? And running for public office?

If music is politics, is politics music?

May one assume, in Berry’s warped world, that when American voters go to the polls next November to throw out America’s current president, it will be deemed a musical gesture?

It will certainly be music to some ears.

Would You Buy A Used Car From This Man?

2011-09-20T14:53:00.016-04:00

American playwright Tracy Letts.

The Edge Of Camp

2011-09-20T09:51:00.032-04:00

On Sunday afternoon, Joshua and I, my mother and our former landlady (who is now my middle brother’s landlady) went to Saint Paul to attend the matinee performance of “August: Osage County” at Park Square Theatre.

Our former landlady, a retired drama instructor (who taught drama at the boys’ school I attended), sees practically every theater production in the Twin Cities, and knows practically everyone in the Minnesota theater community. Word from the local thespian grapevine has been that the Park Square Theatre production of “August: Osage County” was shaping up as something truly extraordinary—and our former landlady convinced us that a return visit to “August: Osage County” would be worth our time.

In February 2008, we had attended a performance of the original Broadway production of “August: Osage County” in New York. At the time, I wrote:

“August: Osage County” is, fundamentally, nothing more than a Carol Burnett comedy skit about a dysfunctional family—but a comedy skit that goes terribly awry, turning incredibly nasty if not absolutely vicious a few minutes into the first act. There was an undeniable fascination in watching members of a seedy and sordid family go after each other tooth and nail, tearing at old wounds and opening new ones. However, the play itself is a formulaic commercial vehicle, created not by a genuine dramatist but by a purveyor of pre-packaged synthetic materials.

The author, Tracy Letts, has obviously spent a lifetime parked in front of his television set. Every single dramatic device, every single character, every single situation, every single line, derived purely from the swamp of present-day television. Indeed, Friday night’s audience instinctively recognized this, reacting to the play as if it were watching the tube at home. The audience chattered during the play, and laughed at inappropriate times and at inappropriate lines, and even interjected jeers and cheers when characters in the play were in discomfort or received a comeuppance.

A patina of seriousness hangs over “August: Osage County” because, lathered into this unpleasant and distasteful vat of television writing, playwright Letts has liberally inserted vast chunks of the family dramas of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Paul Zindel and Sam Shepard. It is all startlingly derivative, dismaying in its lack of originality.

Ironically, these deficiencies happen to be the play’s saving grace. Because it is so derivative and so unoriginal, and because it is so heavily-beholden to television, the play is easily laughed off. If the play were more powerful and more true, and the characters more believable, it would be disturbing. As it is, it is just a contemporary commercial vehicle, very much of its time, an entertainment that theatergoers may happily forget as soon as they exit the theater door.

A second viewing of “August: Osage County” causes me to reaffirm my sentiments from 2008: the play is derivative, unoriginal and exceedingly nasty. It is also exceedingly glib, boasting more clichés-per-minute than any play ever written. “August: Osage County” has absolutely nothing to do with art, but a great deal to do with entertainment.

And, in a good production, the play delivers huge helpings of entertainment. There is something morbidly fascinating about watching actors go after each other with hammer and tongs, bile flowing by the gallon.

The Park Square Theatre production was superb; it was the best thing I have ever encountered at the company. The production was at least as good as the original Broadway production. Park Square Theatre delivered three-and-a-half hours of pure entertainment.

The highest compliment I can pay the Saint Paul production was that it did not devolve into camp. Such was not true of the original Broadway production, which veered on the edge of camp the entire performance. (I have been told that the National Touring Company production of “August: Osage County”, which played the Twin Cities, was nothing but camp.)

However, that a repertory company in the Upper Midwest can offer a faultless production of something as odious as “August: Osage County”—and Park Square Theatre could never present Ibsen or Chekhov at such a high level—says something significant about the state of American theater.

William Inge In The 1950s

2011-09-19T12:15:00.013-04:00

Melodramas Drowning In Self-Pity

2011-09-19T11:31:00.032-04:00

I have never paid much attention to the work of William Inge.

Inge wrote plot-driven vehicles in which lower-middle-class characters from the Midwest and Southwest find themselves in various personal and family crises. The crises are largely uninteresting and carry no universal message. The appeal of Inge’s characters is limited, which makes the appeal of Inge’s dramas limited.

Inge’s characters are, above all, plainspoken. They speak an earnest, flat, featureless prose, the kind of prose high school math teachers from Western Nebraska must have used in the 1940s. I have always wondered whether Inge deliberately avoided a more poetic, rhetorical writing style because he associated unadorned plainness with truth and honesty.

And the language in Inge’s most-produced plays—“Come Back, Little Sheba”, “Picnic”, “Bus Stop” and “The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs”, to which must be added his famous screenplay for “Splendor In The Grass”—is indeed exceedingly plain. His characters utter mundane thoughts in mundane prose; the playwright has matched the dullness of his characters with language of equal dullness, as if he had set out to become the anti-Tennessee Williams (with whom Inge was on friendly terms).

For years, I assumed it was Inge’s dishwater-dull prose as well as his inability to conceal plot gears that kept his works off the stage.

However, having seen three productions of Inge plays in the last couple of years, I now believe a third strike against Inge’s plays is perhaps even more fatal to their long-term durability than the first two deficiencies I have cited: the plays are melodramas drowning in self-pity.

The slovenly wife and alcoholic husband in “Come Back, Little Sheba”; the spinsters of “Picnic”; the motley assortment of vagrants that inhabit “Bus Stop”; the long-suffering wife and unappreciated husband in “The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs”; the young woman who suffers a nervous breakdown in “Splendor In The Grass”: all are exemplars of an unattractive self-pity that was a recurrent theme of 1950s American drama. The plays of Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Williams exhibit the same mawkish self-pity that mars the work of Inge—and, as a result, the plays are insufferable, even flesh-crawling. Only Williams’s work from the period has survived, but only because the poetry that flowed from Williams’s pen helped to offset the maudlin nature of much of his work. Other than one or two plays by Williams, American drama of the 1950s is a wasteland.

And yet a mini-revival of Inge seems to be underway. Performances of his plays are popping up all over the place.

In April 2009, Joshua and I attended a performance of “Picnic” at Stoneham Theatre in Stoneham, Massachusetts. We had attended the performance largely out of curiosity—we had wanted to know whether “Picnic” was stage-worthy.

In a good production, “Picnic” remains stage-worthy, but barely so. “Picnic” is a faded remnant of American commercial theater of the 1950s, undistinguished, formulaic, withered—and yet enjoyable as historic artifact if staged with vividness and imagination and style.

In September 2010, Josh and I attended a performance of “Bus Stop” at Huntington Theatre Company in Boston. We had, once again, attended the performance largely out of curiosity.

“Bus Stop” is not as fine a play as “Picnic”. “Bus Stop” lacks the sense of community that is one of the most attractive features of “Picnic”. Further, the characters in “Bus Stop” lack the individuality of the characters in “Picnic”. Finally, “Bus Stop” is a more schematic play than “Picnic”. In “Bus Stop”, eight diverse characters are stuck overnight in a snowstorm in Kansas—and the stale device of eight strangers trapped together for a prolonged period is best left to crime melodrama, whether the Agatha Christie or “The Desperate Hours” variety. (Indeed, because of the corrupt crime genre on which Inge based his play, the so-called “captivity” drama, the viewer of “Bus Stop” is almost disappointed that there is no murder to be solved at the play’s conclusion.)

Unlike “Picnic”, “Bus Stop” is unworthy of revival. The play more or less rots on the stage. At the end of “Bus Stop”, the characters are in the very same situation as the characters in “Picnic”—they are left to carry on with their dull, vapid lives—yet, unlike “Picnic”, there is no sense that the characters in “Bus Stop” have experienced events worthy of their time and attention, let alone the audience’s. The characters in “Bus Stop” have been thrust together for a few hours, but nothing comes of the enforced gathering.

When Josh and I attended a performance of “Bus Stop” exactly a year ago, we never expected ever again to sit through the play.

However, one of the Minneapolis repertory companies, Theatre In The Round, recently opened a production of “Bus Stop”—and, on Friday night, Josh and I, along with my middle brother and my parents, caught the Theatre In The Round production.

The only reason my parents were curious to see “Bus Stop” was because Josh and I had described the Boston production to them—and, their interest piqued, my parents had decided that they wanted to see the play if ever a Minneapolis production were mounted.

That my parents were serious about such intention became clear on Wednesday night, when at dinner they had asked my brother and Josh and me whether we wanted to see “Bus Stop” on Friday night.

I don’t think our reactions were very enthusiastic—until my father, offhand, threw in “We were thinking of eating at The Capital Grille”, which suddenly made the prospective evening much more enticing.

My brother looked at me and asked, “Will I be able to sit through it?”

“Yes” I answered. “As long as you don’t expect too much.”

The result: we signed ourselves up for an evening out.

The Minneapolis production of “Bus Stop” was not good. The Boston production had been much finer, with better direction, a superior cast, and exceptional stage design (the Boston “Bus Stop” had featured the finest stage design Josh and I had encountered in three years in Boston). In fact, Friday night’s “Bus Stop” was one of the weaker productions I have encountered at Theatre In The Round. My suspicion is that the local director did not realize what he was getting himself into until it was too late to back out of the project. I base my suspicion upon my observation that none of the cast members appeared to believe in the material; the cast walked through its roles without conviction, as if dutifully carrying out unrewarding assignments.

The Minneapolis production emphasized the comedy inherent in the play more than the Boston production, which had been more intense and more dramatic. The result was that “Bus Stop” came across as a gentler, funnier play—but not a better play—in Minneapolis. (Unsuccessful theater productions often settle for ruthlessly mining the material for potential comedy.)

We were able to sit through the manufactured plot contortions of Inge’s play without too much distress—although the small audience Friday night was uncomfortable throughout the performance, unable to decide whether it was observing a comedy or a drama. (I have been told, accurately or not, that Theatre In The Round’s “Bus Stop” has suffered from poor ticket sales—which in Minneapolis means that the production has suffered from poor word-of-mouth.)

The question remains: why are Inge’s plays now enjoying revival after decades of neglect?

My father contends that the answer is an easy one: audiences have tired of seeing the same handful of Williams plays over and over, and Inge’s inferior yet very-Williams-like plays offer a viable substitute.

My mother has a different answer. Inge plays, she says, are revived only by small theater companies looking for something neglected—and they are revived only for very limited runs. Attempts to revive Inge plays for extended runs at major venues, such as on Broadway or in London, have been artistic and commercial failures.

My mother noted that she was pleased to have seen “Bus Stop”. However, she remarked that Inge’s plays not only were very old-fashioned, even by the standards of the time, but that Inge did not develop as a playwright or as an artist. Inge’s first commercial success, “Come Back, Little Sheba”, and his final commercial success, “The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs”, evidence no artistic development whatsoever. All Inge plays are alike; they do not offer a wide range of incident, character or emotion. With time, my mother says, Inge’s plays are destined to disappear entirely.

My brother insisted that “Bus Stop” was a pure product of early television: everything was very on-the-surface and exceedingly obvious, with no room for subtlety or nuance. “It was like watching an old episode of some long-forgotten television series that was never a hit in the first place” was his final word.

Josh believes that the current spate of Inge revivals reflects current economic difficulties. Inge’s plays feature members of the lower-middle classes aspiring and struggling to move up the socio/economic ladder. What with a constrained economy permeating the short-term national outlook, theatergoers now find resonance in the plight of Inge’s characters. As soon as the economy improves, Josh says, Inge plays will go back into long-forgotten drawers.

I suspect there is merit in all those views.

And I cannot imagine sitting through “Bus Stop” ever again.

Dinner at The Capital Grille certainly added to our enjoyment of the evening. We ordered lobster bisque, followed by steak brushed with crushed black peppercorns and cooked in a Courvoisier cognac cream sauce, served with asparagus with Hollandaise sauce.

The food was excellent.

31 March 1943

2011-09-12T21:02:00.039-04:00

The official New York opening for “Oklahoma” occurred on March 31, 1943.

The photograph below presents the principal cast members of the original Broadway production of “Oklahoma”.

The rare color photograph below captures an ensemble number performed by the original Broadway cast of “Oklahoma”.

On the same night of the “Oklahoma” Broadway opening, General George Patton’s troops in North Africa began an all-night march that ended with a successful surprise attack on a German panzer division early the following morning.

That same night, Allied bombers set off from Britain to mount an air attack on the German-occupied harbor of Rotterdam. Owing to heavy fog, the bombers flew off-course, and in error bombed a civilian area of Rotterdam. Hundreds of Rotterdam citizens, already suffering under a repressive German occupation, were killed in the raid.

Crematorium II at Auschwitz went into service on March 31, 1943.

New Mexico State And "Oklahoma"

2011-09-12T17:42:00.015-04:00

On Saturday, my father and my brothers attended the Minnesota/New Mexico State game.

Minnesota was expected to win—New Mexico State has one of the very worst Division I football programs—but the Golden Gophers suffered another loss, 28-21.

After almost defeating powerhouse U.S.C. in Los Angeles the previous Saturday, Minnesota laid an egg at home against New Mexico State. It will be another long season for Golden Gopher fans.

At least the game had a reasonable start time. With kickoff scheduled for 2:30 p.m., my father and my brothers were able to spend the morning playing with the kids—and they were able to eat lunch with the kids, too.

They left for the game at 12:00 Noon, and they returned at 7:30 p.m., a significant investment of time for a very dismal athletic contest. Their only reward: my mother had a good dinner waiting for them upon their return.

Yesterday afternoon, the tables were turned: my father and my brothers stayed home with the kids while my mother, my sister-in-law and Josh and I went to Bloomington to attend the matinee performance of Rodgers’s and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma” at Bloomington Civic Theatre.

We enjoyed the performance. The stage design and costume design were of a high standard, and the orchestra was very good (Bloomington Civic Theatre always uses a full orchestra for its musical productions).

The cast members were lively and enthusiastic, although mostly too young for their roles. Even the actress portraying Aunt Eller looked as if she should be playing Laurey.

Despite several dead spots, “Oklahoma” remains a great musical. The score is radiantly buoyant; it is perhaps the most buoyant score from the American musical theater. It retains its freshness after a hundred exposures.

That the show was written and first produced in early 1943, barely one year into America’s involvement in World War II and long before the outcome of the war was certain, has always fascinated me.

Nothing should be read into such circumstances, however, as both Rodgers and Hammerstein had contemplated—independently—writing a musical based upon the source material as early as 1940.

ALAN GILBERT ATTACKED

2011-09-11T02:02:00.065-04:00

JOSEF STRANSKY ATTACKED

________________________________________________

German Review Criticizes New Philharmonic Conductor

________________________________________________

Berlin, June 3 (by telegraph to Clifden, Ireland; thence by wireless)—The financial backers of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will be interested to learn that the German artistic world is filled with astonishment over the engagement of Josef Stransky of Berlin as the successor of the late Gustav Mahler.

The New York Times correspondent has been aware of this situation ever since he made the announcement of Stransky’s appointment several weeks ago, but he refrained from cabling subsequent developments until they had become public.

This has now happened. The current number of Pan, a leading German artistic review, prints a bitterly satirical article which makes piquant hints of the means by which Stransky’s appointment is said to have been brought about. The correspondent is also informed that letters have passed between Dr. Richard Strauss and Oscar H. Fried, the eminent German conductor, with a view to some form of protest against the idea that Stransky is representative of the best school of German conductorship.

Pan’s article, which is entitled “Mahler’s Diadicht”, says:

“The newspapers which have made the simple announcement of Stransky’s engagement do not know how it came about. That shall now be told here. Nobody denies Stransky’s rich resources—at least his cash resources.

“He ranks as a distinguished dilettante. His endeavors have been supported by the Bluthner Orchestra (an organization which Stransky has conducted in Berlin for the past two years), but the Bluthner Orchestra has been still more strongly supported by him.

“He was, perhaps, a good conductor. He was certainly a conductor who, in the Venetian sense, is ‘good’ for so and so. And so much sacrifice, not only of his person but of his money, has created comprehensibly lenient feelings for him—a man who was so valuable for the founders of the orchestra that he was immune from even the most honorable criticism.

“In consequence of this mistake, the controlling and paying ladies of the New York Philharmonic Society cast their eyes upon the conductor, who is understood to have been recommended by a German-American, August Spanuth, a former New York critic, now resident in Berlin.

“Richard Strauss recommended Kapellmeister Brecher of Hamburg; Mahler had recommended Oscar Fried of Berlin; a third candidate was Bruno Walther, a Viennese.

“These men are all distinguished conductors and genuine musicians, but Stransky got the job.

“Two members of the orchestra crossed the ocean with a power of attorney from the millionaire ladies and, having paid Mahler $30,000 for ninety concerts in six months, they secured the promise of the ‘Diadicht’ to give ninety concerts for $10,000.

“Economy is welcome even in New York, so Europe can continue to call Brecher, Fried and Walther its own.”

Published June 3, 1911
The New York Times

________________________________________________

Exactly one hundred years after it first appeared, this 1911 news story could be rerun in the same newspaper—and it would still be newsworthy. With alterations of a few names and some adjustments for inflation, the story would be as accurate today as it was when originally published in 1911.

(Bruno Walter, a Berliner, was of course not Viennese—but he had worked in Vienna the previous ten years and had taken Austrian citizenship the same year this article was published, which presumably accounts for the error.)

Cause And Effect

2011-09-10T06:58:00.022-04:00

[Zarin Mehta, President and Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic] noted that the Berlin Wall fell 30 years after the Philharmonic, led by Leonard Bernstein, played Moscow in 1959.

“Things don’t happen overnight,” he said.

________________________________________________

No, they do not.

And the Berlin Wall was not ERECTED until 1961.

Conclusion: massive nexus failure.

________________________________________________

Mehta, of course, is the same moron that appointed Alan Gilbert to the post of Music Director of the New York Philharmonic.

Under Gilbert, the NYPO has experienced a significant decline in ticket sales and has suffered its largest-ever single-season deficit, both of which might have been foretold the day Gilbert’s disastrous appointment was announced.

Simply put, serious music-lovers are not going to pay to hear Alan Gilbert.

At least anyone who knows anyone can now get free tickets to all Gilbert-led NYPO concerts: the orchestra has been reduced to papering Avery Fisher Hall for Gilbert concerts.

Indeed, for the bulk of Gilbert’s NYPO concerts, more complimentary tickets have been distributed than tickets sold to paying customers.

Yet despite heavy papering, the hall is seldom even half-full for Gilbert concerts.

I wonder whether Mehta has identified the cause of the NYPO’s attendance woes for Gilbert concerts.

Everyone else already knows the answer—after all, NYPO attendance remains robust for concerts featuring guest conductors of quality—but Mehta very well may be preparing to advance some crackpot cause-and-effect theory akin to his absurd if not idiotic pronouncement about the NYPO and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Central London

2011-09-07T16:25:00.018-04:00

Central London, with the spire of All Souls Church, Langham Place, prominent in the background.

We visited All Souls Church this year. My brother and I had explored the church in 2005, but last month’s visit was the first for Joshua and my parents.

All Souls Church, consecrated in 1834, was designed by John Nash, the designer and architect responsible for Regent Street, on which All Souls Church is situated.

A More Structured Existence

2011-09-05T22:48:00.007-04:00

Summer is over.

Our summer began in Boston, and involved a move across half the country, three weeks at the lake, a bar exam, a trip to Britain, a trip to Oklahoma (and a most complicated rock project), and a season-ending trip to the lake for Labor Day Weekend.

With the end of summer comes a return to a more structured existence: Joshua and I will return to work tomorrow and resume lives of toil and routine.

In our off-hours, we shall house-hunt. It is time that my parents once again have their house to themselves.

London's Comedy Theatre

2011-08-30T23:29:00.020-04:00

London’s Comedy Theatre, which opened in 1881—five days after the opening of the famed Savoy Theatre.

The exterior architecture is entirely unremarkable if not undistinguished.

The auditorium is below street level—one proceeds down two steep flights of stairs to reach the stalls. The balcony is at street level. Theatergoers learn that the auditorium is underground only upon entering the theater—no mention of this fact is to be found on the theater’s website.

Although the building has been remodeled at least three times, the auditorium remains as it was in 1881. The auditorium is of no historic or artistic interest. In fact, it may be the least distinguished auditorium among all London theaters.

Like most London theaters, ventilation at the Comedy Theatre is very poor. My brother and I had attended performances at the Comedy Theatre three times prior to this month’s “Betrayal”—we had seen “Journey’s End”, “The Old Masters” and “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” at the Comedy Theatre—and we had always noticed how poor (and noisy) was the ventilation.

In fact, during the first act of “The Old Masters” performance we had attended, the ventilation had stopped working entirely. Members of the audience began audibly to complain. The buzz from the crowd became so loud that my brother and I feared that Edward Fox and Peter Bowles would stop the performance.

At the intermission, my brother and I asked an usher to inform the house manager of the ventilation woes—but we did so only after observing that no other theater patrons had bothered to stop and have a word with any of the ushers as the patrons made their ways to the crush bars at intermission.

The usher we addressed summoned a well-dressed woman sporting a rhinestone in her pierced nose, and we told the well-dressed woman with a rhinestone in her nose that the ventilation had stopped working, as surely she must already know. She told us that no one had informed her of any ventilation problem—but she checked, and was able to confirm that indeed the ventilation had ceased working. Whatever measures were required to address the situation were taken, because the ventilation was operating by the time the second act was ready to begin. We—and the rest of the patrons—were able to breathe during the second half of “The Old Masters”.

Directly across the street from the Comedy Theatre is a profoundly inexpensive restaurant my brother and I discovered in 2002. It may be London’s least expensive restaurant in which the food is entirely edible. My brother and I used to eat at the restaurant almost every time we attended West End or Covent Garden performances.

Four years ago, my brother and I introduced my parents and Josh to the restaurant one evening—and they found it completely unobjectionable. In fact, they rather liked the place: homey atmosphere; simple, basic food, well-cooked; tables tightly packed together, almost forcing patrons to talk to persons at adjoining tables throughout the meal.

We returned to the restaurant this year, eating dinner there immediately before seeing “Betrayal” across the street.

Everyone was happy to go back. The food was as good and as inexpensive as ever.

London's National Theatre

2011-08-30T14:13:00.028-04:00

Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre, a Brutalist concrete structure on the South Bank of The Thames. The National Theatre opened in 1976.

London Theater Performances

2011-08-29T18:06:00.028-04:00

We saw five theater performances while we were in London.

The day we arrived, August 4, we caught a 3:00 p.m. matinee performance of Simon Gray’s “Butley” and a 7:30 p.m. evening performance of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”.

“Butley”, at the Duchess Theatre, was directed by Lindsay Posner and featured Dominic West in the title role.

Gray’s first hit, “Butley” presents—in real time—the collapsing world of a British academic on a single unfortunate afternoon, an afternoon in which the academic loses first his wife, then his boyfriend—and, most lasting of all, his career. The play is a biting and witty tale of a caustic (and not particularly sympathetic) intellectual with a willful streak of self-destruction.

“Butley” is a good play, and has been revived with some frequency since its 1971 premiere. Gray was a literate playwright, writing 20th-Century versions of drawing-room comedies peopled by intelligent persons who have interesting—if not profound—things to say. I had never previously seen a production of “Butley”, although I had studied the text, which “reads” very well.

The current West End production is not good.

West was miscast. He lacked the range necessary to bring Butley to life, although he certainly caught the character’s nastiness and seediness. Of charm there was none—and if Butley does not have a modicum of charm, the play is pointless—and of intellectual depth there was not the slightest suggestion. West’s was a proletarian portrayal of an academic, borrowed from the insufferable proletarian soap operas that thrive on British television.

Without an incandescent actor in the title part, “Butley” does not work. The play becomes little more than a series of recitations of nasty barbs orbiting around a vacant center.

Alan Bates was the original Butley. Many persons believe that Butley was Bates’s greatest role.

My father saw the original production of “Butley” when it transferred from London to New York in 1972. He recalls the production as “thrilling”—and, ever after, he never missed an opportunity to catch Bates onstage. Alas, according to my father, Bates was never able to recapture the magic of Butley in any other role.

Harold Pinter directed the original production of “Butley”. Indeed, Pinter directed ten plays by Gray, including a 2004 production of “The Old Masters”, a play about Joseph Duveen and Bernard Berenson, which my brother and I caught at the Comedy Theatre in London that year.

The 2004 “The Old Masters” was the last Gray play that Pinter directed. Both men were to die from cancer in 2008.

My brother and I saw Pinter outside the stage door of the Comedy Theatre the night we attended “The Old Masters”.

We were reminded of that fact this year, because it was at the Comedy Theatre that we saw Pinter’s “Betrayal” a couple of hours after attending the matinee “Butley”. (My brother and I had also attended a performance at the Comedy Theatre in 2005, when we had seen a staging of “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?”, a Peter Hall production starring Kim Cattrall and Janet Suzman.)

Many knowledgeable persons believe that “Betrayal” is Pinter’s finest—and only enduring—play. Presented in reverse chronology, “Betrayal” depicts the nine-year affair of a married woman—who has taken up with her husband’s best friend.

I dislike “Betrayal”. Although some skill has been exercised in creating the tale, “Betrayal” is a very nihilistic play about three self-centered and ungenerous and nihilistic persons, none of whom possesses a single admirable quality. “Betrayal” is based upon episodes and personages from Pinter’s life, and the persons portrayed onstage are as vapid and unpleasant as Pinter himself.

The current London production does the work no favors. It was a weak and tepid “Betrayal” we encountered at the Comedy Theatre.

The chief fault with the production was Kristin Scott Thomas, who brought nothing to the central role. Thomas had no range, no magnetism, no projection, no profile. Watching Thomas in a stage role was like watching a television actress undertake, for the first time, a complex, multi-faceted role from the classics—and come entirely to grief. “Betrayal” requires an accomplished actress in the central role for the play to register, and Thomas was nothing more than a pipsqueak. Hers was an embarrassing performance.

The director of “Betrayal” was Ian Rickson.

On our second day in London, August 5, we attended an evening performance of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead” at the Haymarket Theatre (“Theatre Royal Haymarket”, owned by the crown). Four years ago, we had seen “The Last Confession” at Theatre Royal Haymarket. The director of “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead” was Trevor Nunn.

The Stoppard play was the worst thing we saw in London. The production was simply a mess from start to finish, miscast, misdirected, unable to settle upon a tone, unable to acquire a rhythm, unable to develop momentum. The production was aimless, lacking concentration and propulsion. If one did not already know the text, one would assume that Stoppard’s play was a vast failure, a confused exercise in mere cleverness. Nunn’s “Rosencrantz” was the most listless staging of a Stoppard play I have ever witnessed. It was a trial for us to sit through all three acts.

The following day, August 6, we attended two theater performances: we caught a matinee performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” at the Garrick Theatre; and we caught an evening performance of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” at The National Theatre.

“Pygmalion” is a very good play, and we enjoyed the performance very much, even though we were cognizant—throughout the afternoon—that we were not witnessing an exceptional production.

Rupert Everett portrayed Higgins. He was not particularly good, but he was not as bad as I had feared. His Higgins was a very odd man, odder even than the script suggests, but I suspect a focus upon Higgins’s oddness was the only way for Everett to get through the part.

The Eliza was a young television actress. She was attractive, and carried some innate appeal, but she was not a natural stage actress, and was convincing neither as guttersnipe nor as lady. She probably had been cast because she is a known quantity to BBC viewers.

The primary pleasures in the production came from the fine stage design and costume design as well as the fine supporting cast, which was genuinely top-notch. Every subsidiary part had been expertly cast, and the supporting crew was immeasurably better than the Higgins and Eliza. Diana Rigg played Mrs. Higgins, and she was delightful. We wished her part had been larger.

The director of “Pygmalion” was Philip Prowse.

“Pygmalion” received its first performance in Vienna, in German translation, at what is now the Burgtheater. The first English-language production was in New York. London was the third city to see Shaw’s play (Shaw himself directed the first London production).

Shaw’s most-performed play in the English-speaking world, “Pygmalion” is the only Shaw play that has entered the repertory in non-English-speaking countries. France, Germany and Russia, all countries with rich theatrical histories and cultures, have witnessed countless productions of “Pygmalion” in the last hundred years.

The evening performance of “The Cherry Orchard” was the London production we had most wanted to see—and, and as a result, we had deliberately made “The Cherry Orchard” our final theater performance.

“The Cherry Orchard” was presented at the Olivier Theatre, National Theatre’s venue with the thrust stage. The production was directed by Howard Davies. The staging had received great acclaim, and had sold out all performances, and we were very keen to see it. In fact, we had purchased our tickets the very hour August performances had gone on sale via The National Theatre website—and, had we waited a few hours, we would not have been able to obtain tickets.

The production was fascinating, but much over-praised.

A new translation had been commissioned, and the translation was very poor. The translation was packed with preposterous contemporary references and phrases, and instantly became jarring. People in Russia in 1904 did not converse like Londoners in 2011, and it was a grave error for the translator to have couched Chekhov’s tale in the kind of contemporary dialogue one might hear at a London coffee shop. The excellent Michael Frayn translation should have been used instead (The National has used the Frayn translation in the past).

The cast was good, but the cast members were unable to evoke anything remotely Russian in their performances. This was a very, very British staging—with more than a whiff of British provincial theater permeating the production—and the acting styles onstage were more apt for a dreary domestic drama examining Britain’s lower classes, such as John Osborne’s “The Entertainer”, than a Chekhov play.

Zoe Wanamaker’s Madame Ranevskaya was portrayed, above all, as an irritating figure. In the last fifteen years, it has become a widespread practice in British theater for main characters in classic dramas to be portrayed as deliberately irritating. This practice, I believe, is intended to add “complexity” to characterizations of roles over-familiar to audiences—but the practice is, at bottom, a boneheaded idea as well as an idea bereft of genuine thought. An actress or director that must transform Madame Ranevskaya into an irritant in order to lend the portrayal a degree of “depth” has not thought long enough and hard enough about the role or the play.

Given how gruesome was the translation, and given how un-Russian was the staging, “The Cherry Orchard” was, largely, engrossing. However, the script was played as pure domestic drama, with little exploration of other important issues raised in the text. Such a constricted, small-scale interpretation of “The Cherry Orchard” reduces the power and range of Chekhov’s greatest play.

Oddly, Joshua and I had seen a truer vision of Chekhov’s final play two years ago, when we had attended a performance of “The Cherry Orchard” in Baltimore. That production had been presented by tiny Everyman Theater, the smaller of Baltimore’s two professional repertory theater companies.

Everyman Theater did not have a cast as talented as that onstage in London, nor was it able to employ a fraction of the design budget available to The National Theater. Nonetheless, the Baltimore “Cherry Orchard” had been twenty times more affecting than the current London staging—and the Baltimore production had enjoyed a vastly superior Madame Ranevskaya in Deborah Hazlett, who had given a truly remarkable performance (Josh wrote about Hazlett and that “Cherry Orchard” in April 2009). Hazlett had been a glowing Madame Ranevskaya; in comparison, Wanamaker was a mere bundle of nerves, having wandered in off the set of “East Enders”.

We last had attended a performance at The National Theatre in 2008, when we had endured a matinee performance of Michael Frayn’s “Afterlife”, an unsuccessful play about Max Reinhardt.

The National Theatre continues to deteriorate.

The interiors sport more grime with each return visit, the carpets and furnishings become still more tatty, and the unattractive warren-like public spaces evince a grim, prison-like atmosphere. The building is an eyesore, inside and out, one of the great architectural disasters of the 1970s. Constructed from the very cheapest materials, the building looks as if it had been intended for a very brief lifespan.

The building is now thirty-five years old. It is time for the structure to be replaced.

Hindemith And Stravinsky In Santa Fe

2011-08-26T19:09:00.020-04:00

Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1961.

Santa Fe Opera mounted Hindemith’s “News Of The Day” and Stravinsky’s “Persephone” that summer.

The Temple Dancer

2011-08-20T00:24:00.012-04:00

Uliana Lopatkina as Nikiya, The Temple Dancer, in “La Bayadere”.

The Mariinsky Ballet In London

2011-08-19T14:39:00.044-04:00

While we were in London, we caught two performances of the Mariinsky Ballet at The Royal Opera House.

On Monday night, August 8, we attended a performance of “Swan Lake”. On Saturday night, August 13, we attended a performance of “La Bayadere”.

My parents and Josh and I last saw the Mariinsky in February of last year, when we had traveled to Washington for a very long weekend—a weekend in which we had caught the Mariinsky Ballet at the very end of a Washington run of performances and the Bolshoi Ballet at the very beginning of a Washington run of performances. That weekend, we had seen the Mariinsky dance “The Sleeping Beauty”.

The Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty” presented in Washington last year was a Soviet-era production first staged by Konstantin Sergeyev in 1952. The production was peculiar: it failed to follow the scenario; it cut Tchaikovsky’s score to shreds; and the production design was abundantly unattractive. The Sergeyev “Sleeping Beauty” has—incomprehensibly—remained in the Mariinsky repertory ever since it was first mounted fifty-nine years ago (with a short-term exception to be noted below).

The Mariinksy “Swan Lake” we saw in London last week also was a Soviet-era production, dating from 1950—and it, too, had been first staged by Sergeyev. The Sergeyev “Swan Lake” has been in the Mariinsky repertory for sixty-one years.

To Westerners, it seems odd that the Mariinsky continues to present productions unveiled under Stalin. However, the Sergeyev productions, never acclaimed in the West, are unaccountably popular within Russia. Over time, Russian audiences became accustomed to the corrupt Sergeyev versions of various 19th-Century works—with the result that the Sergeyev productions now retain a tenacious hold on Russian affections. Mariinsky administrators that have attempted to replace the Soviet-era productions have been thwarted time and again. A few years ago, the Sergeyev “Sleeping Beauty” was at last retired with great fanfare, and a new production installed. The new production, appreciated in the West but disliked by Russian dancegoers, was quickly shelved, and the Sergeyev production swiftly reinstated, an inconceivable development in the eyes of those in the West.

Like the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”, the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” also used a corrupt score and a corrupt scenario (as well as suffered from exceedingly unattractive designs)—and, much like the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”, the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” has never been respected in the West.

The Mariinsky “Swan Lake” is the infamous “happy ending” Swan Lake, in which Von Rothbart is stripped of his wings and killed while Odette and Siegfried are allowed to live on. The production displays a pronounced fondness for jesters, prancing courtiers and other extraneous nonsense—yet the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” is nowhere near as bad (or as garish) as the Mariinsky “Sleeping Beauty”. If one can ignore the jesters and happy ending (as well as the mangled version of Tchaikovsky’s score), the Mariinsky “Swan Lake” was highly enjoyable, even magnificent.

It was magnificent because of the dancing.

The corps de ballet of the Mariinsky is of an amazing standard, a standard no other company can hope to match. It is the amazing flexibility of the backs of Mariinsky dancers that always first captures my attention. The ballerinas stretch and bend their backs with a suppleness and uniformity and subtlety of expression that are unknown to dancers in the West—and such qualities lend the ensemble work a magical power.

The arms and necks and upper-body carriage of Mariinsky dancers are astonishing; refinement and uniformity are always on display. Watching the Mariinsky corps de ballet execute its steps is, for me, always the highlight of a Mariinsky performance—and the corps was indeed wondrous in Acts II and IV of “Swan Lake”.

The Odette/Odile was Ekaterina Kondaurova and the Siegfried was American David Hallberg, making a guest appearance with the Mariinsky.

Casting for the August 8 “Swan Lake” had been changed twice after we had purchased our tickets from The Royal Opera House website. We were in no way disappointed, even though we had been promised first Diana Vishneva and then Uliana Lopatkina, the Mariinsky’s two most-renowned ballerinas (the performance had become sold out while Vishneva’s name still appeared on the casting list). Days before the Mariinsky dancers landed in London, Kondaurova was announced as the Odette/Odile for the performance of August 8.

Kondaurova was an excellent Odette/Odile. Better in the lakeside acts than in Act III, where her Odile struck me as brittle and unnatural (and perhaps a bit forced), Kondaurova is a major ballerina. Kondaurova should be better-known in the West—she is a dancer of astonishing technique yet capable of expressing drama and emotion as well as evoking heartbreak. Kondaurova is a far finer dancer than any principal I have encountered over the last dozen years at American Ballet Theatre or at The Royal Ballet or at The Paris Opera Ballet. The depth of Russian ballet talent is limitless.

Hallberg did not give a memorable performance. His characterization of Siegfried struck me as faceless, lacking in princely profile, lacking in personality and lacking in charm. Kondaurova totally overwhelmed Hallberg whenever both dancers were onstage at the same time. Their partnership was a steak-and-mutton pairing.

In fairness, I must note that Hallberg had the unpleasant assignment of trying to lend some semblance of life to Act I, by far the weakest act of the Mariinsky production.

The Mariinsky orchestra had been imported from Saint Petersburg for the duration of the three-week London engagement. The orchestra was off-form in “Swan Lake”—and the tempi were far too slow, as is generally the case in Mariinsky performances.

Acts I and II were performed without an intermission, yet there was an intermission between Acts III and IV. In my view, “Swan Lake” must be performed either with three intermissions or with one intermission: there must be an intermission after each act; or there must be a single intermission after Act II, with each palace act seamlessly followed by a lakeside act. Offering “Swan Lake” with two intermissions makes no sense whatsoever—and this is especially so since Act IV is the shortest of the four acts, lasting only twenty minutes.

Despite the shortcomings, we loved every minute of the Mariinsky “Swan Lake”. It was a privilege to see such a great ballet company in one of the 19th Century’s seminal works of Classicism.

The performance of “La Bayadere” we attended five nights later involved an even older Soviet-era production, a “Bayadere” production dating from 1941 (the year Hitler invaded Russia).

My parents and Josh and I had attended a performance of “La Bayadere” in November, when we had seen the Boston Ballet production, a production largely derived from Rudolf Nureyev’s Paris Opera Ballet staging (but with different stage designs).

When I wrote about Boston Ballet’s “La Bayadere”, I wrote at some length about the two different versions of “La Bayadere” most frequently encountered in the West: Natalia Makarova’s 1980 production for New York-based American Ballet Theatre; and Nureyev’s 1992 production for Paris.

At the time, I also mentioned the 2001 Mariinsky production, a production reconstructed from the 1900 Marius Petipa staging. The Mariinsky “La Bayadere” of 1900 was the final production of Petipa’s 1877 original that the choreographer supervised during his lifetime. The 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction had been based upon dance notation from the 1900 production as well as Ludwig Minkus’s original score and orchestrations, unearthed in 2000 in the Mariinsky library.

The 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction of the 1900 Petipa production had proved to be a sensation in the West (it was first shown in New York and London in 2003, and caused critics to revise wholesale their opinions of the ballet)—and I had always assumed that the Mariinsky had permanently abandoned the corrupt 1941 production once it had mounted the 2001 reconstruction of Petipa’s final staging.

I had been wrong. The Mariinsky reverted to the corrupt 1941 production of “La Bayadere” in 2004 (“except for special occasions”, according to the Mariinsky program booklet), and has danced the corrupt 1941 version ever since. The pristine “Bayadere” unveiled in 2001 did not prove to be popular in Russia, where audiences had become so accustomed to the corrupt 1941 version that they had demanded its return.

We had eagerly looked forward to the 2001 Mariinsky reconstruction—and we were disappointed that the old Soviet version was being offered in its place. We discovered what we had gotten ourselves into long before leaving for London—but long after we had already purchased our tickets. We would never have purchased tickets—very expensive tickets—for “La Bayadere” had we known that the 1941 Soviet-era production was the production scheduled for London.

The 1941 production uses a specious score, much not from Minkus’s pen (and with completely different orchestrations, all created by a variety of anonymous hands), and it omits all of Act IV and portions of Acts I through III. The 1941 production ends—as did the Boston Ballet production—with “The Kingdom Of The Shades” scene, robbing the ballet of any sensible dramatic conclusion (but providing a ridiculous if not ludicrous happy ending, first introduced in 1924 under pressure from the Lenin regime, which favored “happy endings” in entertainments for “the masses”).

I cannot understand the Mariinsky’s perpetuation of corrupt Soviet-era stagings. Ballets warranting revival should be presented after thorough research of the most pristine source materials, and with original scores emanating from the pit. (The Mariinsky’s Soviet-era productions are also in dire need of re-costuming.) Ballet stagings in Russia should no longer be based upon the type of production Stalin found pleasing.

The dancing provided the only pleasure to be derived from the current Mariinsky “La Bayadere”—and the dancing was undeniably glorious.

The corps was in stunning form all night—and not solely in “The Kingdom Of The Shades” scene, which came across with stupendous impact (32 ballerinas were used, as in Nureyev’s Paris production, unlike the 24 ballerinas used in the Boston production and Makarova’s ABT production). Even in the brief formal dances of Acts I and II, the Mariinsky corps was incomparable.

Two of the three principal dancers were excellent—and, unlike “Swan Lake”, with its two changes of casting, there had been only one change of casting for “La Bayadere” after we had purchased our tickets.

We had ordered tickets for what purportedly was to be a Vishneva performance. Two days after our order had been placed, the performance was listed as “sold out”—and, two days after that, Vishneva’s name was removed from the cast listing.

We heard countless complaints from patrons of The Royal Opera House about the casting shenanigans connected to the Mariinsky’s visit to London. As soon as performances with the Mariinsky’s biggest stars became sold out, those very same stars were shifted to performances for which sales had been weakest. No one knows whether the perpetrator of this nasty scheme was the Mariinsky itself, The Royal Opera House or Victor Hochhauser, the impresario presenting the London engagement.

Happily, we were able to experience Lopatkina if not Vishneva, because Lopatkina danced Nikiya at the August 13 “La Bayadere” performance—and she was magnificent.

Lopatkina is a spectacular ballerina—one cannot take one’s eyes from her while she is onstage—and the kind of dancer one rarely encounters in the West: blazing technique, glamorous stage presence, deep musicality, surefire dramatic instinct, vivid yet natural projection, charisma to burn. With the slightest tilt of the head, Lopatkina could evoke the kind of stage tension normally associated with Hamlet’s soliloquy or Otello’s “Credo”. I would go see Lopatkina nightly if she danced in Minneapolis. She is one of the greatest dancers I have ever seen.

The Solor was Daniel Korsuntsev. Korsuntsev was quite good in what is, all in all, a rather thankless role. Korsuntsev possessed some stage presence and exhibited the virtuosity dancegoers have come to expect from Russian male dancers. However, Korsuntsev did not strike me as a particularly thoughtful or subtle or polished artist.

Anastasia Kolegova danced Gamzatti—and she was a cipher on the stage alongside Lopatkina and Korsuntsev. Kolegova basically got lost amid the onstage proceedings—but it did not matter, because Lopatkina was so riveting.

Before the performances, I had worried about my brother attending two evening-length ballet performances within five days. My brother, like practically everyone, enjoys “Swan Lake”, but I was uncertain whether he would be able to tolerate “La Bayadere”.

My brother made it through both evenings without stress—and it was two long evenings we endured: the performance of “Swan Lake” lasted three hours and ten minutes; and the performance of “La Bayadere” lasted three hours and fifteen minutes.

My brother enjoyed “Swan Lake” immensely (other than its gruesome first act). He thought “La Bayadere” was rather silly—which of course it is—but he enjoyed watching Lopatkina and the corps. He did not regret the time spent in The Royal Opera House.

London press reviews of the Mariinsky’s three-week visit to The Royal Opera House were shockingly provincial. Other than Clement Crisp writing for The Financial Times, we did not encounter a single critical notice, in any of the London newspapers, covering any of the six programs the Mariinsky toured to London, that exhibited even the slightest sophistication. The reviews were public exhibitions of extravagant ignorance, both about the Mariinsky and about the art form itself.

“A Mere Gathering Of The Unsuccessful”

2011-08-16T05:11:00.032-04:00

“When will we get done with the fool idea that the way to make a party grow is to scare away everybody who has an extra dollar in his pocket? God forbid that the Democratic Party should become a mere gathering of the unsuccessful!”

John W. Davis, Democratic Party Presidential Nominee, describing how “demagogic populism” from his own party cost him the 1924 U.S. Presidential Election.

A Couple Of Super-Turkeys

2011-08-11T17:04:00.034-04:00

Thanksgiving has come early this year.

Anyone asking why the Atlanta Symphony has such serious attendance problems as well as such a huge debt load need only look at the photograph below for answers.

And, no, the photograph is not an outtake from the film, "Mississippi Burning", although anyone might be forgiven for making such an assumption.

The image has not been altered in any way—although one may certainly question the sanity of whichever Atlanta Symphony orchestral administrators approved the release of such a dismaying albeit hilarious photograph.

Are there two bigger turkeys, anywhere, than Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles?

And need one ask why the much-heralded project of a new concert hall for the Atlanta Symphony was (very, very quietly) shelved?