| Saturday,
December 4, 2010 Still catching up. We have opera tickets for
tonight. I am not really looking forward to the performance: the singers are
said to be good, but the performance is in the modern stupid style. It's
Lohengrin, and as far as I can see, the management of LA Opera hates Wagner.
They find they have to put on some Wagner operas -- they triumphantly
present a Ring Cycle last year at enormous cost -- but when they do, they
seem to have a mission: make sure no one actually enjoys it. Sometimes they
fail in that mission, as with Tannhauser a few years ago, but mostly they
succeed. The Ring cycle was done in "fantasy silly" style, with puppets and
a raked stage and incomprehensible costumes and no attempt whatever to allow
the singers to do any acting: one suggested that given the masks and raked
stage and inability to move, perhaps they'd do better to play her CD of her
performance, and hire a dancer to walk through the part.
I haven't seen this Lohengrin, but the newspaper pictures of the costumes
tell me all I need to know: there won't be a swan, it won't be set in a
medieval principality, it won't try to invoke sentiments. Just as this
company's Parsifal and Ring worked very hard at ignoring Wagner's stage
notes and performance suggestions, and making certain that there was no
possibility of creating a fantasy wonderland, I can see from the costumes
alone that the point of this Lohengrin will be to negate Wagner's
intentions. There won't be any swan. As the Times reviewer said, nowadays
there never is. Ah well, I can close my eyes and pretend they did it
in concert, which would have been a lot cheaper.
Anyway, I am trying to catch up.
If you need something to read, "In Defense of Scanners and Pat-Downs", an
interview of John Pistole by Matthew Kaminski (link)
makes as good a case for what TSA is doing as you are likely to find.
Pistole is a career FBI man and he argues his case about as well as anyone
can.
Then you can watch the video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8jGVXOMsw for the other side of the
story.
==============
You can also read the education article by Joe Klein, the retiring
chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, "What I Learned at
the Education Barricades" (link).
Now that he's leaving he's a bit more frank about what's going on, but he
claims to have made more changes than most have noticed.
==========
Unemployment is growing. In Christmas season. After the November
election. And Harry Reid tells us that the Democrats mean it when they say
they want to create jobs, and it's all the Republicans fault for holding the
Democrat programs hostage. Odd that he didn't try for those programs when he
had the means to bring them about. The weird Washington games continue.
And I have to go get dressed for the opera.
I have posted mail
on Climate Data and the Korean situation.
===================
Lohengrin
2330: Wow. Was I wrong. I still prefer medieval fairy tale operas be
staged with traditional costumes and sets, and I think some of the state
business got in the way, but the singing and acting were superb. I went to
Lohengrin expecting to hate it, and I was -- appointed? I had expected to
dislike it and I was very pleasantly surprised. I loved it. It started at
6:30 and ended at just about 11 even with two intermissions. It was
especially enjoyable because we saw a lot of old friends. They all loved it
too. Jim and Judy Perzik -- Jim is the General Counsel and Secretary of the
Lakers -- sit next to us, and Jim brought his Lakers ring to show me, so I
can say I have held an NBA championship ring. And Joe and Alice Coloumbe --
Trader Joe -- were there with Charlotte, a daughter we have known since well
before she was married and haven't seen for a while.
So it was a great evening, both on stage and at intermissions. I
generally expect to have a good time at the opera even if I disapprove of
the staging.
LA Opera put all the money in the voices, and sort of made do with sets
and costumes. Actually I expect they spent a bit on those, too, although
they didn't spring for a swan, and there was really only one set, which
served as both the inside and the outside of the Cathedral. They put a tent
in the Cathedral to be the wedding night bedroom, and oddly enough that
worked although they had a couple of chorus girls helping Lohengrin and Elsa
undress, and I couldn't get rid of the thought that this was a new TSA
inspection. Fortunately the music overcame that whimsical thought before it
spoiled everything else.
Lohengrin's first appearance is in a dirty undershirt, wool pants that
might have once been a uniform, a nondescript left shoe, and shining plate
armor from right toes to right knee. The program notes, or maybe it was in
an interview with a reviewer, say that the leg is supposed to be an
artificial limb. This denotes some sacrifice or another, as if the Grail
can't afford to cure its knights or clothe them much less furnish them with
armor. He doesn't have a sword with him, either, having to borrow one from a
soldier in what looks to be a Prussian uniform of perhaps the period of
Bismarck. Some of the other soldiers are dressed in similar uniforms, but
Friedrich's bully boy knights are dressed in 1940's business suits with hats
of the period. Friedrich first appears costumed in what is apparently a
bloody surgical gown, but later in the same scene he has changed into a
shapeless middle class brown business suit. This is not explained at all.
Much of the stage business is just plain silly, as when a group of soldiers
and veterans pummel a amputee veteran for no reason other than the director
told them to.
In a word, the staging by Director Lydia Steier is designed to show how
clever she is, and perhaps to illustrate that she has a deeper understanding
of the story than we -- or Wagner -- ever had. Perhaps so, but there are
other interpretations.
And yet none of this nonsense can take anything away from Music Director
and Conductor James Conlon, who had the LA Opera orchestra timed to
perfection, holding down the volume enough to allow the singers voices to
come through without their having to strain to compete with the Wagnerian
notes -- but loud enough when called for, as with the wedding march. And the
always superb LA Opera chorus was splendid.
I'm told that Ben Heppner is currently the world's best heroic tenor, and
I have no reason to doubt that. Delora Zajick was a powerfully evil Ortrud,
master of passive aggression (and as it turn out fairly powerful
witchcraft), and Kristinn Sigmundsson was outstanding as King Heinrich,
known to historians as Henry the Fowler, who rebuilt the Holy Roman Empire
although he never took the title of Emperor; he left that to his son Otto,
who revived the Empire 0f Charles the Great, and defeated the Hungarians at
the Lechfeld and thus made it possible for western Europe to accumulate some
capital and begin to climb out of the Dark Ages. You'd think the court of
Henry the Fowler exotic enough as an operatic setting (it certainly was for
Wagner) but modern intellectuals prefer to set their stories in an oddly
mixed neverland of their own imagination, probably because they know no
history and can't be bothered to learn any. I still resent the sets and
costumes and general stage direction; but even the silly costumer and
director couldn't spoil this tale and the magnificent music.
==================
Malware in One Of Your Links
Jerry,
This link in your Decline of The West post was just
flagged in my IE 8 as delivering malware.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/ <http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/29/the-danger-of-a-global-double-dip-recession-is-real.html?PageNr=1>
mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/29/ <http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/29/the-danger-of-a-global-double-dip-recession-is-real.html?PageNr=1>
the-danger-of-a-global-double-dip- <http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/29/the-danger-of-a-global-double-dip-recession-is-real.html?PageNr=1>
recession-is-real.html?PageNr=1 <http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/29/the-danger-of-a-global-double-dip-recession-is-real.html?PageNr=1>
Dean
Thanks. I have no idea which one does what and for whom.
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