WagnerBlog

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-12T20:17:00.008-05:00

It soon becomes clear as you watch the new American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that director David Fincher is the perfect person to direct Stieg Larsson's runaway international best seller. This story, involving a twisted serial killer with fragments of the Bible on his mind, is a terrain that Fincher has memorably explored in perhaps his best known film, Se7en. Further, as the title character, he has cast Rooney Mara, an actress that last year played the role of the girlfriend of computer hacker and creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. It is now Ms. Mara who assumes the role of über computer geek Lisbeth Salander, an unusual girl who assists journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to piece together the events that connect a wealthy Swedish family to a series of unspeakable crimes.

But the similarities between Salander and Zukerberg's main squeeze end the moment we first see Ms. Mara on screen in this film. With her pale face covered with piercings, her jet black hair in a mohawk, (which she later lets hang down in a downtown version of Louise Brooks), and her lithe body covered in ink she is the very essence of 1970s punk rebellion, and the total antithesis of last year's perky Ivy League coed. In fact, Ms. Mara creates an iconic figure in this film. An unforgettable portrait of a no-nonsense drifter who can hack into computers as well as get decent results when she uses a tattoo gun for the first time. A rape victim, she now callously calls the shots in bed: she can pick up a luscious brunette at a lesbian club one night, as well as make all the right moves that get her in bed with Blomkvist. Tough as nails (or as the metal that pierce her alabaster skin), she is the very essence of femme fatale and hardboiled detective wrapped up in one cool biker chic. But Ms. Mara makes sure that we also see her other side. In one of the closing moments of the film we discover that she is as sentimental as they come, and that her heart is quite vulnerable.

Although very much a film that centers around Ms. Mara and Mr. Craig, there are also fine supporting performances from Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgård as patriarchal members of a family with a dark past.

The script by Steven Zaillian is quite faithful to the English translation of this Swedish novel, whose original title Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) takes the focus away from the Salander character and places the novel squarely in the realm of pulp noir where it belongs.

Hugo, Movie Magic via Martin Scorsese

2011-11-27T13:35:00.014-05:00

When Martin Scorsese's point of departure for a film is personal, the result is always an outstanding movie. This is the case with Hugo, a family film with a feel-good warm glow that surely on the surface does not feel at all like a Scorsese picture, but one that harbors, at its core, a loving homage to the magic of film making, making it perhaps the most personal of all the films that he has directed in his brilliant career.

When young Marty was a kid growing up in New York's Little Italy, often his health did not allow him to play with the other neighborhood kids. He would observe the world from his Elizabeth street window, and fill notebooks with storyboards of imaginary films. As a child, he was already measuring reality through the frame of a window, similar to the way the camera eye composes a shot. When we first meet young Parisian orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) his big sad blue eyes are staring at the world from inside the giant clock in the large railway station in which he lives. His "Hunchback of Notre Dame" existence consists of winding the big clock to ensure that he will not be sent to an orphanage by the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), as well as stealing gears from a toy seller with a past (Ben Kingsley) in order to make a mechanical automaton -- a legacy from his dead father (Jude Law) -- come to life. As young Hugo begins to work for the mysterious toy seller he learns that the old bitter man is a very special person, none other than Georges Méliès the great film pioneer magician who between 1896 and 1913 made more than 500 short films including the classic "A Trip to the Moon" but who fell into bankruptcy and obscurity after the Great War. Before long, young Hugo and his pal Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) are on a mission to deliver Méliès (Isabelle's godfather) back from obscurity.

This is Mr. Scorsese's first 3-D film, and it finds him in a playful mood with his new toy, echoing the world of cinema right and left. His trademark moving camera, traditionally always on the prowl, here achieves a sense of depth that Alfred Hitchcock was able to capture in his one and only 3-D film Dial M for Murder. As a matter of fact, there are many homages to the Master in this film. The way that Hugo spies on the regulars that gather at the railway station reminds us of Jimmy Stewart looking out of his Rear Window. Even Hugo's dwelling inside the clock, with dozens of moving gears and mechanical parts, reminds us of the inner workings of a motion picture projector. The stairs that lead up to it bring us back to the Master by giving us a sense of Vertigo.

But when the movie flashes back to the end of the 19th century, that's when the real cinematic magic begins. Scorsese's recreation of the heyday of Georges Méliès and his wondrous, hand-tinted, theatrical and fantastical films is an unforgettable, loving homage to the time when the movies began. Ben Kingsley gives a memorable performance as Méliès, forgotten and wounded in his old age, but as a young man sunny, full of enthusiasm, and wide-eyed at the possibilities that this new medium can offer.

In many ways I picture Martin Scorsese sharing this enthusiasm when making this film. A work so different from the rest of his other works, and yet so close to his own heart and imagination. It might just become the movie that he will be best remembered for.

J Edgar, Clint Eastwood's film with Leo DiCaprio

2011-11-26T10:27:00.012-05:00

In a memorable scene from J Edgar, Clint Eastwood's new biopic of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's first director, the young J. Edgar Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is entertaining actress Ginger Rogers at the Stork Club and gets invited to dance with the Hollywood hoofer. Immediately Hoover declines, gets nervous, says that he does not know how to dance and perspiring he excuses himself from the premises taking along with him his assistant Clyde Tolson (played by Armie Hammer). Later that night at his home, which he shares with his mother, Mrs. Hoover (Judi Dench) wonders what people will think of her son if he refuses to dance with women and is constantly seen with his male assistant. She tells him that she'd rather have a dead son than a "daffodil." That night, J. Edgar Hoover gets his first dancing lessons, with his mom leading.

In 1995, three years before the titanic turn that turned him into "Leo," DiCaprio showed that he could portray sexually ambivalent characters convincingly. In Total Eclipse, he played the young French poet Arthur Rimbaud, a performance soaked in absinthe and featuring a torrid and graphic lust affair with older poet Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis). It was the first and last time that we would see DiCaprio having sex with a man on screen. After Titanic the very thought of it seemed ludicrous. Now, In J. Edgar, DiCaprio once again plays a character awash with feelings for a man, but whereas his Rimbaud was a sexual animal on the prowl, the extent to which his Hoover shows affection does not go beyond a momentary touch of Clyde Tolson's hand. As played by Mr. Hammer, Tolson is just as sexually inept as his boss, and this leads to quite a memorable scene in a hotel room.

Aside from spying upon J. Edgar Hoover's sexual peccadilloes, the film largely focuses on delineating the beginnings and growth of the FBI, while portraying Hoover as a monster who seeks the limelight at any cost and who keeps secret files on everyone. Clint Eastwood relishes the chance to do early 20th century period once again as in his Changeling back in 2008. The color palette provided by cinematographer Tom Stern (who also shot Changeling) captures well the 1930s as well as the 1970s, the two decades which the movie explores.

Any film that covers half a century for its character is going to need old age makeup, and as usual, this is where today's films always falter. The glory days of Citizen Kane, where with simple theatrical makeup Orson Welles was able to transform himself into an old man, have disappeared. The credits to this film lists twenty makeup artists, and the results are mediocre. The film features liberal use of prosthetics in well-lit scenes: never a good combination. For example, one daylight exterior scene at the racetrack reduces Armie Hammer's face to that of an immobile waxen dummy. Somehow, DiCaprio pushes his performance through the latex and in the struggle with makeup he manages to survive. Naomi Watts, who plays Helen Gandi, Hoover's longtime secretary, ends up looking creepy.

If you can get through the makeup I am sure that you will enjoy J. Edgar. It is the kind of well-made, well-paced film that Hollywood tends to favor around Oscar time. Already, the buzz is on for DiCaprio. This is the closest he has come in his career to making us forget that he is Leo and making us believe that he is the character. Maybe it's the make-up, after all, adding gravitas to his performance. Perhaps this year the Academy will honor his efforts.

Richard Peña to Step Down from the NY Film Festival

2011-10-16T20:47:00.006-05:00

I received the following press release this evening from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced this evening that FSLC’s longtime Program Director and Head of the NYFF Selection Committee, Richard Peña, will step down from those posts at the conclusion of next year’s 50^th New York Film Festival, and his 25^th year with the Film Society. At that time, Peña will continue his involvement and has agreed to stay on to help design and organize a new educational initiative at the Film Society.

Dan Stern, President of FSLC’s Board of Directors made the announcement prior to the Closing Night Gala screening of THE DESCENDANTS, saying, “For the past 24 years Richard Peña has served as the Chairman of the Selection Committee for the Festival as well as the Program Director of the Film Society. Richard has informed the Board that at the end of 2012—after the Festival’s 50^th anniversary, and his 25^th at its helm—he will step down from both posts. Richard has been with the Film Society through the opening of the Walter Reade Theater as well as the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and we are pleased that he has accepted our invitation to stay on to help create a new educational initiative at the Film Society.”

Regarding the timing of the move, Peña said, “Heading into the fiftieth anniversary of the Festival, it seems a perfect time for a transition, both for me personally and for the organization. Working at the Film Society has been beyond a "dream come true," but in the years left me I would like to possibly explore other areas of interest, both within and beyond the cinema. I also feel that, like at any other cultural institution, change can be important, as it will bring in fresh ideas and approaches to lead the Film Society into its next fifty years.”

FSLC’s Executive Director, Rose Kuo said,“Richard Pena has been a shining light for more than two decades at the Film Society, guiding us in the discovery of artists like Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Leigh, Lars Von Trier, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Sang Soo and many more. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with Richard and I am delighted that he will continue with us as he transitions to a new period in his career and life.”

Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, he has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Carlos Saura and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Israeli, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Swedish, Taiwanese and Argentine cinema. In addition, he is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and from 2006-2009 was a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of WNET/Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.

The 10 Best at this Year's NY Film Festival

2011-10-15T21:30:00.010-05:00

I did not see all of the films that played at the 49th New York Film Festival, but I saw enough of them to be able to put together a top ten list. Here are the best films from this year's festival.

1. The Skin I Live In. Grand guignol horror and stylish melodrama from Pedro Almodóvar, with an outstanding debut by newcomer Elena Anaya and an amazing comeback performance by Antonio Banderas.

2. Shame. Director Steve McQueen's analysis of a 30 something's addiction to sex, with an unforgettably explosive performance by Michael Fassbender that goes from sexy beast to heartbreaking. In only his second film, McQueen has managed to capture the inner soul of sex.

3. Carnage. Roman Polanski's claustrophobic examination of four contemporary educated adults and how their seething anger rises to the surface when confronted with the problems caused by two of their children. Delicious performance by the quartet of stars: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and an amazing John C. Reilly.

4. Ben-Hur. An incredibly beautiful and pristine restoration of William Wyler's 1959 classic. The film has never looked so good, and the grander than life emotions of the story play beautifully on the big screen.

5. A Dangerous Method. The volatile relationship of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung via director David Cronenberg, who has left behind the world of horror in this film and decided to explore a truly scary terrain: the landscape of the mind. A memorable performance by Keira Knightly.

6. A Separation. The breakup of a married couple and the repercussions it has on the people surrounding their orbit. An acting and directorial gem from director Asghar Farhadi, and one of the best films to emerge from Iran in years. Despite our many cultural differences, the film shows the universality of a marriage on the rocks.

7. My Week With Marilyn. A sunny tale of showbiz legends Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, via director Simon Curtis. Fluffy entertainment featuring great performances from Eddie Redmayne, Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh.

8. Melancholia. An examination of the mental breakdown of a recent bride as the world is threaten by total annihilation. An enigmatic story from Lars von Trier with tour-de-force cinematography, memorable Richard Wagner music, and a knockout performance by Kirsten Dunst.

9. Tahrir: Liberation Square. A cinéma vérité documentary about the recent revolution in Egypt. Stefano Savona's work puts you right in the middle of the action, his camera uncannily acts as a magnet that draws forth the events right to you, and you right to the middle of history.

10. The Artist. A loving Valentine to classic Hollywood movies. French director Michel Hazanavicius's silent film is a lot of fun to watch and an audience crowd-pleaser. It features many fine performances by a French and American cast, and one canine actor that almost steals the whole show.

Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In at the NY Film Festival

2011-10-12T21:40:00.021-05:00

When Mikhail Bakhtin writes about the polymorphously perverse and carnavalesque nature of the novel, the great Russian literary theorist could have been referring to The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito), Pedro Almodóvar's latest, and most fascinating film. Also his most disturbing. Here we find the director in top form, juggling Felliniesque imagery, Hitchcockian suspense and throwing in a good dose of the grotesque via Tod Browning, as well as a good amount of Douglas Sirk melodrama. He tops it all off with lots of film noir darkness and Spanish baroque pessimism together with fetishism worthy of Luis Buñuel. The result under lesser hands would be a stylistic mush, but Almodóvar has been at it for a long time, and he knows how to toss all the ingredients of his cinematic paella into one kaleidoscopic ride that is certain to entertain and surprise you, as well as creep you out.

It's hard to discuss this movie without giving away its juicy secrets. Let's just say that it is always chilling to watch any story where a doctor disregards his Hippocratic oath. It is a premise that takes us straight into the horror genre and the world of mad scientists breaking the laws of nature. In this film, Antonio Banderas, back working with Almodóvar after a hiatus of twenty some odd years, plays Doctor Robert Ledgard, a brilliant but obsessed scientist who early in the film, in the middle of an academic presentation, announces to the medical community that he has invented a type of synthetic skin more resilient to damage. His invention could very well revolutionize plastic surgery. What his colleagues don't know is that this seemingly altruistic doctor is obsessed with a mysterious woman whom he has locked up in his house (The beautifully radiant Elena Anaya), and whose perfect skin is a result of the experiments that he has performed on her. There is more here than meets the eye, and as The Skin I Live In starts shedding its layers the film goes deep beyond the outer epidermis. Almodóvar manages to pull off this feat with the mastery of a skilled surgeon digging his scalpel as far in as it can go.

Lately, Almodóvar's scripts have examined how events in the past color our present existence. With this film, the director weaves a Freudian tale (based on a French novel by Thierry Jonquet) that descends into the darkest side of sex. We flashback in the story in order to reveal past events that are key to understanding the narrative. In this respect, this film owes much to Hitchcock's Vertigo. Even Alberto Iglesias's startling music reminds us very much of Bernard Herrmann's memorable score to that film. Throughout his career, but especially in his last few films, Almodóvar, like Hitchcock, has examined and re-examined the psychological aspects of sexuality, and this film might just be the pinnacle of that deep obsession. His films have always been obsessed with flesh, and now this one takes this subject to a new level.

Stylistically, Almodóvar has never been afraid of showing his characters running the gamut of emotions. In an Almodóvar film one can expect raw nerves and usually one gets a fair share of them. At times, though, this style does not translate well outside of the Spanish-speaking world and oftentimes Almodóvar is accused of allowing his actors to overact, and his stories to go out of control in a passionate avalanche of excess. Spanish language and culture can, indeed, be more baroque and likely to relish in excess than American audiences are accustomed to. As a result Almodóvar and kitsch are words that often and sometimes unfairly go together in the minds of many film goers. Without a doubt, The Skin I Live In is the most over-the-top that Almodóvar has been in a long time, but somehow, the director makes it work because he believes in the logic of this crazy world that he has created.

The Skin I Live In will haunt you for a long time after you've seen it. It is a totally satisfying well-made film, if at times too frank, too gruesome, and too self-absorbed in its own world. It is a chance to witness a modern master of the cinema at work in the territory that he knows best.

My Week with Marilyn at the NY Film Festival

2011-10-09T23:26:00.011-05:00

The Weinstein Company is back with another mid 20th century story set in England about a British royal and a commoner to rival last year's The King's Speech. The new film My Week with Marilyn tells the story of Sir Laurence Olivier, the greatest British actor of the first half of the twentieth century, and Marilyn Monroe, the most sought after actress-sex symbol of the time, and how their paths met when the classically trained, soon to be Lord Olivier invited the Stanislavsky Method American actress to come to England to be his co-star on the film The Prince and the Showgirl. The battle of wits between them, which led to one of the stormiest shoots in the history of the cinema, is told through the eyes of young, wide-eyed innocent Colin Clark who starts as third assistant director on the set, and ends up becoming Monroe's true friend and confidant.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, it's because it's more or less the same territory covered in the 1982 hit comedy My Favorite Year. The locale has changed from the Sid Caesar show in New York City to Pinewood Studios in England, but the premise feels essentially the same. In My Favorite Year young intern Mark Linn-Baker is hired to make sure that his movie idol, the alcoholic devil-may-care Peter O'Toole, stays out of trouble for a week and shows up for a live TV broadcast. In My Week with Marilyn, Eddie Redmayne's Colin Clark, an underling who works for Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), ends up becoming the only person on the set who can reach out to pill-addicted Marilyn (Michelle Williams) and ends up becoming her one true friend.

Despite the fact that we've all seen this before, the casting is quite inspired making the movie a sheer pleasure to watch. Gathered here are the very best American and British actors, sometimes in tiny blink-and-you-miss them roles. There's the remarkable Dame Judi Dench playing Dame Sybil Thorndyke, as well as Simon Russell Beale, Toby Jones, Emma Watson, and Derek Jacobi in relatively miniscule roles. Zoë Wannamaker as Marilyn's acting coach/guru Paula Strasberg, and Dominic Cooper as Marilyn's photographer/Svengali Milton Greene have more screen time and are quite memorable in their roles.

But the film is all about Eddie Redmayne's Colin Clark in the middle of the Olivier/Monroe storm. Mr. Redmayne, who was wonderful in London and New York in the play Red playing Mark Rothko's assistant (and incidentally winning the Olivier Award for his performance), is totally believable as the ingenue who in a week matures into a man. His fresh, freckled face and full lips contrasts well with Mr. Branagh's airbrushed thin lipped near-caricature of Olivier. Branagh plays the great actor/director as a lion in winter who mistakenly thought that hiring Monroe would make him feel young again. Soon he realizes that her natural qualities sharply accentuate how much he is aging and how dated his technique can seem. This Olivier detests method acting but longs to be relevant to a young audience. Ms. Williams gives a memorable performance as the troubled and needy Marilyn Monroe. Beautifully photographed in vibrant 1950s style by Ben Smithard, she plays her as a child who might have grown up way too soon without having had a childhood at all. Now, caught up in the whirlwind of fame, photographers, fans, and the pills that her entourage keeps feeding her, she longs for somebody real, and that's where Mr. Redmayne's Colin comes in. The scenes where they both leave the set and visit the English countryside have an idyllic, warm quality. Forget about Marilyn the sex symbol, this is the Marilyn anyone would have loved to have hung around with -- vivacious, fun, naughty, but always with a complex center that was hard to reach.

Despite all the backstage and personal drama, director Simon Curtis manages to keep things sunny throughout. We are even reminded at the end of the film that following the Sturm und Drang of the Prince and the Showgirl, Olivier went on to score one of his biggest successes playing Archie Rice in John Osborne's angry young man play The Entertainer, and Marilyn went on to do Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot, one of the most beloved comedies of all time. Sir Larry got to be relevant with the young crowd, and Marilyn went back home to prove to everyone that she was a great actress. One leaves a showing of My Week with Marilyn with the feeling that everything is right with the world.

As The King's Speech proved last year, this is the kind of film that Hollywood adores. American audiences love British drama, and in this one you have one of the best loved American icons in the center of it all. I expect that My Week with Marilyn will do very well at the box office, and especially well come Oscar time.

Melancholia by Lars von Trier at the NY Film Festival

2011-10-07T11:05:00.017-05:00

Little remains of DOGME95 in the current films issuing from the mind of Danish film director Lars von Trier. In his latest, Melancholia, a trace of the Danish manifesto manages to surface in the quirky hand held camera ever-present in the majority of the film, and in the jagged jump cut editing style that, in reality, owes more to the French New Wave than to the ten commandments of the rigid film manifesto with which Mr. von Trier came to prominence. The most impressive sequences in the film break every rule of the manifesto of von Trier's youth by presenting us with a series of visually stunning, slow-motion scenes of a bride on the brink of a deep depression as a rogue planet heads towards a collision course with Earth. We are a long way from Dogma here. There's even lots of computer generated images and the name of the director is emblazoned above the film's title.

This inevitable interplanetary crash can now be seen as a metaphor for Mr. von Trier's recent escapades. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, Melancholia took center stage as a result of Mr. Von Trier's wrecking ball behavior and his comments about Nazism. At the screening of the film this week at the New York Film Festival, the absent von Trier sent an e-mail to the Film Society of Lincoln Center stating that in the future he will no longer be giving any press conferences. If he keeps his promise, this is a good decision. Many times he fails to recognize that his films speak for themselves, and that no show-biz shenanigans are needed to supplement what to this moment has been a uniquely successful career. Artistically and stylistically he is one of the great talents in world cinema, and many feel that with Melancholia he might have reached the zenith of his career.

Melancholia begins with an amazing tour-de-force prologue featuring scenes reminiscent of Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad to Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey. While the soundtrack plays Richard Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde we see images of irrepressible beauty, and surreal splendor that introduce us to Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, who gets married while in the throes of a deep depression as we see a planet called Melancholia approaching and ultimately colliding with planet Earth. In essence, the prelude offers us a complete film in the same way that Wagner's prelude is a musical encapsulation of his entire opera, or how the "News on the March" documentary that begins Orson Welles's Citizen Kane offers a miniature version of the story that will follow. But it takes Richard Wagner many hours to resolve the harmonic conflict that he sets up with the famous "Tristan chord" in the third measure of his score. It is not until many hours later that his music resolves itself into a crescendo of tonality, very much the process of Mr. von Trier's film which ends with an apocalyptic crescendo reminding us of Wagner's other work, the end of the world opus, Götterdämmerung.

The nucleus of Melancholia is structured in two acts. The first, labeled "Justine," is devoted to a disastrous wedding reception, the length of which makes the interminable wedding scenes of The Deer Hunter appear the length of a freeze frame, but which feature incredible performances by the likes of John Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, and Charlotte Rampling, who play the most salient characters of Justine highly dysfunctional family. The second half, called "Claire," named after Justine's sister played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, develops the mental landscape of several of the main characters while focusing on Justine's descent into the kind of madness where we realize that the impending interplanetary cataclysm might just all be in her mind.

Melancholia is a long and tedious film filled with sumptuous imagery that harbors an empty nihilistic core at its center. And although most of the performances are memorable (especially Ms. Dunst and Ms. Gainsbourg) we fail to connect with very few of its characters at any level.

Ultimately, I recommend the film because of its deliriously beautiful imagery coupled with a very impressive use of music. In addition, Lars von Trier is a serious artist, and any new work of his ought to be experienced. Here is an artist who has never sold out to popular tastes or become commonplace. You may not understand all of Melancholia (I don't think anyone, including von Trier does) but it will make you think beyond the proverbial box where Hollywood persists on trapping us.

Roman Polanski's CARNAGE at the NY Film Festival

2011-09-27T17:25:00.011-05:00

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's international smash hit play has been brought to the screen by director Roman Polanski, featuring an all-star cast headed by Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly. It has been selected as the opening night selection for this year's New York Film Festival, and it will be shown this Friday.

In it's move to the screen the title has been shortened to Carnage, but the punch of the original stage work has not diminished, and much of the original dialogue remains intact. The story is a deceivingly simple one. Two couples meet in order to hash out the reasons why the child of one couple attacked the child of the other. This meeting, which starts with all the cordiality and good manners of a house warming visit soon turns into an ugly battleground where resentfulness and pent up anger lead to an afternoon of drunkenness and revelations that leaves all the participants with their nerves exposed and raw. It's the "Walpurgisnacht" of Mike Nichol's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, coupled with a dose of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and a dash of Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel. The result is the kind of exhilarating filmmaking that allows great acting to shine.

Carnage retains it's theatrical setting, never departing from that apartment set except for a prologue that shows us the public park incident between the two 11 year-olds that sparks the conflict, and an epilogue that should set out minds thinking about the events we have witnessed.

Unable to come legally to the United States, Roman Polanski shot the film in Paris, although the Brooklyn setting of the story is maintained. As the two couples, Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play Penelope and Michael, and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz play Nancy and Alan. All the performances are first rate, and the script allows each actor more than one moment to shine in the spotlight. Ms. Foster, as the righteous, art-loving Penelope gives a performance of theatrical dimensions, at times verging on over the top histrionics. Kate Winslet, her American accent perfect as always, goes from sophisticated elegance to bitter drunkenness with convincing results. Christoph Waltz, playing her lawyer husband, a man more in tune with his Blackberry than with his own wife or son, has an air of detached ennui that fits the character perfectly. But perhaps the most satisfying of the quartet is Mr. Reilly, who slips into his role so effortlessly and convincingly that the performance is totally worthy of a well-deserved Academy Award.

Mr. Polanski is no stranger to filming in enclosed spaces. Repulsion (1965) showed us what he can do inside of a claustrophobic London flat as a schizophrenic Catherine Deneuve descends into madness. Two years later Rosemary's Baby (1968) explores how a dream Manhattan apartment can turn into a prison -- complete with next door witches and warlocks -- for Mia Farrow. Likewise, in this film, the Brooklyn apartment where all the action takes place, is not big enough to contain the emotions that erupt within it.

Once again, Roman Polanski gives us a film filled with ironies and unanswered questions, and in the process, puts us in the middle of a ride that will take us a long time to forget. At the heart of his latest work are four performances that will remain with us long after the last frame flickers on the screen.

NY Film Festival: Tahrir: Liberation Square

2011-09-24T00:39:00.010-05:00

At the press screening of Tahrir: Liberation Square the new documentary that chronicles the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime, NY Film Festival's program director Richard Peña assured director Stefano Savona, via a Skype press conference, (see picture above) that his film was chosen over some of the other Tahrir Square films that were submitted to the festival due in large part to the uncanny film's ability to put the audience right in the middle of the events that happened there beginning on January of this year. Peña went on to declare that all the other films he saw about the event tried to explain the popular uprising. Savona's film, on the other hand, with it's cinema vérité style, marches right into the heart of the action and succeeds in capturing the days and nights of the struggle for freedom, and putting you right in the center of it all.

I couldn't agree more: it's not so much that Savona's camera invades the space, the feeling one gets is that the revolution somehow manages to come to him. His camera is both a curious observer and an active participant. But it is not a foreign hungry lens capturing earth shattering events of a foreign nation, but rather a homegrown magnet where the various episodes just seem to naturally gravitate towards him in wave after wave of memorable images that become indelible in our minds.

The documentary has neither narration nor music. Only the natural sounds of people speaking, arguing, and dreaming of a new day in Egypt. The staccato rhythms of the people chanting political slogans reveal a soundtrack more powerful than any music background could provide. It is guerrilla filmmaking at it's best. Just a lone wolf armed with a Cannon digital camera, while the rocks fly around him and us, and the unforgettable images of the walking wounded and the dead remind us that these events cost many lives during those tumultuous days back at the start of the year.

An unforgettable scene features an older man passionately talking straight into Savona's camera explaining that this revolution was started by young people, and that even though he is in his sixties he wants everyone to know that he feels like a young man who is ready to die for his country. Savona at times allows his images to go momentarily out of focus, thus giving the documentary a news report immediacy that creates the illusion of putting us right inside the front ranks of the revolutionaries. At the same time, we also know that this is a carefully crafted film, its 91 minutes having being boiled down from more than thirty hours of raw footage.

Egypt is currently a work in progress, and Savona's documentary feels unfinished in a good way. He didn't start filming at the beginning of the revolution simply because he was not in the country to capture the opening salvos. His "in medias res" results reminds us that the politics of Egypt currently are in a state of transition. This he captures beautifully in the last shots of the film where a woman rants and raves to a crowd of onlookers yelling at them that once the revolutionaries leave Tahrir Square the old regime could come back. It is a chilling reminder of the uncertainty of the political tides after a revolution, and it addresses the current problems that the country is going through today.

If you want to know the details of the Tahrir Square Revolution and its aftermath keep following the world's newspapers or buy any of the books that have recently been appearing about the events. If you want to be there, watch Stefano Savona's unforgettable documentary.

The Main Slate for the NY Film Festival is Set

2011-08-18T11:17:00.011-05:00

The Main Slate for the 49th New York Film Festival is set. Twenty-seven films are in the main section of the festival, including Roman Polanski's Carnage, Simon Curtis' My Week With Marilyn, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In. The festival will close with Alexander Payne's The Descendants, starring George Clooney.

Here are the rest of the films of the 49th New York Film Festival:

4:44: Last Day On Earth, directed by Abel Ferrara (USA)
A Separation, directed by Asghar Farhadi (Iran)
Corpo Celeste, directed by Alice Rohrwacher (Italy/Switzerland/France)
Footnote, directed by Joseph Cedar (Israel)
George Harrison: Living In The Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese (USA)
Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (France/Germany)
Le Havre, directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland/France/Germany)
Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin (USA)
Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany/Italy)
Miss Bala, directed by Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico)
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Pina, directed by Wim Wenders (Germany/France/UK)
Play, directed by Ruben Östlund (Sweden/France/Denmark)
Policeman, directed by Nadav Lapid (Israel/France)
Shame, directed by Steve McQueen (UK)
Sleeping Sickness, directed by Ulrich Köhler (Germany/France/Netherlands)
The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius (France)
The Loneliest Planet, directed by Julia Loktev (USA/Germany)
The Kid With A Bike, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium/France)
The Student, directed by Santiago Mitre (Argentina)
The Turin Horse, directed by Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky (Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA)
This Is Not A Film, directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Iran)

This year's festival promises to be an exciting one with the return of Abel Ferrara, Steve McQueen, Aki Kaurismäki, Martin Scorsese, and Wim Wenders. It has been a long while since Mr. Wenders has been represented at the festival, and any new film he makes is always eagerly awaited. Lars von Trier's Melancholia will certainly be one of the hot tickets in lieu of the fact that the director scandalized the Cannes Film Festival this year by confessing to the press that he was a Nazi. If he makes an appearance here to present his film, both the Q&A and the audience's reception promises to be very interesting.

Roman Polanski Film to Open New York Film Festival

2011-07-29T15:32:00.007-05:00

I just received the following Press Release from the New York Film Festival:

New York, NY, July 29, 2011 - The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Roman Polanski’s CARNAGE will make its North American Premiere as the Opening Night film for the upcoming 49th New York Film Festival (September 30 – October 16).

"From KNIFE IN THE WATER (which screened at the first edition of NYFF in 1963) to REPULSION to THE TENANT, Roman Polanski has shown himself to be an absolute master at making the most restricted spaces come to dramatic life. In CARNAGE, aided by four remarkable performances, he has reached a new pinnacle in his already extraordinary career," says Richard Peña, Selection Committee Chair & Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage”, the 2009 Tony Award-winner for Best Play, CARNAGE follows the events of an evening when two Brooklyn couples are brought together after their children are involved in a playground fight. Produced by Said Ben Said, the Sony Pictures Classics release stars Academy Award winners Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz and Academy Award nominee John C. Reilly.

Biogas at Bayreuth: The new Tannhäuser production

2011-07-26T14:00:00.015-05:00

A pregnant Venus, a Wartburg transformed into a biogas plant breaking down organic matter, a Venusberg filled with caged subhumans right out of the original Planet of the Apes, and Wolfram von Eschenbach singing the well-known "Song to the Evening Star" while taking a dump sitting on a toilet. What does this have to do with Richard Wagner's romantic opera Tannhäuser? Nothing! As expected, the audience shook the very foundations of the Festspielhaus with their booing after the performance. The verdict? This new production by Sebastian Baumgarten scored another Bayreuth opening night triumph!

When Festspielchief Katharina Wagner staged her revisionist, controversial production of Die Meistersinger in 2007 she opened the Regietheater floodgates at the Green Hill, assuring the world, as she inherited the helm of the festival from her father Wolfgang Wagner, that Bayreuth would remain a place of outrageous experimentation in the staging of her great-grandfather's works. Four years earlier avant-garde artist Christoph Schlingensief had already set down the template for what was to come with his notorious production of Parsifal that set the action in Africa and featured film footage of a decomposing rabbit. When Katharina's turn came up to stage Meistersinger critics and puzzled audiences questioned what a shower of sneakers and masturbating statues of famous Germans had to do with Wagner's only comedy. But the die was already cast. It became clear that the principal aim of these productions was to provoke. As music critic Alex Ross wrote in his insightful review of the Schlingensief Parsifal "The trouble with this sort of provocation is that if you criticize it ... you end up playing a role that the instigator has written for you." In other words, they want you to hate it, they want you to boo, and if you do, then they have a triumph on their hands.

This opening night saw Thomas Hengelbrock conduct the Dresden version of Tannhäuser with a professional swift hand. The orchestra and especially the chorus received the biggest hand of the evening, and they deserved it. The chorus was particularly focused, achieving a smooth, pure sound that suddenly reminded everyone that the Bayreuth sound is quite special when things are done correctly. Unfortunately, Lars Cleveman, in the title role received only a lukewarm reception from the audience, and Stephanie Friede, as Venus, was booed. Camilla Nylund as Elisabeth sang with an assured tone. Both Günther Groissböck (Landgraf Herrmann) and Michael Nagy (Wolfram von Eschenbach) received the biggest applause of the evening. Needless to say, Sebastian Baumgarten and the rest of the production team were booed very loudly.

Hopefully, this production will remain at the Festspielhaus for only a few years. No doubt it will be replaced, in the near future, with another more indignant exercise in provocation. This is what Bayreuth is all about these days.

First video of Sebastian Baumgarten's Tannhäuser

2011-07-25T16:17:00.004-05:00

Here is a news report, in German, about Sebastian Baumgarten's new controversial production of Tannhäuser, with actual video clips from the production. The report also includes short comments by Camilla Nylund who plays Elisabeth, as well as scenic designer Joep van Lieshout, and Baumgarten himself. This short video report gives you a hint of the production that premiered today at the Festspielhaus.

Israeli Musicians to play at the Bayreuth Festival

2011-07-25T13:22:00.004-05:00

The following article appears through the courtesy of AFP News Agency:

Germany's 100th Richard Wagner opera festival kicked off here Monday in an edition that will include a taboo-busting performance by an Israeli orchestra.

The annual tribute to the works of the 19th-century composer, a fervent anti-Semite who later inspired Nazi leaders, will include for the first time a concert by musicians from Israel, which maintains an unwritten Wagner ban.

On Monday afternoon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet led a parade of political and business elites mounting Bayreuth's famed Green Hill to the concert hall built in 1876.

Audiences were keenly awaiting the opening performance of Tannhäuser, a romantic opera considered the seminal work of Wagner's younger years, but the Israel Chamber Orchestra's concert Tuesday was the hottest ticket in town.

The musicians are scheduled to perform Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll" during a concert otherwise dominated by works by Jewish composers including Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn.

Performances of Wagner's work are almost unheard of in Israel.

When Israeli-Argentine conductor Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a performance of an excerpt from Tristan und Isolde in Jerusalem in 2001, dozens of audience members stormed out.

Israel Chamber Orchestra first clarinettist, 27-year-old Dan Erdmann, said he had attended that concert with his father.

"He (Barenboim) indicated to those who wanted to leave to do so but at the same time, the orchestra was ready to play for those who chose to stay," he told AFP.

"Thirty or forty people left, some of them shouting and cursing and slamming the doors. The rest stayed and gave a standing ovation at the end."

Ten years on, the Israeli concert is not part of the official Bayreuth Festival program but it has nonetheless set some tempers flaring.

"The decision of the Israel Chamber Orchestra sadly represents an act of moral failure and a disgraceful abandonment of solidarity with those who suffered unspeakable horrors by the purveyors of Wagner's banner," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

"Nobody suggests that Wagner's music not be played. But the public Jewish refusal to do so was a powerful message of indignation to the world that exposed Wagner's odious anti-Semitic ideas and those who championed them."

The city of Bayreuth and the Wagner family, which notoriously courted Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, are meanwhile trying to break with the past.

Bayreuth plans to start a Jewish cultural centre while Katharina Wagner, the 32-year-old great-granddaughter of the composer and co-director of the festival, has pledged to open the family archives revealing the extent of her ancestors' entanglement with the Nazis.

Felix Gothart, a leader of the Bayreuth Jewish community, which now has about 500 members, twice the number in 1933 when Hitler came to power, was also critical of the decision to invite the Israeli musicians to play this year.

"As soon as a single person was offended by the fact that Wagner is being played by Jews in Germany it would have been better to keep a lower profile," he told AFP.

However the president of Israel's fledgling Wagner society said he was delighted that an Israeli orchestra would be performing in Bayreuth, saying it could represent a new beginning.

"I hope that the concert will mark a new step towards the lifting of the taboo in Israel against Wagner, one of the principal composers of the 19th century, and that he will soon by performed freely in our country," Jonathan Livni said.
The Bayreuth Festival runs to August 28.

The Bayreuth Festival Begins

2011-07-22T23:59:00.012-05:00

The 2011 Bayreuth Festival opens this Monday with a performance of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, in a new production by avant-garde director Sebastian Baumgarten. As usual, this opening night performance, as well as the first nights of the rest of the operas being performed this year, will be broadcast via the Internet over a variety of online stations. For clarity of sound, together with uninterrupted broadcasts, I recommend listening to it over Bavarian Radio (Bayerische Rundfunk), but if you click here you can examine this year's schedule, and the various radio networks that will be broadcasting the performances.

In addition, on August 14th there will be a live video broadcast of Lohengrin, directed by Hans Neuensfels. This production premiered last summer to great critical acclaim. This year the leading roles will be sung by Klaus Florian Vogt, Annette Dasch, and Georg Zeppenfeld. For information about how you can watch this transmission click here.

In addition, to prepare yourself for the video transmission you can listen to "Of Rats and Men and Lohengrin" my podcast of last year's opening night by clicking here.

The Bayreuth Festival is always an important cultural event, and this year's live video performance of Lohengrin will allow fans all over the world the chance to experience Mr. Neuensfels controversial vision of Wagner's opera (see picture above). If anything, it promises to be a puzzling but fun staging, and I am sure it will be greeted, as it was last year, with the usual mix of bravos and boos. Make sure you tune in.

Alexander McQueen - Savage Beauty

2011-07-17T18:32:00.027-05:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is enjoying more than a palpable hit this summer. The show Alexander McQueen - Savage Beauty has become one of the best attended exhibitions in the history of this institution. The retrospective of the meteoric career of the British fashion designer traces a decade that changed the world of fashion and earned McQueen international fame. It starts with his 1992 "Jack the Ripper Stalks his Victims" graduation fashion show from London's Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design, when his family and friends knew him as Lee McQueen, (influential British fashionista Isabella Blow suggested he use Alexander, his middle name, after she bought his entire first collection) and ends with McQueen's last complete show before his untimely suicide in 2010.

The exhibition, curated by Andrew Bolton, hits all the right points in establishing McQueen as more than just a fashion designer, but a visionary in tune with historical artistic movements and British socio-political concerns. Gallery after gallery we meet the many sides of a very complex artist not afraid to change styles even further than those dictated by the ever-changing whims of the fashion world. There's the Gothic McQueen, the primitive McQueen, as well as the exotic, naturalist, and nationalistic McQueen. But throughout all the different phases of the man, there are two constants that never waiver: an intense grounding in Romanticism as a point of departure for all his ideas, and solid craftsmanship skills learned while an apprentice at Anderson and Shephard, Gieves & Hawkes and other bespoke tailoring houses on Savile Row. The meeting point of a fervid imagination and spectacular couture is at the very heart of this exhibition, and the MET has done a terrific job not just collecting all the dresses together, but providing the appropriate lighting, ambiance and music (George Frideric Handel's Sarabande used in Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon and a haunting composition called "Disco Bloodbath" by Mekon are unforgettable) that makes us seem as if we are attending an actual McQueen runway show.

And then there are the accessories. The majority of the mannequins in the show are presented wearing appropriate headgear or masks fashioned by influential British hairstylist Guido Palau. These are essential to every single creation, and I would not dream of imagining this show without them. Unfortunately, the exhibition catalog, which does a very good job of capturing in photographs this show, fails to include any of them. Thankfully, the catalog does picture the amazing "butterfly hat" created by Philip Treacy for the "La Dame Bleue" Spring/Summer 2008 show as well as many other accessories that were key to the McQueen experience.

Whatever your interest or knowledge in the fashion world you are going to be impressed by how well this exhibition has been put together. What's more, you are going to come out with a greater appreciation for the world of haute couture. No doubt you will emerge from the show with some definite favorites in mind. You might be carried away by the incredible flower dress (pictured above) that McQueen created for the Spring/Summer 2007 show which he called "Sarabande." Or you might be totally fascinated by the dress made entirely of pheasant feathers for his "Widows of Culloden" collection a year earlier. Two impressive creations filled with a pervading sense of finality. From his Jack the Ripper collection to the very end, McQueen was not afraid to court Death throughout his career.

On my second visit to the exhibition I was fascinated by the hologram that concluded the "Widows of Culloden" show. Model Kate Moss appears out of the void, floating in space, wearing an incredible billowing dress of ivory silk and organza while the music of the film Schindler's List plays in the background. So brave and noble of McQueen to conclude his show in a celebration of Kate Moss as a fashion icon only months after the model had been involved in a drug scandal.

Here is the incredible finale to "The Widows of Culloden."

Mark Rylance Does it Again!

2011-06-12T22:00:00.011-05:00

Mark Rylance won the Tony in the Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play category for his monumental performance in the play Jerusalem. Back in 2008 Rylance won the Tony for his Broadway debut in the play Boeing-Boeing. As you may remember, his acceptance speech a few years ago confused many. It consisted of reciting from memory the poem "The Back Country" by poet Louis Jenkins. Tonight, Mr. Rylance went back to Mr. Jenkins's poetry for his second Tony acceptance speech. Here it is.

"Walking through a Wall" by Louis Jenkins

"Unlike flying or astral projection, walking through walls is a totally earth-related craft, but a lot more interesting than pot making or driftwood lamps. I got started at a picnic up in Bowstring in the northern part of the state. A fellow walked through a brick wall right there in the park. I said, "Say, I want to try that." Stone walls are best, then brick and wood. Wooden walls with fiberglass insulation and steel doors aren't so good. They won't hurt you. If your wall walking is done properly, both you and the wall are left intact. It is just that they aren't pleasant somehow. The worst things are wire fences, maybe it's the molecular structure of the alloy or just the amount of give in a fence, I don't know, but I've torn my jacket and lost my hat in a lot of fences. The best approach to a wall is, first, two hands placed flat against the surface; it's a matter of concentration and just the right pressure. You will feel the dry, cool inner wall with your fingers, then there is a moment of total darkness before you step through on the other side."

The Tree of Life

2011-05-30T18:46:00.008-05:00

The Tree of Life, the fifth film in the nearly four decade career of director Terrence Malick, gives back to cinema, and in particular to American cinema, what it has lost after years of commercialism: a return to an "auteur" sense of artistry that brings us back to the abstract notion best summed up by Italian film director Federico Fellini about a certain type of film catapulting audiences out of the darkness of the theater and into the light of understanding. For Malick, the urge of wanting to share that precious discovery with his audiences is very much alive in this epic film. It is a work that will puzzle many and entertain few. But honestly, this should not surprise anyone, accustomed as we are at this time of the year to paying our overpriced admission tickets only to be plunged into a world of summer explosions and endless sequels. Here's a summer movie (I'm actually surprised that Fox Searchlight Pictures released it this early in the year) that will not allow you to do that for one second. Hitch along for this singular ride and you will find yourself in the middle of one extraordinary journey seldom experienced in film these days.

The Tree of Life reaches beyond the bounds of traditional storytelling at every turn. Not content with telling the story of a dysfunctional family in Waco, Texas in the 1950s, the film reaches back to the beginnings of time. Why? For the same reason that Stanley Kubrick's 2001, A Space Odyssey begins at the dawn of prehistory to tell the story of Mankind's quest in space. We are, all of us, each a part of the whole, and to forget this is to misunderstand our very existence. Malick shows us the birth of the universe, anchors us with a domestic American story of love and loss, and shows us in an unforgettable scene that takes place by the seaside the souls of the departed, content in the afterlife, finally achieving the kind of redemption that we all seek while we are alive. By the end of the film we have experienced the very depths and the very heights of the human condition -- the mirror has been held up to nature: we have seen ourselves.

And to get us through this epic journey, Malick has chosen some of the most ravishing classical music ever assembled for one motion picture. Whatever you think of Malick's masterful film, I am certain that you will not be disappointed by its superb soundtrack featuring the music of Brahms, Berlioz, among many others. And neither will you be disappointed by the powerful performances of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as a struggling 1950s couple, as well as by their three children portrayed by Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, and Tyre Sheridan. Sean Penn, playing one of the grownup children, gets inside of his cameo role revealing a profoundly deep sense of alienation. Without uttering a single word he is able to convey that he is one of the many lost souls trapped in our modern world of concrete, steel and glass. Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's memorable images are outstandingly beautiful whether capturing Eisenhower's America or the Jurassic prehistoric period.

When Herman Melville wrote and published the entertaining Omoo in 1847 it turned out to be a popular narrative of the South Seas aboard a whaling vessel, selling very well in the US and England. In 1851 Melville published the dark and brooding Moby Dick, another tale aboard a whaling ship, but this time a narrative filled with digressions referencing the Bible, philosophy and cetology. Needless to say, it was a critical and popular failure when it was published. Today Omoo is a nearly forgotten work, while Moby Dick has achieved the status of a classic. Allow me to predict the same fate for Terrence Malick's new film. The Tree of Life is destined for a place in the pantheon (if you allow me an auteur term) of great American films.

Is Lars von Trier a Nazi?

2011-05-21T16:24:00.039-05:00

Lars von Trier has been declared "persona non grata" at this year's Cannes Film Festival. During a press conference to promote his new film Melancholia, the Danish director made a number of off-topic remarks that included various odd references to Jews, the state of Israel, and Adolf Hitler. Here is the transcript of what he actually said:

“The only thing I can tell you is that I thought I was a Jew for a long time and was very happy being a Jew, then later on came [Danish, and Jewish, director] Susanne Bier, and suddenly I wasn’t so happy about being a Jew. That was a joke. Sorry. But it turned out that I was not a Jew. If I’d been a Jew, then I would be a second-wave Jew, a kind of a new-wave Jew, but anyway, I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because my family was German. Which also gave me some pleasure.

“So, I, what can I say? I understand Hitler. I think he did some wrong things — yes, absolutely — but I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end. I’m just saying that I think I understand the man. He’s not what you could call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit, yes. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War! And I’m not against Jews. No, not even Susanne Bier. That was also a joke. I am, of course, very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass. But still, how can I get out of this sentence? I just want to say I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer, I liked. He was also, maybe, one of God’s best children. He had some talent that was kind of possible for him to use during, um… Okay, I’m a Nazi.”

Is Lars von Trier a Nazi? I sincerely doubt it. He enjoys being a provocateur, and he likes to exercise this devil-of-an-impish streak whenever he can. Unfortunately, he neither seems to lack any common sense, nor does he know when it is best to quit and stay silent. To add to the problem, lately he seems to be going through some kind of mid-life crisis that has made him stop drinking but which inexplicably has catapulted him into the realm of psychobabble whenever he faces the press. And then there is his new tattoo -- letters on his knuckles that spell the word FUCK (See picture above). Either a homage to Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (where Robert Mitchum's character has the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles) or another of Mr. von Trier's desperate attempts to get a visceral reaction from his audience.

The Cannes Film Festival has banned Lars von Trier because it is illegal in France to say or write anything anti-Semitic. This action strikes me as too sudden, too harsh. It feels very much like the actions of Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, misguidedly following the letter of the law, inflexible and harsh.

My opinion is that Lars von Trier, as an artist, was trying to tell the press, in his awkward, rambling way, that he has an artistic admiration for the work of various accomplished artists that rose to prominence under the Third Reich. Albert Speer is arguably one of the most famous, as well as infamous of the architects of the first half of the 20th century. His grandiose designs spell out National Socialism like no other. His "cathedral of light" design is perhaps the most famous and lasting of his monumental ideas. It was achieved by pointing 130 anti-aircraft searchlights into the night sky and thus causing the effect of columns whose capitals disappear into the night. Every year on September 11, two massive searchlights aimed at the New York night sky give the feeling that the World Trade Center towers are still standing. It is an idea very close to what Albert Speer first devised in the 1930s for the Nazi rallies. The documentary work of Leni Riefenstahl, (where she captured on film Speer's work) for example, is stunning in its execution, although its subject matter propagandizes the evil machinery that helped to create it. One is not a Nazi if one is impressed by Riefenstahl's work. Both Triumph of the Will and Olympia are stunning documentaries of the 1930s, beautifully photographed, stunning in their scope, and masterfully edited. They serve as vivid records for the nightmare that was brewing in Germany at that time.

When it comes to the works of Richard Wagner (whose music has been featured in some of von Trier's films) the debate has been going on for more than half a century as to how we should think of him as a composer. What are we to think of Wagner, whose works highly influenced and inspired Hitler and the formation of National Socialism? I think the answer is very clear. Even though Wagner was a rabid anti-Semite, we must separate the man from his twisted ideology and his evil disciples, and concentrate on his true genius which lies in his sublime music. We must do the same for Speer and Riefenstahl -- separate the artists from the ideology that bred them. No, I don't think you are a Nazi if you like Wagner, the very idea is preposterous. And, no, I don't think that Lars von Trier is a Nazi either, even though his own ill-chosen, rambling words condemn him. He is just a confused artist unable to accurately verbalize what's on his mind. I personally don't think he should give press interviews. There is no point to it. Watch his controversial, maddening, but memorable films. That's ultimately how history will judge him.

Die Walküre at the MET -- Been There, Done That

2011-04-24T14:30:00.015-05:00

The title of this review does not refer to me having made the trip to Richard Wagner's Valhalla and having successfully returned, but rather it is a personal commentary on the on-going unveiling of the new Ring production at the Metropolitan Opera by director Robert Lepage and his associates from his production company Ex Machina. Unfortunately, they only seem to be interested in turning Wagner's great work into a well-oiled machine. On Friday they unveiled their new production of Die Walküre with some mixed results.

Back in the fall, they opened the 2010-2011 season with Das Rheingold, and opening night introduced us to the 24 movable planks that make up the set for the four-evening work. Rheingold proved to be a mixture of imaginative staging and magnificent projections featuring characters who often seemed to defy all laws of gravity. Still, despite some amazing stage magic, there were some kinks left in the machine, and opening night did not see the gods parade into Valhalla via a rainbow bridge that never materialized. Instead, the gods had to exit stage left through the wings. The conclusion of Rheingold brought a mixture of applause and boos, the latter mostly directed, I'm convinced, at Lepage and company.

Now it is Die Walküre's turn to be "machined." No sooner did James Levine (looking thin and frail) give the orchestra the opening downbeat, the machine started to move, showing us a snowstorm, then turning itself into a forest and then into a rather sparse, almost modernistic Hunding's hut. During Siegmund's monologue, shadowy projections illustrated his tale of woe -- a nice cinematic touch, but the truth of the matter is that Wagner's music illustrates the action rather well without the need for a magic lantern show. When Spring bursts into the room and Siegmund (Jonas Kaufmann in marvelous voice) sang his "Winterstürme" the lights turned green, the machine moved a little more (not too quietly) , and that's it! Anyone who wanted the set to perform wonders during this act could not help but yawn.

Then came Act II. That's when the audience finds out that this set is really dangerous. Bryn Terfel as Wotan stepped out into the planks of the set, the slope of which would make any ordinary mortal slide down. He managed to stay up there during the night, don't ask me how. Unfortunately Deborah Voigt was not as nimble: she took a tumble as she tried to step up to the planks right before her "Hojotohos." Luckily she managed to laugh it off and she got through the difficult musical passage without a problem. I am sure, she was shaken, though, and you could hear the audience gasp as she went down. I really don't see the need to put singing actors through this. Stephanie Blythe had it the best. As Fricka, the "goddess who must be obeyed" she never had to step into the planks. She sat in her regal throne, holding on for dear life as the platform where she sat slid down into place. Of course, let's just hope that the wires that hold her securely never break, otherwise we could very well have another Wagnerian incident like the one that happened a few years ago when Tristan barreled down, head first, into the prompter's box.

Act III offered an imaginative use of the machine for the "Ride of the Valkyries", but the effect verged on the kitschy as proven by the lusty reaction of the audience. I predict that every time they mount this production this celebrated portion of the score will cause some kind of inappropriate reaction. The opera finished with the most impressive use of the machine: an aerial shot of Brünnhilde as she sleeps among the flames. A nice effect, although it never quite takes your breath away.

The most wondrous aspect of the evening was the orchestra. Under Levine's direction they were a noble extension of his musical concept of this work. There was faultless playing throughout the evening, and memorable sounds coming from the bass and horn sections. Onstage, all of the singers, with the exception of Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde), who had to be replaced after Act II, sounded vocally secure. Mr Kaufmann is proving that he can become one of the great heldentenors of our times. Last summer at Bayreuth he wowed audiences in the title role of Lohengrin, and now his Siegmund is igniting the first two acts. Stephanie Blythe was simply amazing, arguably the strongest and the most interesting voice of the evening. Bryn Terfel's Wotan is a force of nature, the Welsh bass-baritone continues to transform himself into one of our best commanding Wagnerians. His hefty tones may not have the majesty of singers of the past, like George London or Hans Hotter, but his musicianship and his perfectly clear diction add a layer of nobility to his performance. Deborah Voigt impressed me with her first Brünnhilde, although I will argue that this may not be the role for her. Still, she had a very good night, and hopefully her voice will hold as the Ring cycle continues into next year.

Overall, I found the production lacking imagination, especially after whetting our appetite with the worlds created in Das Rheingold. True, Walküre is a more earth-bound story, but if you have a high-tech multi-million dollar gadget in front of you, it better perform some amazing out of this world tricks. Wagner did it with his music, I can't see why Lepage and company can't match it.

FRANKENSTEIN at the National Theatre

2011-03-29T21:09:00.007-05:00

Last week I went to see Danny Boyle's production of Nick Dear's sold-out new play, Frankenstein, from the National Theatre in London -- as a matter of fact I went twice in one week, and I didn't even have to cross the Atlantic. The National Theatre continues to present HD broadcasts of some of their most popular presentations. They did it a couple of years ago for the first time when they presented Helen Mirren in Phèdre by Jean Racine, and they are doing it again with this riveting adaptation of Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novel.

It's the kind of theatrical experience that has buzz written all over it. First there is director Danny Boyle, returning to the stage after spending the last two decades making a name for himself in the movies with Trainspotting, and winning Hollywood Oscar gold with Slumdog Millionaire, and winning critical acclaim with last year's 127 Hours. Then there is the cast, in particular the actors playing Doctor Frankenstein and his creature creation. In a bit of casting genius the two actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller swap roles nightly. This is the kind of casting that makes theatergoers drool, and forces them to see the show more than once to savor how each actor approaches each character. This is what I did by attending two of the HD presentations, and I am convinced that this is the only way to fully appreciate this production.

Actor Benedict Cumbernatch, little known in America but a household name in the UK, is riding the wave of newly-found fame these days, and is clearly the chief drawing card for this production. He was the name on everybody's lips when the Doctor Who franchise went looking to replace the irreplaceable David Tennant as he finished his tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Cumberbatch's pale skin and chiseled David Bowie-like alien features would have made an ideal Eleventh Doctor. Instead, Cumberbatch remained near the Time Lord's orbit by being cast in the title role of Sherlock, a 21st century retelling of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle master sleuth by Steven Moffat, Doctor Who's current head writer.

Playwright Nick Dear turns Mary Shelley's gothic story into a Samuel Beckett-like existential confrontation between creator and creation. Danny Boyle's cinematic staging wonderfully supports this adaptation, which also includes idiosyncratic background music reminiscent of his latest films. The scene when the two characters meet at the summit of a mountain and the creature berates his maker and demands that he build him a mate is alone worth the price of admission.

If you manage to see this production twice I am sure that one of the evenings will stand out in your mind more than the other. Personally, I enjoyed the show a lot more when Johnny Lee Miller played the Creature and Benedict Cumberbatch played Frankenstein. Why? Well, I enjoyed Miller's child-like creation over Cumberbatch's stroke victim monster. On the other hand, I marveled at Cumberbatch's Byronic, elegant and mysterious Frankenstein. Frankly, I did not care for Miller's huff and puff Frankenstein. On the other hand, watching Cumberbatch bring to life the Creature at the moment of his birth is one of the highlights of this theater season.

The bottom line is this: see the play twice, and watch two great actors at work!

Calixto Bieito's PARSIFAL in Stuttgart

2011-03-23T18:52:00.023-05:00

Calixto Bieito's controversial 2010 staging of Richard Wagner's Parsifal is back at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart, Germany. This staging, by the notorious Spanish director, brings to mind Mel Gibson's apocalyptic Mad Max films, but it is actually inspired by another greater apocalyptic work: Cormac McCarthy's memorable novel The Road.

The remaining performances of this production at the Staatsoper this year are on March 26th, and April 3rd. Below is a short documentary which shows plenty of scenes from the production, as well as commentary from director Calixto Beito. It definitely gives you an idea of what this unique staging is all about.

And here is a nine minute video with extended scenes from this production:

Does anybody know if this production has been filmed for DVD and Blu-Ray release in Europe and/or America?

Tom Stoppard's ARCADIA back on Broadway

2011-03-20T12:35:00.019-05:00

Ever since artist Nicolas Poussin painted his famous picture "Et in Arcadia Ego," which shows a group of pastoral shepherds (pardon the redundancy!) discovering a tomb with this inscription, scholars have argued about the meaning of this Latin text. So, whether you interpret it as "I, who am now dead, also lived once in Arcadia," or the more popular "I, Death, exist even in Arcadia," please do me a favor: before you die, make sure that once in your life you experience Tom Stoppard's masterful play Arcadia.

I've seen the play three times thus far. Twice in London, and once here in New York, last night, in its new Broadway revival that opened last week. My first encounter with Stoppard's play was during its initial West End run back in 1994. That landmark production, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Joanne Pearce and the incomparable Roger Allam convinced many theatergoers that Stoppard might have written the crowning masterwork in a career that up to that time also included, among others Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, and Travesties. In the summer of 2009 I was lucky enough to see Arcadia again, this time at the Duke of York's Theatre with a cast that featured Ed Stoppard, the playwright's son, in the role of Valentine. It is this production, directed by David Leveaux, with sets by Hildegard Bechtler that opened last Thursday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

This current production, with its mixed cast of American and British performers turns out to be, as expected with this casting choice, a bit of a mixed evening. The English actors, among them Bel Powley (Thomasina Coverly) and Tom Riley (Septimus Hodge), and especially Lia Williams (Hannah Jarvis) perform Stoppard's language with the facility that can only come from those born and raised in Blighty. The American stars of this production, Raúl Esparza (Valentine Coverly) and Billy Crudup (Bernard Nightingale) struggle at times with their accents, although in all honesty, they do an admirable job overall maintaining the illusion of britishness.

Mr. Crudup's Bernard Nightingale is arguably the character that casts the longest shadow in this play. The other, of course is Lord Byron himself, a character who like Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Agamemnon in Richard Strauss's opera Elektra never appears. Bernard is an opportunistic don who dreams of striking it rich in the academic world unearthing a little-known episode of Byron's life. Basing himself mostly on speculation, and a few letters he's unearthed, the biographical details that he pieces together do not altogether complete the puzzle. The beauty of the play is that, as in the film Citizen Kane, we the audience end up finding out more about the true events of the past than the characters in the present will ever be able to decipher. Bernard needs that last impossible-to-find "Rosebud" piece that will complete his hypothetical puzzle.

But the play's the thing, and Arcadia remains as fresh and as fascinating today as when I first saw it. Along with its themes of Classicism versus Romanticism, the geometry of English gardens, Newtonian physics versus chaos theory, the lost years in the life of Lord Byron, and the publish-or-perish mentality of the college don, Arcadia celebrates the unquenchable thirst of man in its quest towards intellectual discovery.

QR Code Madness

2011-02-26T17:49:00.017-05:00

For the past few months I have been spotting these strange diagrams, like the one to the left, everywhere, especially in posters in New York's subway system. These little squares often come with brief instructions to scan them with your smart phone in order to get information. Stuck with a Motorola RAZR until a few weeks ago these little squares really meant nothing to me. And then, on the day it debuted, I got myself a new Verizon iPhone, and in the course of playing with it and doing some research I found out that these little squares are called QR Codes (short for Quick Response). They were invented in Japan, and they fall under the category of matrix barcodes readable by scanners and camera phones.

Already on the web there are a handful of sites that will transform your website into a QR Code. What you see here is the QR Code of my Wagner Operas website. If you have an iPhone download the free app called "QRreader" and once it has downloaded and installed itself take a picture of the square above. Your iPhone will immediately take you to my Wagner Operas website. Amazing!

Now, is it just me, but look carefully: I think that if you stare at the QR code of my site, and you squint your eyes a bit, you start to see Richard Wagner's profile in the center of the diagram? Wait, nevermind, it's just a QR code not a Rorschach test. Enjoy playing with your smart phone!

The New La Traviata at the MET

2011-01-16T10:15:00.015-05:00

Willy Decker's staging of La Traviata was the sold-out event in the summer of 2005 at the Salzburg Festival. That production, starring Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, and Thomas Hampson has been immortalized in DVD and Blu-Ray disc for all time. Now, this same production arrives at the Metropolitan Opera, replacing the Franco Zeffirelli bombastic, huge, opulent staging that few critics liked, but that most audiences loved. When next they update the history of the MET, they will remember the Peter Gelb years as the time when the opera house finally grew up out of its Joseph Volpe artistic lethargy and re-joined the ranks of the great opera houses from across the pond; the time when the MET began to present avant-garde productions featuring contemporary stagings by many of the best European directors and designers. As a result, these days the intermission conversations at the MET seldom center around the performers, but neither are there deep discussions on the virtues of a given new staging. Everything is dismissed as Gelb bringing in Eurotrash! The Gelb years at the MET will always be remembered as the time when the MET might have hit a new pinnacle of artistic excellence and innovation, and the audiences do not care. The times might change, but it is interesting how MET audiences persist on remaining the same. This Saturday afternoon, during the single intermission (after Act One!) of this production, the snippets of conversation that I caught involved wanting Zeffirelli's production back coupled with the phrase "I'm a conservative."

In the Four Quartets poet T.S. Eliot writes "we had the experience but missed the meaning." Wake up people! There is a revolution going on at the Metropolitan Opera the likes of which this opera house has never seen, and it is passing you by because many of you are artistically asleep. Awaken!

Decker's production deconstructs Violetta's world, and in Act I turns it into a night journey of androgyny devoid of time period or setting. Looming above the action is a white bearded old man who in Act IV turns out to be Dr. Grenvil, but who in the opening acts moves about the set looking down at the characters and even directing the action like the stage manager right out of Thorton Wilder's Our Town. In one incredible sequence, he clears out the choristers from the stage by walking towards them while they back away from him and exit via the only way in and out of this set: double doors that shut tightly close like the prison that is Violetta's world. This character, oftentimes compared to an emissary laying down the rules of the force of destiny, reminds me physically of Giuseppe Verdi himself; as if Willy Decker invoked the approval of the composer himself in order to stage this work.

The sets by Wolfgang Gussmann owe much inspiration to the 1930's geometric sets of Adolphe Appia, and the New Bayreuth experiments of Wieland Wagner. As a matter of fact, the best set for an Act III of Tristan und Isolde I have ever seen is Act IV of this Traviata. The staging area now completely bare, Violetta dying on the floor while waiting for her beloved Alfredo to arrive, as Annina, Dr. Grenvil, and Giorgio Germont sit on a semi-circular bench hopelessly waiting the end. This is Tristan! Just change the names of the characters around!

Gussmann's costumes are also interesting. Throughout the production Decker plays with Violetta's red dress and red pumps. Oftentimes, when she wears them and, more importantly, when she sheds these clothes, the action is filled with hidden meaning. Also, when choreographer performer Athol Farmer, reprising his Salzburg performance, his face covered by a kitschy Spanish señorita mask, dons Violetta's dress and performs a Spanish dance meant to mock Alfredo, it is the pinnacle of an act where both female and male choristers gender-bend by wearing tuxedos, while they wear masks of the opposite sex.

I was pleased by the performances on Saturday afternoon. Marina Poplavskaya sang the role with strength and assurance. Blondes do seem to have more fun, it is said, but I wish that she would have donned a brunette wig for this production. Not that I want her to look more like Netrebko, it's just that a brunette Violetta is more in keeping with the overall basic colors of this production. Matthew Polenzani gave the best performance I have ever heard from this tenor. Andrzej Dobber was a stentorian Giorgio Germont, although I miss Thomas Hampson from the original Salzburg production.

The biggest issue that this production brings up is how long is the MET going to keep Decker's Traviata? This staging was to be one hot summer ticket in 2005, and then it was meant to be packed away never to be seen again (at least not in Salzburg). The MET has always been a house where productions have outlasted their welcome after twenty years. As Anthony Tommasini pointed out in his review in the New York Times:

"The question is whether the Decker “Traviata” is the kind of reconceived production that will last for seasons into the future. Perhaps the MET will become a house where productions are rotated more often, which would be an interesting departure, though an expensive one."

Let's hope this is the case.

Upcoming at the Metropolitan Opera

2010-11-03T05:16:00.005-05:00

Here are some upcoming performances and productions that are rumored to be coming to The Metropolitan Opera. An asterisk means that it will be a house debut for the artist.

2011-2012

Anna Bolena [new production; Oct. 29, Jan. 23-Feb. 4] with Anna Netrebko/Angela Meade (Anna), Elina Garanca (Giovanna Seymour), Kate Lindsey (Smeton), Stephen Costello (Percy), Ildar Abdrazakov (Enrico/Henry VIII), c. Marco Armiliato, dir. David McVicar

Nabucco with Maria Guleghina/Marianne Cornetti (Abigaille) , Yonghoon Lee (Ismaele), Zeljko Lucic, Carlo Colombara

Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Javier Camarena*/Colin Lee, Mikhail Petrenko (Basilio)

Don Giovanni [new production] with Barbara Frittoli/Annette Dasch/Marina Rebeka*, Maija Kovalevska, Mojca Erdmann*/Isabel Leonard, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien/Gerald Finley, Luca Pisaroni, Joshua Bloom, Stefan Kocan, c. James Levine/Edward Gardner, dir. Michael Grandage

Siegfried [new production] with Deborah Voigt/Katarina Dalayman, Ben Heppner, Bryn Terfel/Falk Struckmann, Eric Owens, c. James Levine, dir Robert Lepage

Satyagraha with Rachelle Durkin

Rodelinda (Nov) with Renee Fleming, Andreas Scholl, Iestyn Davies*, Kobie van Rensburg, c. Harry Bicket

Faust [new production] with Angela Gheorghiu/Marina Poplavskaya, Jonas Kaufmann/Piotr Beczala, Alexei Markov/George Petean, c. Yannick Nezet-Seguin, dir. Des McAnuff, des. Robert Brill [first seen at ENO]

Madama Butterfly with Robert Dean Smith?, Luca Salsi, Joel Sorensen as Goro

La Fille du Regiment with Nino Maichadze

Hansel and Gretel with Aleksandra Kurzak, Alice Coote

Enchanted Island [new production, original pastiche by Jeremy Sams, featuring music from Handel and Vivaldi] with Danielle de Niese (Ariel), Lisette Oropesa (Miranda), Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax), David Daniels (Prospero), Anthony Roth Costanzo* (Ferdinand), Placido Domingo (Neptune), Luca Pisaroni (Caliban), c. William Christie, dir./prod. Phelim McDermott/Julian Crouch, chor. Christopher Wheeldon?

Tosca with Roberto Alagna

Goetterdammerung [new production, Jan.] with Deborah Voigt/Katarina Dalayman, Waltraud Meier/Karen Cargill* (Waltraute), Ben Heppner, c. James Levine, dir Robert Lepage.

Ernani with Angela Meade, Salvatore Licitra, c. Marco Armiliato

Aida with Micaela Carosi, Stephanie Blythe, Lado Ataneli, Eric Owens (Ramfis), c. Fabio Luisi

Khovanshchina with Olga Borodina as Marfa, Vladimir Galouzine as Andrey, George Gagnidze as Shaklovity, Ildar Abdrazakov as Ivan, Rene Pape as Dosifei, John Easterlin as Scrivener

L’elisir d’amore with Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez, Mariusz Kwiecien, Alessandro Corbelli

Macbeth with Nadja Michael*, Gunther Groissbock, c. Gianandrea Noseda

Manon [new production, March] with Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala, Paulo Szot, c. Fabio Luisi, dir. Laurent Pelly in co-production with Covent Garden, La Scala, and Toulouse

Das Rheingold. With Stefan Margita (Loge), Iain Paterson (TBA). Full Ring Cycles to follow.

La Traviata with Natalie Dessay/Marina Rebeka

Die Walkure with Eva-Maria Westbroek

The Makropoulos Case (Apr-May) with Karita Mattila, Kurt Streit (Albert Gregor), David Kuebler (Vitek), Johan Reuter* (Prus), Tom Fox (Kolenaty)

Billy Budd with John Daszak* as Vere, Nathan Gunn, James Morris, Allan Glassman (Red Whiskers)

2012-2013

Eugene Onegin [new production] with Anna Netrebko, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecien, c. James Levine, dir. Deborah Warner

Un Ballo in Maschera [new production] with Karita Mattila, Kathleen Kim, Marcelo Alvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, c. Fabio Luisi, dir. David Alden

The Tempest by Thomas Ades [Metropolitan Opera premiere] with Simon Keenlyside, dir. Robert Lepage, co-production with La Scala, who offers it in 2013-14

Il Barbiere di Siviglia [abridged Family Version, holidays], c. Yves Abel (uncertain whether it’s in rep with traditional performances)

Maria Stuarda [Metropolitan Opera premiere] with Joyce Di Donato as Maria, Elza van den Heever* as Elisabetta, c. Maurizio Benini, dir David McVicar.

Rigoletto [new production] with Diana Damrau/Lisette Oropesa/Aleksandra Kurzak, Piotr Beczala/Vittorio Grigolo, Zeljko Lucic/George Gagnidze, Stefan Kocan

Parsifal [new production] with Katarina Dalayman, Jonas Kaufmann, Peter Mattei, Rene Pape, dir. Francois Girard in co-production with Opera de Lyon

Giulio Cesare [Glyndebourne production, dir. David McVicar?] with Natalie Dessay, David Daniels, Rachid Ben Abdeslam* (Nireno)

Aida with Marco Berti, George Gagnidze, Stefan Kocan

Carmen (fall, then Feb-Mar) with Ekaterina Shcherbachenko*/Maija Kovalevska, Angela Gheorghiu?/Vesselina Kasarova, Yonghoon Lee, c. Michele Mariotti*

Le Comte Ory with Juan Diego Florez

Dialogues des Carmelites (Apr.-May) with Kristine Jepson (Mere Marie), Felicity Palmer (Mme. De Croissy)

Don Carlo (Jan-Mar) with Eric Halfvarson, c. Lorin Maazel?/Fabio Luisi

Francesca da Rimini (Mar) with Eva Maria Westbroek, Marcello Giordani, c. Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Norma with Sondra Radvanovsky, Kate Aldrich

Le Nozze di Figaro with Maija Kovalevska, Mojca Erdmann?, John Graham-Hall* (Basilio)

Otello with Krassimira Stoyanova, Jose Cura

Il Trovatore [fall] with Anja Harteros, Fabio Armiliato, Franco Vassallo, c. Daniele Callegari

Les Troyens with Susan Graham, Karen Cargill (Anna), Marcello Giordani

Turandot with Takesha Meshé Kizart (Liu), Marco Berti, c. Dan Ettinger

Complete Ring Cycles with Simon O’Neill (Siegmund)

2013-2014

Two Boys [commissioned work by Nico Muhly with libretto by Craig Lucas], dir. Bartlett Sher, co-production with English National Opera.

Falstaff [new production] with Lisette Oropesa, Stephanie Blythe, Franco Vassallo (Ford), dir. Jack O’Brien

Die Fledermaus [new production] with new dialogue by David Hirson

Prince Igor [new production] with Ildar Abdrazakov, dir. Dmitri Tcherniakov?

Werther [new production] with Elina Garanca, Jonas Kaufmann, dir. Richard Eyre?

I Puritani [new production, Apr] with Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Florez, Mariusz Kwiecien, c. Michele Mariotti

La Fanciulla del West with Marcelo Alvarez

Die Frau ohne Schatten with Anne Schwanewilms* (Empress), Ildiko Komlosi (Nurse), Johan Reuter (Barak), c. Vladimir Jurowski

The Nose

La Rondine

Parsifal

Der Rosenkavalier with Mojca Erdman (Sophie)

La Sonnambula with Diana Damrau, Javier Camarena

2014-2015

Commissioned work by Osvaldo Golijov, libretto by Alberto Manguel, dir. Robert Lepage [subject matter relationship of science and religion]

Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci [new production] with Marcelo Alvarez, c. Fabio Luisi

The Merry Widow [new production] with Renee Fleming, dir. Susan Stroman

In Memoriam -- Joan Sutherland (1926-2010)

2010-10-11T18:16:00.008-05:00

She had the most beautiful voice. Arturo Toscanini said of Renata Tebaldi that hers was the voice of an angel. Of Joan Sutherland, who died in Switzerland yesterday at the age of 83, the Maestro would have no doubt placed her among the Seraphim -- the angels of the highest order whose name means fire. Hers was the second soprano voice I ever heard on records (the first was Tebaldi), and her voice, full of fiery ardor beneath that gorgeous tone, ignited in me a love of beautiful singing that I carry to this day.

I saw her a couple of times live at the Metropolitan Opera in the late 70's and 80's. Once as Gilda in Rigoletto and another time in her signature role, the title character in Lucia di Lammermoor. I missed her singing days in the 1960's when her voice was the purest. However there are the recordings. Sutherland arrived on the opera scene, and with her classical recordings reached a zenith of perfection. Her label was London Records, which always seem to have an edge on RCA and Angel when it came to impressive sound. For me Joan Sutherland was a voice I came to know and appreciate as it was captured in the recording studio.

Her recording of Rigoletto was one of the first opera albums I ever owned, and one of the definitive recordings of that score. Along with the young Luciano Pavarotti and Sherrill Milnes in the title role, this album is one of the classics in that golden age of opera studio recording. Alongside Pavarotti, she recorded opera's basic repertory (and then some) in one classic album after another, nearly all, conducted by her husband Richard Bonynge. In Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, a recording which also featured Luciano as Calaf, and which was led by Zubin Mehta, she tackled the title role of the icy empress, abandoning bel canto and entering into a realm which at that time was dominated by Birgit Nilsson. Quite often, critics, when mentioning the strength of Sutherland's voice, would comment that she would have made a great Wagnerian. And she did: as the Forest Bird in John Culshaw's titanic recording of Richard Wagner's Siegfried conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

She certainly had her critics. They mostly complained of her acting, and of the fact that her Italian and overall diction left something to be desired. They were right. It was often hard to understand the words that she sang. I remember one of the many Live from Lincoln Center programs where she performed the aria "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" from the operetta The Bohemian Girl by Michale William Balfe, and wondering what language she was singing in. Still, the beauty of her tone more than made up for it.

Let's listen to Joan Sutherland's beautiful voice once more. The following video is from the Sydney Opera House where Sutherland had her first early triumphs. Here she is in the opera Norma singing "Casta Diva," once again conducted by Maestro Bonynge. I can't think of a better way to remember Joan Sutherland than by listening to her in one of her signature roles.

Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic

2010-10-02T22:49:00.005-05:00

The Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall is always a hot ticket in New York, especially when they are led by Gustavo Dudamel, the young music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. Maestro Dudamel chose an eclectic program with music that ranged from Europe to the Americas, and included works by Gioachino Rossini, Leonard Bernstein, Julián Obrón, and Maurice Ravel.

The program began with Rossini's overture to La Gazza Ladra. This well-known piece from this obscure opera never fails to please, and Dudamel brought out exquisite playing from the orchestra. It's wonderful how Dudamel managed to bring out a warm Italianate sound from the orchestra, and it shows the incredible flexibility of this world-famous ensemble. The next piece, Tres versiones sinfónicas by Spanish-Cuban composer Julián Obrón -- a pupil of Aaron Copland, mixes harmonies reminiscent of the American composer with the Afro-Cuban rhythms of Obrón's adopted homeland (he was born in Spain and became a Cuban citizen). Obrón is pretty much a minor figure in 20th century music, and largely unknown in the United States. Whereas thumbnail pictures of the composers were included in the Carnegie Hall playbill, Obrón's likeness was curiously absent. Despite the relative obscurity of many Hispanic classical composers and their music, Dudamel has always been a champion of the composers of the continent of his birth, and his passionate reading of Obrón's rhythmic score had him doing some fancy angular movements on the podium, and oftentimes leaping in the air. He also chose to have key players of the orchestra stand while playing selected passages of the score. This directorial decision has become a Dudamel trademark.

Leonard Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra opened the second half of the program. It is a curious piece made up of miniature movements ranging from Latin dances to a Turkey Trot and finishing with a rousing but dissonant march reminiscent of Charles Ives. The piece, which was commissioned in 1980 for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is one of the composer's late works, and it feels as if Lenny dug into his trunk and found up a few musical ideas that he weaved together for this composition.

The evening ended with two pieces of Maurice Ravel. The short elegy for a dead child, Pavane pour une infante défunte, is a tender composition whose enigmatic title is a companion piece to the composer's other homage to Spanish culture Alborada del Gracioso. The melodic score allowed Dudamel to shape the long phrases with a delicate hand, and the orchestra responded by playing it so sumptuously that it easily turned out to be the highlight of the evening. Bolero, which ended the printed program, began so quietly that you had to bend an ear to hear the opening bars. Before long, it carefully build to a thunderous climax. It was exciting to witness the violin players of the Vienna Philharmonic digging into their instruments with such wild abandon and musical precision at the same time. This is the kind of sound that few orchestras are able to produce successfully.

The audience greeted the program with a rousing standing ovation, and Dudamel took his bows standing in the midst of the orchestra, his customary spot during curtain calls. It's not that he's shy; he clearly enjoys the limelight that his talents have brought him, but this is an artist with a humble streak that always wants to remind us that despite his superstar status he is only a musician, just like the rest of the players on stage. But what a musician, and what an orchestra he led tonight! The kind of concert where everyone -- including the performers -- left the hall wearing a smile.

Das Rheingold opens MET Opera Season

2010-09-27T22:16:00.018-05:00

It's a well-known fact that mounting a new production of an opera these days requires a special "vision" from the stage director. It isn't enough anymore just to stage an opera, the work must be dissected, re-invented, and somehow made "new" to audiences that demand a new take on an old warhorse. Needless to say, the less the director follows the stage directions and intentions of the original librettist and composer the better. Richard Wagner's stage works are perfectly suited for this directorial experimentation; and so we have had productions of Parsifal where the Holy Grail has inexplicably morphed into anything from an apocalyptic glow from a nuclear blast to a decomposing giant rabbit in Equatorial Africa. This summer at the Bayreuth Festival the guests at Lohengrin and Elsa's wedding were a chorus of giant rats, and a shower of sneakers rained down from the rafters during the finale of Act II of Die Meistersinger. These days, everything is fair game: the weirder the better.

The Metropolitan Opera made a big deal when it decided to retire the old Otto Schenk production of the Ring and replace it with a new staging by Robert Lepage. The old production went out with a sold-out bang, and everybody waved goodbye to possibly the last "old-fashioned" realistic setting of the Ring left in the world. Weeks later, during a dinner hosted by the Metropolitan Opera Club, of which I am a member, Peter Gelb assured those of us gathered there that the new production would be set in "a mythological world." He had to reassure us of that. American audiences, by and large, are essentially conservative ones, and they are somewhat skeptical of "Eurotrash" stagings.

The poster that appeared all over town a few months later, advertising the new production is worth noting. It shows Wotan (sung by Bryn Terfel) wearing a breastplate and a wig with long locks of dark hair draped over his missing eye. In his right hand he carries a spear which is filled with ancient runes. In other words, in this getup Mr. Terfel can board Dr. Who's TARDIS and be transported back in time, and easily step into a production at the old MET circa 1902. By the looks of the poster you would think that the MET had replaced the Schenk production with an even more traditional one.

Not so! The Met opened the new season on Monday with Mr. Lapage's first opera in the Ring cycle, Das Rheingold. It is certainly set in a mythological world all right, I just don't know which particular mythic realm he picked (although the director claims that the myths of Iceland have influenced him the most). The mammoth set for Rheingold and for the rest of the Ring is a wall that consists of twenty-four planks constructed between two towers. These planks can be configured in a number of ways in order to produce different settings. Also, on their plain surfaces, projections as well as interactive video that reacts to movements and sound (as in Mr. Lapage's 2008 MET production of La Damnation de Faust -- clearly a dress rehearsal for this Ring) can be projected.

This monstrous contraption (the MET had to reinforced its stage this summer) allows for some beautiful stage pictures as well as some very clumsy staging. The first scene features the Rhinemaidens swimming about underwater with bubbles rising to the surface. Then we see them lounging by the banks of the river, their mermaid tails moving the projected pebbles by the river banks. A beautiful and unforgettable effect. Later on, Wotan and Loge's journey to Nibelheim is presented as an aerial view as the two seem to be descending a giant staircase designed by M.C. Escher. The staging of the second scene, on the other hand, proved to be more complicated. The giants Fasolt and Fafner are isolated, standing on their own platform above the gods with nowhere to move, and unable to interact physically with anyone else on the stage. The gods Freia, Froh and Donner enter the scene by sliding down one of the walls as if Valhalla was some kind of immortal playground. Further, when in the last scene Fafner kills his brother Fasolt, the body of the slain giant slides down the wall like the disposal of human garbage. It looked like a scene from Sweeney Todd. This awful bit of staging drew a loud amount of laughter from the audience.

The fairest criticism that one can have of this production is that it is largely unimaginative. The last scene presents us with a small rainbow bridge and rainbow colored lights upstage. However, the gods exit into the wings rather than take the ride up to Valhalla via the rainbow bridge -- why? My understanding is that the wall did not work as it was supposed to. A pity, it definitely left you wanting more, that's for sure, especially at Opening Night prices. After all the years of planning and months of building can't they get these things to work?

Musically, the evening went a lot better. James Levine is back on the podium, looking frail and thin after this summer's 10 hour spine operation. His body may be weak, but his musical talents remain as prodigious as ever. He led a well paced performance which rarely overpowered the singers. The orchestra played beautifully throughout the evening, even inspired at times. Towards the end of the evening, however, there was some unevenness in the brass section.

In his first MET Wotan, Bryn Terfel did not disappoint, although he started the evening a bit shaky and a little gravelly, perhaps trying to save his voice for the long one-act evening. Good performances were also given by Dwayne Croft as Donner and Adam Diegel as Froh. Eric Owens provided the richest, most consistent singing among the men. As Alberich, who renounces love for wealth and power, Mr. Owens gave us a twisted, complex creature with a rich sonorous bass to match. As Freia, Wendy Bryn Harmer sounded strong and sure of herself vocally, easily the best performance from among the women.

I am not one of those who will petition the MET to bring back the Otto Schenk production, which I always thought to be too realistic and mad for details. The years pass, tastes change, and audiences must advance forward with the times. If I am nostalgic for anything, it is for the Wieland Wagner inspired Herbert von Karajan older MET production, with the rocky cliffs and the ever-present darkness and gloom. I have to admit: I loved that Ring!

One quarter of the tetralogy is down and we await to see what this production team will do with the next installment later on in the season. Let's hope that the wall is in working order and that it is used in more imaginative ways in Die Walküre.

The Social Network opens the 48th N.Y. Film Festival

2010-09-24T13:23:00.018-05:00

All the buzz you've heard is true. The Social Network, director David Fincher's highly entertaining new film chronicling the genesis of Facebook is a first rate biopic of the rise and rise of Mark Zuckerberg, the Ivy League undergraduate creator of that Internet blue-logo social site that, for better or for worse, has most of the world in its virtual grip. With a first-rate script by Aaron Sorkin that fires with both cylinders, with rapid-pace dialogue reminiscent of His Girl Friday, the story takes us from Facebook's humble beginnings in Harvard Yard, and sweeps us along towards a morality tale conclusion where ultimate redemption might just be a click of the refresh button away.

We first meet Mark Zuckerberg, wonderfully played by Jesse Eisenberg, at a Harvard student watering hole where his relation with his girlfriend (the underused Rooney Mara) is rapidly heading for the rocks. Mark is a genius at embracing algorithms, but an utter failure at courtship. His revenge for being dumped starts a chain reaction that knocks down the university computer network, puts him on academic probation, and brings him to the attention of a pair of buttoned-down blue blood twins (both played by Armie Hammer) who lure Mark into building for them a website for elite WASPs. In a wonderful scene Mark is invited to the outer foyer of Porcellian, the elite "final club" to which the twins belong, and present him with their their offer. Mark runs with the idea, and the prototype of Facebook is born, while the brothers are left out of the picture.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark as if he suffers from Asperger syndrome. It is a brilliant performance built on a shaky foundation of fits and starts. Sometimes the character seems to know it all (he walks out of an advanced computer class being the only student in the room who knows the answer to an intricate question that the professor has posed), and at other times his face morphs into an eerie mask where his eyes are all but dead. It is a superb performance of a person unable to relate to others who, ironically, is destined to build the website whose mission statement is the unification and connection of us all.

If Mark is the brains behind Facebook, then Eduardo Saverin is its heart. Mark's best friend, played by Andrew Garfield in a breakthrough performance, is a great foil, and one of the best examples of good guys finishing last. There is a jittery quality to Mr. Eisenberg that is beautifully complemented by Mr. Garfield's grounded performance. He is a noble character for whom we feel compassion, especially when the tide of events turn against him.

Facebook might have had the kernel of its invention in the East, but it does not take off until the operation moves out West, and this move was largely influenced by Sean Parker, the creator of the defunct music-sharing site Napster, here played with great flair by Justin Timberlake. The introduction of Parker's character halfway through the film injects the narrative with a shot of adrenaline and directs the film to another plane. We move from the halls of Academia (beautifully shot digitally on "the Red" by Jeff Cronenweth) to sunny suburban houses with pools and trendy sushi restaurants shot with a palette of bright colors that contrast with the autumnal hues of the first part of the film.

Here lies the genius of David Fincher. He is able to juggle the many worlds of this movie with great accomplishment. Not a stranger to unknown worlds (as he proved with his first film, Aliens 3, and later on in the rain-soaked unnamed city of Se7en), he is comfortable in the binary world of computer geeks as well as in the elite world of privilege. He knows how to show the beauty of modern liquid crystal displays, and then turn around and convincingly lead us through a regatta in England where wealth, royalty, and old money mingle. Very few directors nowadays can perform this feat so convincingly.

In many ways, it is a film about the clash of the old and the new. But the success of the film lies not in the fact that it deals with the latest flavor-of-the-month Internet accomplishment. That is only its outer veneer. According to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the film has little to do with the Internet and everything to do with themes as old as storytelling itself. As he mentioned at the press screening of the film, The Social Network is about "friendship and loyalty, class, jealousy, and power: things that Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Paddy Chayefsky would write about." It is for this reason that this very up to date film about our age seems as ageless as tragedy and comedy, the poles of Western art that this work inhabits and balances so deliciously.

Christoph Schlingensief is Dead

2010-08-27T10:15:00.006-05:00

It's so difficult to believe that Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) is dead. Barely a few weeks ago his name was on my lips as I was putting the finishing touches on my podcast about the new Hans Neuensfels production of Lohengrin at Bayreuth. In 2004 Schlingensief directed an extremely controversial production of Parsifal at The Green Hill, and the current Lohengrin is drawing the kind of loud boos that greeted Schlingensief's work six years ago.

You would not be reading this article had there not been a 2004 Schlingensief production of Parsifal at Bayreuth. The critical outrage, and the overall sheer chutzpa of that production fueled my imagination, and was largely the inspiration for wagneroperas.com and its companion: this, oftentimes, irregular blog.

Of the many hats that he wore in his brief life, Schlingensief excelled at being a provocateur. To fully understand his art, oftentimes complicated by the politics from which it arose, you have to be German, or at the very least you must have your finger on the pulse of current German politics and history. He often ridiculed Helmut Kohl, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, and often his work was filled with references to Germany's Nazi legacy. His play, Kühnen 94, Bring Me the Head of Adolf Hitler, its title referring to the neo-Nazi leader Michael Kühnen, as well as Sam Peckinpah's 1974 film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, was a controversial examination of German history that drew inspiration from popular history and Hollywood pulp films.

The iconography of his Parsifal at Bayreuth (see above) drew from many themes, inspirations, and styles. Setting the work in what appeared to be the African continent drew angry responses from the crowd year after year that the production was presented. It even drew one angry Spaniard to yell "To Jail!" at the conclusion of one of the acts. Anger overflowed backstage to the cast. Tenor Endrik Wottrich refused to sing in the production after the first year, and did not honor his contract after he and Schlingensief fought bitterly and called each other names that ranged from "Racist" to "Fascist."

Often, critics who understood his penchant for provoking masses accused him of not having a true visual style. His "Voodoo Parsifal," as the Bayreuth production was nicknamed, drew inspiration from the controversial film Our Hitler by director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, one of the most radical filmmakers from the New German Cinema of the 1970s. The truth of the matter is that Schlingensief was influenced by everything that touched him, and he wanted to put everything in the pot and stir it up, always curious to see what came out.

It is this sense of exploration and curiosity, coupled with a need to shock and disturb that Christoph Schlingensief brought to Bayreuth when he was invited to come up with a new Parsifal. Now that he is gone, his creativity and determination will be greatly missed.

David Fincher at the New York Film Festival

2010-08-12T14:24:00.006-05:00

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that it will kick off its 48th annual New York Film Festival with The Social Network, the new film by director David Fincher. The new film, written by Aaron Sorkin, stars Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake.

David Fincher broke on the scene with the dark, apocalyptic Alien 3, perhaps the darkest and most personal of the first "Alien" films. In 1995 he released the mega-hit thriller Se7en, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. He followed this film with a score of triumphs, all bearing the stamp of a genuine American auteur. Fight Club, Zodiac, and the recent The Curious Case of Benjamin Button have become instant classics, and have transformed Mr. Fincher into one of the genuine visionaries in American cinema today.

Currently, Mr. Fincher is in pre-production on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the Stieg Larsson novel. This film is slated for Christmas 2011 release.

The Social Network opens at the New York Film Festival on Friday, September 24th 2010. It is due for release by Sony Picture Classics on October 1st.

PARSIFAL Ad

2010-08-02T13:34:00.022-05:00

I recently found out that one of my favorite productions of Parsifal, Nikolaus Lehnnhoff's post-apocalyptic setting of Wagner's last work at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus was advertised with the above poster. The conductor for this production was the American Kent Nagano, who is of Japanese extraction. I was really shocked that the management of the Festspielhaus would stoop down to this kind of opportunistic attention-grabber tactic.

The ad bears the logo of the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, and reads "Kent Nagano conducts Wagner." Although I don't believe their intention was to offend, but rather to produce amusement, the image is still disturbing, and the fact that it was developed to cause amusement in the first place betrays much of its problematic nature. It shows a photo-shopped image of the composer manually slanting his eyes in order to make himself look "more Asian." This obviously alludes to a racist European custom of trying to mimic Asian facial characteristics by doing this. The ad comments on Kent Nagano's Japanese-American ethnicity while at the same time it indirectly reminds us of Richard Wagner's own prejudicial view of the world.

Under the surface of the visual "joke" the ad touches a deeper vein. It recalls the fact that when Parsifal premiered at Bayreuth in 1882 Wagner asked conductor Hermann Levi to submit to Christian baptism in order to be purified of his "Jewishness" so he could be worthy to conduct this Christian work. The ad touches upon German (Christian) supremacy, perhaps announcing that someone of Japanese extraction conducting Wagner's most holy work is not only somehow preposterously humorous, but that it soils the true "German-ness" of the work (these were Wagner's own fears of having a Jewish conductor lead the opera's premiere). As a result the composer's most famous portrait has now metamorphosed into a grotesque mask, itself already having been "soiled."

Needless to say this is the kind of ad that clearly nobody would dare to show in the United States, England or in many other European countries. The fact that it won advertising awards in Berlin, and that nobody protested or even batted an eye when it came out speaks volumes about questions of sensitivity in Baden-Baden and the rest of Germany. On the other hand, we have to ask ourselves if our society has become way too tender to questions of race that we are in danger of completely losing our sense of humor, which I believe was the point of departure for this ad. Of course, humor directed at minorities is no humor at all.

The only question that remains in my mind is what did Kent Nagano himself think of the ad?

Bayreuth's new Lohengrin: Of Rats and Men, and More Rats

2010-07-30T09:57:00.021-05:00

One of the many results of the so-called Regietheater, the director-driven style of presenting opera that has Europe and most of America and the rest of the world in its tight grip, is that along with an askew, left of center imagination that sets the opera in a place, time and space that the original composer never dreamed of, the production team has to ensure a certain level of controversy at opening night for the whole thing to properly work. Therefore, if the audience does not feel uncomfortable, or worse yet, if the audience behaves, then the production is deemed a dismal failure. On the other hand, if enough pockets of audience members throw themselves into an endless polemic during intermissions after participating in a rowdy booing attack, then the production might be considered a hit.

This is the easy recipe for Regietheater in which the director responsible for the transgression hopes to achieve the utmost in controversy. Christoph Schlingensief did it at Bayreuth in 2004 with his "voodoo Parsifal" that came complete with time-lapse photography of a rotting carcass of a rabbit being devoured by hungry maggots. Last year, at the venerable Metropolitan Opera, which has opened the door to a careful select version of Regietheater via the appointment of Peter Gelb, Luc Bondy's ugly new production of Puccini's Tosca featured a whore giving Scarpia a blowjob at his offices in the Palazzo Farnese. A wave of boos (which started from the Family Circle and moved on down) greeted the conclusion of each act only to intensify at the end when Mr. Bondy took a curtain call. He smiled; he was happy; he had accomplished what he set out to do: The MET finally had a Regietheater scandal.

Hans Neuenfels is no stranger to these kind of scandals, as a matter of fact he specializes in manufacturing them. This is the man that re-thought the Ethiopian slave Aida as a 20th century domestic black servant, and who caused a city-wide security issue when his production of Mozart's Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin had the title character carry in the severed heads of Jesus and Muhammad. It was about time for the 69 year old director to finally make his debut at Bayreuth, an opera theater committed to the new and unafraid of controversy. The director has chosen Richard Wagner's most romantic opera, Lohengrin. The musical direction has been given to the dynamic 31 year old Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons.

Neuenfels has transformed Lohengrin from a utopia fairy tale and has turned it into a dystopia of deep philosophical concepts that examines the human condition via kitschy images filled with outrageous humor. The chorus is dressed as white and black rats, perhaps letting us in on the fact that not all seems to be right in the colorful world that the composer has painted. Lohengrin's entrance (according to Wagner's stage directions, the knight enters in a boat pulled by a swan) is instead replaced with the figure of Lohengrin walking in, in shirtsleeves and undone tie, as if he has just finished a long day's work on the set of Mad Men with his stuffed swan carried in behind him by a swarm of black rats. I'm dead certain that King Ludwig II (1845-1886), who had the fairy tale castle Neuschwanstein built after he became enraptured by Wagner's Lohengrin, must surely be turning in his grave.

It is the kind of production that wants and needs a strong audience reaction and gets it, and that is exactly what Neuenfels craves. He has surrounded himself with a very talented set of collaborators just to make sure that the success is legitimate. The sets by Reinhard von der Thannen are mostly in shades of whites, while his costumes, particularly those of the chorus, when they are not dressed as rats, are brightly yellow and betray a smart haute-couture retro feeling. Think 1950's by way of Versace and you get the idea.

The main draw of this production is Jonas Kaufmann, opera's current sex symbol, whose name seems to be drooling on everybody's lips these days after making some of the most talked about, successful debuts around the world's stages this year. (His visit to the MET this spring in the roles of Cavaradossi and Don José re-charged the last months of the opera season.) His strong tenor, in the tradition of Franco Corelli and Plácido Domingo, may not possess the true heldentenor timbre, but it is perfect for this virile conception of the title character -- and his drop-dead gorgeous looks go a long way to fill in what may be missing vocally. His baritonal lower register again might not be what Wagner imagined for his Grail Knight, however, in this production he fits right in. Alongside Kaufmann is the beautiful and beautifully-voiced Annette Dasch who has been making some acclaimed debuts herself around the world. Are they the new opera couple? Are they the new Netrebko-Villazón replacements? Time will tell, but their opening night vocal displays moves them up a notch or two in the direction of world acclaim and instant celebrity recognition.

Finally, Riga-born conductor Andris Nelsons conducted a passionate reading of the score. Wagner was in his early thirties when he completed the music to Lohengrin, and having a young man at the podium channels the vigor that the pre-Ring, pre-Tristan und Isolde Wagner possessed when he wrote this totally German in spirit, but Italian opera-infused effervescent score.

Now that Wolfgang Wagner is dead, total control of the festival has passed down to Richard Wagner's great-granddaughters. Both Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier have been chosen by Bavaria's culture minister, Thomas Goppel, to lead the festival into the 21st century. In the same way that Wieland Wagner and his brother Wolfgang revived the festival from the ashes of World War II, Katharina and Eva seem to want to take the festival to the forefront of the opera world and to the outer reaches of artistic merit. Their recipe appears to be a kind of operatic theater where youth (or youthful thinking) is at the helm, and where conservatism is continually engaged in an awkward dance with the forces of the avant-garde. When one thinks about it, not too different from the post-War years that brought back the Bayreuth Festival in 1951. Essentially everyone is engaged in an artistic journey in search of the Wagnerian truth.

RED on Broadway at the Golden Theatre

2010-04-10T15:29:00.010-05:00

The Donmar Warehouse, that magnificent British theatrical institution, is on a roll these days. Recently, three of their productions (Frost/Nixon, Mary Stuart, and Hamlet) have successfully made it to New York City after sold-out runs in London. Donmar’s latest offering is Red, written by John Logan, (who wrote the screenplay to the films Gladiator and The Aviator) and directed by Michael Grandage: a two-man play centering on the relationship between American painter Mark Rothko and his studio assistant during the time when the artist was awarded a commission to paint murals for the newly-built restaurant The Four Seasons. This stormy period of the artist’s life is brought to life by actors Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, who respectively play the tempestuous Rothko and his young inexperienced studio assistant.

When you enter the Golden Theatre, the first thing that hits you is the smell of paints and linseed oil. Set designer Christopher Oram has created a hyper-realistic environment that looks and smells like a working artist studio. Then, when you settle in your seat you instantly become aware that already sitting on the curtain less stage, his back to us, is Molina, his hand cradling his shaved bald head. He sits there, already being Rothko, looking hard and deep at one of his “red” paintings that hangs on a pulley-system easel upstage. I had not seen this theatrical conceit of having the lead actor already there before the audience arrives since Ian McKellen sat on a wheelchair as old Salieri in the original production of Amadeus. As he sits there, in silent communion with his work for what seems like an eternity, already in character, he is preparing us for a play which is essentially about probing, about looking deeply past the obvious surfaces and into the pulsating heart and soul of a piece of art. When the house light go down, Rothko lights a cigarette, stands up from his chair and approaches the painting. He extends his hand and touches the stretched canvas in front of him, feeling its delicate surface -- the creator in search of his creation's hidden truth and secrets... perhaps its soul. It is a magical theatrical moment, and the first line of the play has not even been uttered.

The first words I ever heard about Mark Rothko, indeed, the first time I ever heard of the man I was an undergraduate at NYU. Rothko was dead less than ten years, and my best friend was taking an Art 101 course. He was puzzled by his professor's statement about Rothko's work. "His paintings carry the weight of the Old Testament" the professor lectured to the class. The words resonated within me, but my knowledge of art at the time did not allow me to understand the reason anybody would utter such a statement about abstract colors on a canvas. I dismissed the comment as ridiculous, but for some reason the memory of it stayed with me. That summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held a huge exhibit of paintings by Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still. I bought the show's catalogue and slowly became engrossed by this period of American Art. At the Golden Theatre the words from my undergraduate days came back as I entered this recreation of Rothko's world, and John Logan's script has made these words reverberate once more.

When Ken, Rothko's new studio assistant, arrives at the studio the first day wearing a suit and tie Rothko berates him for not coming in properly dressed to a working studio. As the extraneous layers of clothing are shed we get to know him as a young man who aspires to be a great artist one day. Rothko roars back that he will never be a great artist unless he learns the canon of Western art, literature music, and above all that he must read Nietzsche. The stage is set for an Apollonian versus Dionysian struggle of wits between the two. The young man genuinely wanting to understand the spark of genius that ignites the old man's artistic drive while the towering, seemingly unfeeling Rothko eternally reminds him that he is nothing more than a mere unimportant employer, and that in this studio it is all about Rothko.

Easy to see Rothko as a self-absorbed sour bully, and Alfred Molina embodies that to the hilt (this being his strongest Broadway performance to date), but the truth of the matter is that in his own monomaniacal way he is trying to make the kid understand that art is deeper, much deeper than he ever thought it could be. Molina is also able to bring that across admirably. When he must fire Ken because he has decided to turn down the Four Seasons commission, Molina tenderly touches the young man's cheek and urges him to make something of himself by learning to see things differently. Eddie Redmayne's Ken is an absolutely brilliant creation. Throughout the course of the drama he goes from being a wide-eyed ingenue cowering in the shadow of both taskmaster and tormentor to becoming a spokesperson for the new generation of Pop Artists who threaten Rothko's very own artistic existence. Mr. Redmayne's performance is one of the great Broadway debuts of the season.

Then there are the paintings themselves, beautifully recreated by Mr. Oram. They are the other characters in this play. They enter and exit and play their mute roles as the two characters carry them in an out of their big easel, each replacement cleverly signaling a new scene. The paintings are monumental, and yet fragile and sad -- perhaps carrying the weight of Scripture within their frame. They are the subject of the drama, and yet they will forever be relegated to being decoration. For Rothko, who envisioned his work occupying the most sacred of spaces, this was the saddest revelation: that his creations would become nothing more than backdrops for wealthy diners. However, as John Banville wrote "In a way, the murals would have suited the Four Seasons, one of those modern-day temples ... where the sons of man - and sons of bitches - feed daily upon the blood sacrifice of their own ferocious, worldly triumphs."

Even though Rothko says at one point that "there is tragedy in every brushstroke" the paintings themselves tell that story, and the story of the compulsive, ego maniacal self-destructive genius who created them.

The Addams Family, The Musical

2010-04-07T17:46:00.018-05:00

At one point, somewhere in the second act, Gomez Adams, played by Nathan Lane, looks up at statuesque Bebe Neuwirth, playing his wife Morticia and tells her that what he lacks in height he makes up for in shallowness. In many ways this quip could be a good description of The Addams Family, The Musical, the new show that is ready to open at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

The production had a troubled out-of-town run in Chicago and garnered mixed reviews. Its original director was fired and Broadway legend Jerry Saks was brought in to patch things up. Mr. Saks is billed in the current playbill as creative consultant while the team of Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (who brought Philip Glass's Satyagraha from the English National Opera to the MET last year) are billed as the show's directors and designers.

The press release of this production informs us that the creators have gone back to the original source and drawn their inspiration from the kooky, macabre, but lovable cartoons that illustrator Charles Addams published on the pages of The New Yorker magazine from 1933 to his death in 1988. That is true in that they even borrow some of the captions from the famed cartoons and incorporated them into the script. In actuality, any musical that claims to have the Addams Family as its title has to draw primarily from the 1960's ABC TV sitcom which codified and labeled Charles Addams's unnamed cartoon characters. Likewise, Barry Sonnenfeld Paramount films from the early 1990s: The Addams Family and Addams Family Values (written by Paul Rudnick) are sources of inspiration for this musical.

As they went from the pages of The New Yorker to TV to the movies, the characters underwent interesting transformations. The TV series Gomez (played by John Astin) was a wacky aristocrat who dabbled on Wall Street and often called his Witch Doctor in Africa for medical consultations. His Spanish ethnicity, largely hidden, only erupted in moments of passion when the word "querida" escaped from his lips and he kissed the length of Carolyn Jones 's arm. Her Morticia was a kittenish witch who might have been the descendant of a clan that escaped the Salem burnings. The TV Addamses were very WASPy blue bloods with deep ancestral roots (as opposed to the blue-collared Munsters on CBS), and might have lived on Park if the avenue had room for a haunted house. In this production the mansion is inside Central Park! In the Sonnenfeld films Gomez (deliciously played by Raul Julia) became a full-blooded Latin lover while Anjelica Huston's Morticia was a sultry, gothic siren beautifully lit around the eyes to give her a ghostly appearance. The character of Uncle Fester, who was played in the TV series by silent film former child star Jackie Coogan, was a lovable man-child who was able to conduct electricity, while for the big screen Christopher Lloyd brought out a darker side to the character.

In this show, Nathan Lane plays Gomez at his oiliest: an over-the-hill lounge lizard with an outrageous Spanish accent. Bebe Neuwirth does a creditable job with Morticia, but the truth of the matter is that the show doesn't give her the scene stealing opportunities afforded her co-star, so she ends up being no more than a ghoulish gothic hottie with a plunging neckline. And speaking of her dress and other things: she and Lane get to cut up a rug on the dance floor. They dance a sultry tango where Ms. Neuwirth gets to show us the shapely legs that are hidden beneath that tight black dress.

The basic plot of this show channels a classic story premise used in the TV series as well as in the movies: a "normal" family visits the Addamses at their house. This visit has a distinctive "Cage aux Folles" flavor since the reason for the visit involves Wednesday Addams (Krysta Rodriguez) who has fallen in love with Lucas (Wesley Taylor), a young man from Ohio who is in New York with his parents (Carolee Carmelo and Terrence Mann). Yep! You know what's coming! Pretty soon the visiting family begins to see things the Addamses's way. All of this is treated with plenty of crowd-pleasing goofiness through songs that unfortunately try to top each other. Does every composer on Broadway these days feel that every song must be a showstopper? Apparently, yes, they do! Regretfully, what should be the real theme of the Addams family, starting with the cartoons themselves, which is questioning the definition of what is normal, remains undeveloped behind the glitz.

The reason for this problem lies with Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and their uneven book which fails to conjure the true spirit of the Addams Family cartoons. True to the cartoons, they do succeed in putting together a show which feels episodic, and for some reason I just don't think that was their intention. The show is also chock full of topical references ranging from Health Care to texting, which do get a big laugh, but which make the show feel as if the creators are trying to grab an audience that is ebbing away from them. Also, there is a surprising amount of philosophizing about the existential aspect of life. One character, with dread, compares our fleeting days on Earth to a tight rope with a coffin waiting for us at the end. The real Addamses would never fear death! Instead they would probably invite him over for drinks, offer their umbrella stand for his scythe, and ask him to stay overnight in one of the guest rooms if he wasn't too busy.

The show's supporting cast is an interesting mix. Kevin Chamberlin as Uncle Fester plays the character as a sweet weirdo who's in love with a nocturnal celestial body, His love song, visually inspired in part by a famous Georges Méliès silent film is a memorable part of the show. On the other hand, the character of Grandma, played with showstopping energy by Jackie Hoffman, is turned into a foul-mouthed, ex-hippie hag who peddles various drugs out of a wheeled cart that looks like a voodoo altar.

Here's a scene they did manage to get right. Gomez is sitting on a swing outside his mansion, behind him a beautiful backdrop of Central Park West. Suddenly, gunshots are heard. Gomez's face breaks into a pleased, satisfied smile. That's the spirit of Charles Addams! I wish there was more of it in this cute, at times lovable, but ultimately flawed show.

ATTILA: Verdi, Muti, and Prada at the MET

2010-02-28T14:47:00.010-05:00

For Peter Gelb the new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Attila might just be the pinnacle of his tenure thus far at the MET. It is a star-studded event on many levels, with all kinds of debuts that spell the kind of success that most opera houses dream of. At the helm, leading the MET orchestra for the first time, is Riccardo Muti, perhaps the greatest Verdi specialist of our times leading an early Verdi opera never before heard at the house. Also making debuts are visionary director Pierre Audi, costume designer Miuccia Prada (that's right, an opera with Prada gear!) and the architectural firm of Herzog & de Meuron, who have given us London's Tate Modern and Beijing's "Bird Nest" Olympic Stadium, in charge of the sets. Onstage, Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, soprano Violetta Urmana, tenor Ramón Vargas, and veteran bass Samuel Ramey (himself a legendary Attila). On paper this is a dream team, at the house it is a revelation!

Attila occupies an unusual space in Verdi's canon; one that is also shared by the opera Stiffelio, both works heard at the MET this season. These two "minor" works come just before better known works by the composer. Attila is Verdi's ninth opera coming right before his early masterpiece Macbeth, and Stiffelio was written right before the legenday trio of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata. Given the chronological spaces that these works occupy, it is easy to see why they have been eclipsed by the composer's more popular, more mature works. But make no mistake about it: Attila, which presents the life of the Scourge of God as a melodic pageant of early Italian history written for a Venetian audience of 1846, might be weak in its libretto, but the music already shows a master of Bel Canto who is slowly discovering his personal musical language and paving his own way for the masterpieces that he would soon create in the decade of the 1850s.

Riccardo Muti drew inspiring playing from the MET orchestra, the likes of which I have not heard at the house in quite a long time. It was so exciting to hear the expansive richness of sound that this ensemble is able to produce under the right hands. Muti was in complete control throughout the evening, leading the orchestra through memorable textures and rich sonorities. The subtleties of the score came through as well as the impressive fortissimo tuttis (one of which made one member in the audience Saturday evening burst out in enraptured applause).

In many interviews, Muti has declared that his personal aim in this production is to show how Attila already contains the kernel that makes the mature works great. Needless to say, he has succeeded in this endeavor. He gives the reading of Attila the same respect and attention to detail as if he were conducting Otello or Falstaff, and that's the secret to making these early Verdi operas work musically for today's audiences.

Pierre Audi's production tackles the problem of presenting an operatic fresco from 1846 by instilling a modern look. The battlefield of Aquileia is an impressive mount of rubble that gives you the feeling that if you take away a stone the whole thing would tumble down. The rest of the opera is played in front of an impressive wall of foliage, complete with giant leaves and impressive tree trunks worthy of the best scenes in James Cameron's Avatar. Thankfully, the costumes by Ms Prada do not channel the Na'Vi, but are nonetheless tres chic and quite elegant. The Act II banquet scene, in particular, stands out for its impressive use of golden yellows.

The cast assembled for this production is first rate. Ildar Abdrazakov may not be a powerhouse Attila, but his attractive bass is lyrical and easily reaches the low notes required for the role. His good looks brings incredible charisma and stage presence to the title role. Violetta Urmana started out a bit shrilly, but it took her no time at all to bring down the house displaying Odabella's beautiful but difficult coloratura. Giovanni Meoni, filling in for Carlos Alvarez, brought tender and expressive singing of great beauty to the baritone role of Ezio. Ramón Vargas looked uncomfortable in his costume, and the music seemed to overwhelm his light tenor for most of the evening. His third act aria "Che non avrebbe il misero" however, was sung expressively in true Verdi fashion. Samuel Ramey made a memorable cameo in the role of Leone a Roman bishop.

It is good to see Riccardo Muti make his long overdue Metropolitan Opera debut. He is unquestionably the reason for much of the spark and magic of this production. My first thoughts after the last echo of the resounding ovation was over was that New Yorkers deserve to hear him again in the opera house: perhaps next time leading one of the more beloved warhorses of Giuseppe Verdi's oeuvre. Are you reading this Mr. Gelb?

Inglourious Basterds -- new film by Quentin Tarantino

2009-08-21T19:25:00.021-05:00

What if World War II had come to an explosive end not in Hitler's bunker in shattered Berlin, but in a movie theater in Nazi occupied France? This is the premise for Quentin Tarantino's new film Inglourious Basterds, the story of how a band of avenging American Jews demolish the Third Reich with the help of the explosive glories of silver nitrate. Tarantino's new film is both exasperating as well as enjoyable; it is also episodic, juvenile, and way too long. But if you latch on to its postmodern riff, mixing everything from 70's films to 1940's pulp, it is a helluva good ride into the kind of Hollywood fantasy land that only exists in the mind of the director.

Tarantino's film is based on a little known Italian war movie called The Inglorious Bastards, an almost forgotten 1970's B movie rip-off of Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen. This complicates things for any viewer who wants to know where Tarantino is coming from. It all becomes crystal-clear, however, if you bring to mind one particular genre that nowadays we usually don't think about: the Western.

Once Upon a Time in the Western part of Europe there were advancing hordes of Jewish-hating Nazis who came into conflict with good-hearted Frenchmen who tried to save Jewish families from extermination. The pastoral first scene of this film captures this confrontation while at the same time surprising us by conjuring the spirit of the American Western. The scene is vaguely reminiscent of the opening of The Magnificent Seven, a film based on Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. This is the smoke and mirrors celluloid world in which Tarantino inhabits. This new war film surprisingly conjures up the spirit of the American Western as seen by Italian director Sergio Leone, and it features music written for those "spaghetti Westerns" by the great Ennio Morricone. Even Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who leads the band of Nazi hunters, demands, like a pre-politically correct redskin on the warpath, that all Nazis killed be scalped. Inglourious Basterds might just be the first WWII Western, whatever that is!

For a postmodernist, Tarantino's WWII is curiously devoid of too many references to the classic war films made in the 1940's. There's very little John Ford or Raoul Walsh in Tarantino's vocabulary, hence don't look for the spirit of They Were Expendable or Objective Burma! to creep through. Instead, Tarantino's war comes complete with Samuel L. Jackson's narration in which he tells us that film shot on silver nitrate is highly combustible. I'm not surprised. Tarantino is a child of the 1970s, and for anyone who came of age in that decade the jingoism of WWII American films just did not jive. It was the era of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And in Hollywood, it was the era of M*A*S*H, Apocalypse Now, as well as 1970's Kelly's Heroes, a film with which Inglorious Basterds shares many a comparison.

For my money, Inglorious Basterds belongs to Austrian actor Christoph Waltz who shines as Colonel Hans Landa, better known as "The Jew Hunter." His performance is carefully and memorably crafted: over the top one minute, minimalist the next. In reality, it is nothing more than an update of a wonderful caricature of the Hollywood Nazi: the kind of role that the great Conrad Veidt excelled at. Waltz's Landa, however, is more tongue-in-cheek, smoother, funnier, and as a result more dangerous. His Best Actor Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival for this performance was well deserved.

I don't think that Quentin Tarantino fans will be disappointed with Inglorious Basterds. It is a worthy addition to the small number of films that he's directed. If we boil the film down to its essence, it is a series of disjointed dialogue scenes, broken into various chapters, brilliantly choreographed and acted, which eventually come together in a fiery Wagnerian climax that channels the spirit of Brian De Palma's Carrie. The rhythms of Inglourious Basterds are reminiscent of Pulp Fiction though it lacks the earlier film's incredible crackling dialogue or its brilliant handling of the story's timeline.

On a personal note, I wish they would have held off the summer opening of this film and saved it for a prestige premiere at this year's New York Film Festival. This year the festival promises to be mostly a ho-hum affair, and I think that Inglorious Basterds would have given that New York institution a good kick in the pants as well as brought Tarantino back to the place that launched his unusual career.

The Bacchae in Central Park

2009-08-13T23:03:00.016-05:00

The Bacchae is perhaps Euripides' s greatest tragedy, and it is currently running as the second offering in this summer's Free Shakespeare in the Park. Under the direction of the Public Theater's former artistic director Joanne Akalaitis, this production is a compact, fast-moving one-acter played in modern dress, but maintaining the drive and savagery of the 2,500 year-old text. It is 90 minutes of Aristotelian unities, translated by Nicholas Rudall, and reenacted to the driving, undulating minimalist rhythms and melodies of composer Philip Glass.

This story of the hubris of a king, the foolishness of old men, and the wrathful vengeance brought about by the alien minion of a disrespected god makes for incredibly exciting theater. The Bacchae is part of the trilogy (along with the author's Iphigenia in Aulis and the now lost Alcmaeon in Corinth) that won the great prize at the Dionysia Festival posthumously for Euripides. They truly don't write them like they used to.

This production, performed outdoors as was the original, trades the blinding Aegean sun for the evening skies of late August New York. This transfers the essence of the work from sun-beaten rocks and blinding natural light to chic "late-night cool," and in keeping with this adaptation, the lead is a rock-and-roll Dionysus singing into a microphone like Elvis, and a chorus of Maenads (the possessed Bacchant women enchanted by Dionysus) in bright orange costumes. The men and women's costumes offer an interesting contrast. Staying true to the play's theme of opposing forces, the male characters are uniformly in modern dress, while the women aren't.

Likewise, the set itself seems to be of two minds. Performed in a barren, metallic circular arena (complete with a narrow moat of water) to an audience sitting in a semi-circle -- a space reminiscent of the configuration of Greek amphitheaters, the playing area has an industrial feel to it, and that is also seen in the upstage lopsided bleacher-like construction that the actors often inhabit like spectators at their own play. The setting gives no specific clue as to the time the play takes place, and as a result a timeless feeling is achieved quite effortlessly.

A drawing card for this production is an original score by Philip Glass. The composer's work and style is a well-known commodity, and for this production he stays the course and provides a rich, sultry score in keeping with the kind of Glass that we are accustomed to. As we enter the theater a recorded minimalist pattern is repeated over and over again, setting the scene and perhaps adjusting our ear for the musical sounds that we will hear for the rest of the evening. But as we enter the course of the play, that barren overture seems to pale by comparison to the rest of the lush score. Glass's musical settings for a chorus of sopranos and altos are just lovely, with beautiful harmonies and attractive melodies throughout. He is less successful, however, when it comes to the music of Dionysus which seems contrived, often uninspired and seemingly searching in vain for a distinctive style. Not the kind of music I would have written for this haughty, self-assured character.

The last time I went to see The Bacchae was back in 1980 in the Michael Cacoyannis's production at the Circle in the Square, starring the great Irene Papas. It was a play that left me cold back in my salad days because Ms. Papas's star turn as Agave, though memorable as it was, happens during the last half hour of the work, and I remember not paying enough attention to the play waiting for Ms. Papas to show up on stage. When she did, it was worth it, but the long wait, I remember, left me cold.

The present cast features no superstars, but solid theater actors well-known to the New York stage community. In my opinion, this is the best way to experience this kind of play. As Dionysus and Pentheus Jonathan Groff (of Spring Awakening and Hair fame) and Anthony Mackie are strong foils. Groff in his long locks, and tight jeans seems to still be playing the teen rebel, while Mackie, handsome in his dark suit, adds an air of elegance to the production. When Mackie has to don a woman's dress, in the latter part of the play, the result is far from camp, but rather a prelude for the wild carnage that will occur. In addition, giving strong performances are the great André de Shields as a thyrsus-carrying Teiresias (I am glad that he is not encumbered with woman's breasts in this production) and Joan MacIntosh who shines in her Agave monologue.

But true to the democratic spirit of Euripides (and of the Public Theater) the greatest moments of the evening, in my opinion, belong to the two great monologues of the two lowliest characters in the drama: the Herdsman, played by Steven Rishard, who recounts with great relish the bacchanalia of the Maenads, and the Messenger, played by Rocco Sisto, who electrifies the audience with his powerful and monstrous details of the death of Pentheus.

Basically, this is a "not-to-be missed" production of a play that ought to be mandatory reading and viewing for everyone. It is one of the great works of the Western canon, and this production does more than justice to its greatness. The production will play at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park until August 30. For information about tickets visit The Public Theater's website.

Phèdre at the National Theatre

2009-07-28T16:39:00.019-05:00

When it seemed that it was impossible to get a ticket to the sold out run of Phèdre at the Lyttelton auditorium of The National Theatre in London, lo and behold a pair of tickets opened up two days before my flight back to New York. It was one of the reasons why I had flown to London in the first place: to see Jean Racine's tragedy with the incomparable Helen Mirren. When I got to London though, the writing was on the wall and it spelled the sad reality that I was going to go back home just having been to the city where Phèdre was playing.

There were other ways of getting in. One was the black market, where tickets were going upwards of £100. The other possibility was praying for returns the day of the show. Neither paying 100 quid for a ticket that normally cost £39.50 or having to get up early in the morning, cross the Thames and queue up for returns that may not materialize excited me. Near my hotel, every morning I would pass the crowds lining up early outside Wyndham's Theatre for the scarcely few standing room tickets to see Jude Law in Hamlet. Call me lazy, but somehow I just didn't see myself lining up for returns for this or any other show on this trip. There had to be another way to see Phèdre.

And there was ... and his name was Ian. Ian, a prince among concierges, works at the St Martin's Lane Hotel where I always stay when I am in London. He kept his eye on the National's website until he observed that one of the weekend days I had requested had transformed itself from sold-out black back to an orange colored link that spelled availability. He immediately picked up the phone and sped-dialed my room urging me to come down right away with my credit card in hand. Thankfully, the online transaction went without a hitch, and I had in my hand the hottest ticket in town, or at least the hottest ticket confirmation printout.

The rainy evening of the show, I took my umbrella and hailed a taxi right outside the hotel. The driver was interested to know what I was going to see at the National, and when I told him about my prized ticket, he was almost as excited as I was. We spent the rest of the short journey talking about the late Ted Hughes whose translation of Racine I was going to see that night, and the fact that some years ago Phèdre had been performed in this same translation with Diana Rigg in the title role.

Well, what was Phèdre like? Actually, a bit disappointing overall, but certainly no disaster. First the good news: Bob Crowley's brightly-lit setting was breathtaking: earthy rocks set against a gorgeous blue sky in a stage whose dimensions reminded one of a Cinemascope screen splashed with Technicolor hues. Nicholas Hytner's directed with a solid hand throughout, and the cast headed by Mirren, Dominic Cooper as her son Hippolytus, and veteran Margaret Tyzack as Oenone managed to create three-dimensional breathing human beings out of their classical roles.

The challenge of Phèdre for an English-speaking audience is the fact that the French theater of Racine's time maintained the classical unities of Greek drama. In effect, the great plays of Corneille and Racine are re-tellings of Greek myth, and are all written in the most sumptuous, wonderful verse. Unlike Elizabethan drama, no real dramatic action is shown onstage, and any violent act happens offstage and later on the audience is informed of it by a chorus-like character. This demands a unique gift for the spoken word from the author and acting of the highest order by the cast. In this production the acting is terrific, it is Ted Hughes's translation that appears to be at the root of the problem in this staging.

Though wonderful to read, Hughes's free verse translation, as opposed to Racine's gorgeous alexandrines, remains earth-bound when mounted on the stage. In the original, the poetic language catapults the play into the stratosphere, but in English no such starry journey seems to be possible. Our language just doesn't allow for a rhyming evening of tragic theater without the whole thing sounding alarmingly phony. French, of course, is another story. For instance, just compare the rhyming French of Racine to Hughes's translation:

HIPPOLYTE
Le dessein en est pris, je pars, cher Théramène,
Et quitte le séjour de l'aimable Trézène.
Dans le doute mortel où je suis agité,
Je commence à rougir de mon oisiveté.
Depuis plus de six mois éloigné de mon père,
J'ignore le destin d'une tête si chère ;
J'ignore jusqu'aux lieux qui le peuvent cacher.

HIPPOLYTUS
I have made my decision.
It is six months now
And there hasn't been one word of my father.
Somebody somewhere knows what happened to him.
Life here in Troezen is extremely pleasant
But I can't hang around doing nothing
With this uncertainty. My idleness makes me sweat.
I must find my father.

What is lacking in this production of Phèdre is just a hint of the beauty of the original French language. The slightest hint would have done it. Which leads us to the question, can English ever approximate the experience of watching this play in its native language? Probably not, but one can certainly hope that English-speaking poets will continue trying their hand at it.

I just found out that a new translation by British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, who grew up in the French basque country, will premiere at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Autumn of this year in what promises to be a very sexy production starring Seana McKenna.

Un Ballo in Maschera at the ROH

2009-07-23T10:27:00.009-05:00

LONDON, UK -- The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden is having a winning summer season this year. Between performances of Tosca with Bryn Terfel's Scarpia ignating the stage, and Juan Diego Flórez singing his familiar Count Almaviva in "Barbieri," I managed to catch a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, featuring Ramón Vargas, Angela Marambio, and Dalibor Jenis.

It is not surprising that in the UK, a country with a monarchy, the American version set in Boston was performed. We rarely get to experience this version at the MET, and it always serves as a good opportunity to delve into that other "censored Ballo" forced upon Verdi by international assassinations occurring during the time that the opera was composed. Although I prefer when it is set in Denmark with King Gustavus, it is fun to catch the Boston setting even though some of the lyrics are laughable. Exactly which Massachusetts's "castello" did Riccardo steal from his enemy?

The ROH current Verdi productions are a mixed bag, as they are everywhere else in the world. Their mounting of Rigoletto, for instance, which I saw in February, reveals a gray, bleak Mantua where orgies are conducted nightly, and strewn garbage litter the dangerous streets. The current production of "Ballo" is decidedly prettier to look at, but it still presents us with a mixed bag of styles. We go from Ulrica's scary and appropriate pit, to Renato's empty house dominated by an unused hobby-horse, to a very memorable gallows scene (with some of the Rigoletto garbage making a cameo appearance), and we end up at the ball scene where designer Sergio Tramonti shows us what wonderful images can be conjured with a simple mirror: the effect is kaleidoscopic, conjuring up the world of M.C. Escher and thus showing us the dark labyrinthine paths that lead to a major political assassination.

The singing on Friday night was also decidedly mixed. Elena Manistina was an appropriately dark Ulrica and Anna Christy sang an Oscar that made the character a lot less annoying and quite endearing. Dalibor Jenis as Renato was a tale of two voices: his bottom dark ugly and wobbly, while his top revealing a grace, flexibility and beauty of tone that may reveal that this artist might have missed his calling as a heldentenor. Chilean soprano Angela Marambio sang the role of Amelia with huge lung power and at times little subtlety. As in the rest of the production, the voice was uneven throughout the evening, although her big voice when it settled was very thrilling to hear. Ramón Vargas sang with his usual Italianate style, giving the most satisfying performance of the evening. At the 4,000 seat Metropolitan his voice sounds small as it does in Row V of the Orchestra Stalls at Covent Garden which is half the size of the MET. It's not the hall, it is Mr. Vargas's voice, which lacks the heft to catapult him to the stratosphere of the greats. And yet, it is an instrument which serves this singer well in many different roles. Maurizio Benini conducted with style, at times bringing up sections of the orchestra that usually remain hidden in the fabric of the music.

I sat next to a Scottish gentleman who is good friends with John Boyle who directed the new production of Peter Grimes at the Metropolitan Opera. It was fun to talk about Grimes, Benjamin Britten, and the Suffolk Coast with him during the opera's two intervals. These days the luxury of having two intervals was in itself something to cheer about.

Public Enemies

2009-07-03T10:38:00.007-05:00

There are two scenes in Michael Mann's new film Public Enemies that stand out because of their complexity and interesting points of view. In both, which occur towards the end of the film, Johnny Depp, who embodies Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger with a subtlety that we have not seen from this actor in quite a while, becomes a kind of spectator joining us in the visual creative process of the film. In the first, Dillinger enters a Chicago building and walks right inside the special crime unit that bears his own name right on the door. Once inside, he ambles through the FBI's semi-deserted office, and through maps and pictures that document his own crime history and recap the earlier scenes and characters of the film. Depp ambles through the office like a stranger in a strange land, as if he had landed on another planet where the faces are recognizable but the language is not. Exhilarated that he has entered the holy of holiest, and fascinated as he witnesses his life translated into the foreign jargon of G-Men, Johnny Depp's expression is priceless. As he observes the photographs of his dead associates and the POV camera rests on his own mug shot (the only one not bearing a stamp that says "Deceased") that poignant existential moment ought to be the scene's payoff. But Mann has another trick up his sleeve. Johnny Depp turns around and realizes that the emptiness of the office is due to the fact that the G-men have dropped everything, and are gathered around a radio listening to a baseball game. The scene finally comes to a climax when Depp boldly asks them for the score, and he gets an answer without a single agent raising his head from the radio. The second scene is a little more problematic. In the film's climactic sequence, Dillinger has gone to the movies and the FBI has been tipped-off and are waiting for him outside the theater. Inside the movie house, Hollywood greatness is running through the projector. The silvery images of Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Clark Gable flicker by our eyes as well as Depp's. As he watches MGM's Manhattan Melodrama, a tale of the friendship between crook Gable and governor of New York Powell that ends with Gable going to the electric chair and refusing Powell's pardon, Johnny Depp's eyes are filled with wonder, as are our own. In Gable, Dillinger sees a romanticized picture of himself, as we ourselves witness the final scenes of a romanticized life of John Dillinger. But beyond this, there is something else, something deeper in Johnny Depp's eyes. Quite frankly, a look that shouldn't be there. There is way too much of the film buff on his face. He is sitting in a 1934 theatre with the look of a Columbia Film School graduate. Was John Dillinger really that much of a film lover, and would he have shown it the way that Depp does? Depp's enraptured gaze can easily label him as a Jacques Derrida deconstructionist, or an avid collector of back-issues of Cahiers du Cinéma more than a 1930's Depression era mid-westerner out for a night on the town.

But any movie called Public Enemies is referential to the world of film. Its title is inspired by the greatest of all the Warner Brothers gangster films (The Public Enemy), and following this postmodern tip of the hat, Public Enemies is also about Bonnie and Clyde, as well as Miller's Crossing and Mr. Mann's own The Last of the Mohicans, a film that was based on the screenplay of the 1936 version and which was also shot by the great cinematographer Dante Spinotti.

Spinotti's outstanding and revolutionary digital cinematography along with Johnny Depp's understated performances are just two of the many things to recommend in Public Enemies. Christian Bale is enigmatic and chilling as G-Men Melvin Purvis and Marion Cotillard plays Billie Frechette, as the most faithful and trusting gun moll in the history of crime drama. As head of the newly-formed FBI, Billy Crudup is almost unrecognizable as J. Edgar Hoover, and there are also fine, if fleeting performances by Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd, Giovanni Rabisi as Alvin Karpis, and a blink and you'll miss her turn for Diana Krall as a Torch Singer at a club. This last bit is wildly reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright's cameo as a Cocoanut grove singer in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.

Like Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann is a good student of film, meaning that he knows how to avoid Brian De Palma "excessive borrowings" and make a good movie that manages to capture the flavor of another age and time. Public Enemies is no exception: a fine historical gangster film that entertains and often makes one ponder about our never-ending love of gangsters and the Underworld.

Waiting for Godot is back on Broadway

2009-05-09T19:28:00.011-05:00

The Roundabout Theatre Company has a hit on their hands with a superb production of Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot played by a cast of superb quality. In the roles of the two existential vagabonds, Estragon and Vladimir, Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin are joined by John Goodman and John Glover in the supporting roles of Pozzo and Lucky. As was reported by UPI back in December, the role of Lucky was originally to have been played by David Strathairn, whom many will remember as the Academy Award nominated actor who played CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in the film Good Night, And Good Luck. When Mr. Strathairn dropped out, John Glover joined the cast.

Waiting for Godot is the beginning of modern theater. The play is the precursor of the "theatre of the absurd" movement, and Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee and David Mamet are all its children. I am sure that at the time of its writing, the author never imagined how influential his work would be. Written against the background of Post-World War II Europe, and the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust, his carefully crafted skeletal play (first published in French in 1953, then translated by the author into English) dramatizes the trivialities of everyday life, while never for a moment being trivial. It caused a literary revolution as the work's non-plot oftentimes appears to be nothing more than a string of glorified vaudeville numbers. Through his cast of comic clowns (based largely on the great Hollywood comedians of the silent era) Beckett explores the loneliness of modern Man in an apocalyptic godless world. And yet, this serious intent is cleverly disguised in two enigmatic acts filled with comic possibilities, but which never quite seem able to get started. A critic of the time wrote that Beckett "had achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice."

This production of Waiting for Godot manages to strike all the principal chords that any staging of this work must have. In the first place, it is funny, and every successful Godot production must cut through the seriousness and attack the funny bone. This is not hard to do when you have Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, and John Goodman on board. Each is hilarious, but each is also heartbreaking. This is the other requirement for the play: it must indulge our sense of tragedy. A perfect example of the comic and the tragic is found in John Glover's Lucky, who easily evokes our pity as a creature resembling more a beast of burden than a man, but who can also make us roar with his reading of the nonsensical Act I monologue.

It is interesting to note that right now in London a production of Godot, featuring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow, and Ronald Pickup is enjoying a sold-out run at Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Not having seen it, I cannot comment on it, but one thing is for sure: given that illustrious British cast, it must be a wonderful but wildly different take on Beckett's play.

The New York production is also rapidly selling out. At this point there are very few seats left for this limited run. Make a dash to Studio 54 fast, and don't miss this genuine theatrical event.

An Excellent Elixir (without Villazón)

2009-04-05T13:44:00.013-05:00

Rolando Villazón did not sing the broadcast of Gaetano Donizzeti's L'Elisir d'Amore at the MET yesterday afternoon. The official word is that the tenor is suffering from laryngitis, although many believe that the Mexican tenor is in the kind of vocal crisis which just might imperil next year's new dreamcast production of Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Already, earlier in the season he cancelled almost all of his appearances in Lucia di Lammermoor. Whatever is happening to him, it appears to be quite serious, and he is taking care of himself by staying away from the stage and resting his voice. Although he is disappointing fans right and left, medically he is doing the right thing. It has been a season of cancellations and cast changes at the MET, and the absence of one of our generation's most sought-after tenors puts a damper on the final weeks of the MET's season.

In any case, the MET went on with the show yesterday afternoon, and a pretty good show it was. In many ways, one of my most satisfying afternoons at the opera this season. Filling in for Mr. Villazón was Massimo Giordano who sang a lusty, oversized Nemorino. He is a husky man with a big voice to match: not my ideal sound for this sweet bumbling character, but his singing was secure from top to bottom. Angela Gheorghiu was the feisty Adina, and the soprano sang with the kind of vocal confidence that makes the character a believable three-dimensional entity. Often, throughout the afternoon, her singing achieved a beauty of sound that we rarely get these days. Her notes above the staff, in particular, were vocally strong and rather memorable.

I thought that Franco Vassallo sang a very nice Sergeant Belcore, although throughout the afternoon he seemed to be singing to the broadcast microphone. I really wonder if he was heard up in the upper reaches of the house. As Doctor Dulcamara, Simone Alaimo avoided the old basso-buffo excesses of past performers. For instance, he did not intone an old man's voice in the Act II duet with Adina ("Io son rico, e tu sei bella..."), a tradition that I have never liked, and which I found a good directorial choice for this performer. However, I really wonder if these kind of characters, when played more naturally and less cartoonish, achieve the kind of comedy that they were meant to achieve in the first place.

The John Copley production, with sets by Beni Montresor is serviceable. But I still miss the old production that featured Doctor Dulcamara arriving and leaving the village via a hot air balloon à la Wizard of Oz.

I hear that Rolando Villazón is due to return to this production this week. If he does return, let's see in what kind of vocal shape he arrives.

Rehearsing La Sonnambula

2009-03-14T23:14:00.009-05:00

There is a very cute payoff at the end of Mary Zimmerman's new production of Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula at The Metropolitan Opera that almost validates the director's conceit of transferring the action of the opera from an 1800's Swiss village to a modern rehearsal room where a contemporary opera company is putting together a production of this bel canto work.

Very much like the English National Opera's satiric production of The Mikado, where director Jonathan Miller stages Gilbert & Sullivan's work at a resort where British vacationers put on a show, Ms. Zimmerman's Sonnambula takes flights of fantasies with Bellini's work although her reason for doing so is somewhat cloudy. She is convinced that this opera is short on plot and needs a modern hand in order for it to work for modern audiences. La Sonnambula might be short on plot, but I'm not totally convinced that it works outside of its original setting. Dr. Miller's Mikado is successful because it is a biting satire on all things English, especially that yearning by the Victorians for exoticism that partially led to the creation of the work in the first place. Dr. Miller's production is a calculated satire of a satire. Ms. Zimmerman seems to conclude that Bellini's work, with its half-baked libretto and string of rapturous melodies, is as incomplete as the rehearsal of a stage work. Since Maria Callas first sang I Puritani at La Fenice, and revived the works of the bel canto composers, scores of creative artists have tried to make sure that these works remain fixed in the pantheon of great Italian operas. Ms Zimmerman's Regietheater staging of Sonnambula either does not respect Bellini's work enough, or respects it too much thinking that it can stand anything that you do to it. If the latter is her way of thinking, then that just shows that she does not know enough about this composer. Bellini is not Wagner. Bend Bellini enough and he will break. This production gets dangerously close to that.

On the musical front, everything is in good hands. Natalie Dessay's Amina is a sprite, lithe creation packing a powerhouse coloratura that rivals anyone else singing the role today. Likewise, Juan Diego Flórez sounded secure throughout the evening, although I find that his voice is getting tighter at the top these days. Still, the encore pairing of these two, after last year's phenomenal La Fille du Régiment proves that the MET knows they have a gold mine whenever these two singers appear together. Michele Pertusi proved to be a sonorous Count Rodolfo and Jennifer Black was a cute Lisa. Conductor Evelino Pidò accompanied the singer's with true bel canto style getting some sumptuous sounds out of the Met Orchestra. Some exposed french horn passages, a favorite Bellini instrument, sounded quite beautiful and effortless.

Throughout the evening in a corner of the rehearsal room that serves as the only set, there is a model of the finished La Sonnambula production that these actors are rehearsing. It is a lighted model inside of a miniature proscenium stage that sits atop a platform. I wanted so much for the cast to be miniaturized and be transported inside that little stage -- and me right along with them.

Villazón is Out: Two Wonderful Tenors are In

2009-02-09T15:37:00.016-05:00

The current revival of Lucia di Lammermoor, at the Metropolitan Opera, sold out months ago when subscribers saw that the MET was bringing together opera superstars Rolando Villazón and Anna Netrebko. The pair, who in the last few years have become the darlings of the international opera scene, were set to bring monumental sparks to the cold and dreary month of February in New York City. No such luck. By the time I went to see this production last Tuesday (February 3) Villazón was out sick, and soon after that it was officially announced that he would not be singing the rest of the performances, which included the Saturday matinee broadcast and HD live telecast.

As usual, the MET had to scramble to fill the role of the tenor. But this time they got it right. Giuseppe Filianoti filled in the evening I attended, and he sang with flair, loads of gusto, and true Italianate sound. His high notes rang solid, his acting was believable and, from the tenor point of view, the evening turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Ms. Netrebko, on the other hand, sounded tentative throughout the evening, and avoided most of her high notes. She did manage to make some truly beautiful sounds in spots, but her performance was, on the whole, uneven.

On Saturday, the MET struck gold once again: For the HD Live telecast performance they brought in Polish tenor sensation Piotr Beczala. He has been singing the role of Lenski in Eugene Onegin at the house to great critical praise, and agreed to sing the Donizetti role for the Saturday broadcast/telecast. The result was marvelous. His singing was sumptuously rich and powerful and his Italian diction was impeccable. He succeeded in conveying over the radio airwaves a fully rounded interpretation of this tenor role. Netrebko finally rose to the occasion, giving her all in what probably was her best performance of this run. She took all the high notes that she had dropped on Tuesday, they managed to come out pretty well, and thus scored a great success for herself. Mariusz Kwiecien, the wonderful Polish baritone who these days seems to do no wrong, offered his usual strong (if at times, loud) interpretation of Enrico. With a Russian and two Poles in the main roles, this Lucia had a decidedly Eastern European flavor that brought a surprising exotic, but wonderful sound to the MET. I can't wait to see what the video turned out like.

Katharina Wagner's Meistersinger DVD

2009-01-06T20:16:00.008-05:00

Once upon a time, operatic audio recordings would unite the world's greatest singers into make-believe studio productions that introduced millions to the world of opera. The opera recording started when Enrico Caruso signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company, and it may have ended with Plácido Domingo's recording of Tristan und Isolde a few years ago. Making an audio recording of an opera has become a prohibitively expensive undertaking, and these days it is far more cost-effective to film live performances in opera houses, and release the results on DVD. Not only do you get the music, but you also get to see the productions and the artists. As the number of opera CDs continue to diminish, opera DVDs are flourishing. These days opera productions are breaking out of the proscenium and landing right in our living rooms, not only via DVD releases but also through HD telecasts and webcasts.

Bayreuth has long been a pioneer in distributing recordings of their long and distinguished legacy in the latest recording medium. It was in Bayreuth where the first live stereo recording of an operatic work was produced, and now they are busy releasing DVDs of their most illustrious productions.

Recently, the folks at Bayreuth sent me their new DVD release: Katharina Wagner's controversial staging of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a production which premiered at the Green Hill two summers ago. Last summer this production, conducted by Sebastian Weigle, launched the 2008 festival in a unique way: the event was broadcast live on the Internet. Millions of people around the world were able to experience the production live from the stage of the Festspielhaus right on their own home computers.

Now this uniquely cinematic production has been released in Europe in a deluxe DVD set (it will be released in the United States later this year) featuring widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio as well as spectacular 5.1 Surround-Sound.

It is the practice at Bayreuth to film productions without an audience in order to fully control the soundscape and take advantage of the possibilities of camera placement that would otherwise interfere in the course of a performance in front of a live audience. This particular production is filled with minute details which have been captured by an army of cameras that seem to be everywhere capturing every salient moment. The summer webcast of this production offered a look at the production during a live performance, and it was a very successful experiment which I hope that the management at Bayreuth continues this year. This DVD however, offers a finer, more detailed look at Katharina Wagner's first staging at Bayreuth.

Don't hesitate to buy this DVD if it is available in your part of the world. It is the next best thing to being at the Festspielhaus.

Hans Jürgen Syberberg and I

2008-12-11T20:11:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago I was invited by Per-Erik Skramstad, the webmaster of Wagneropera.net, to submit my choices for favorite important and influential recordings, in CD and DVD's, of Richard Wagner's operas. I have just read his article, and little did I realize that I was going to be in such prestigious company. Click here in order to see my choices, as well as the choices of some of my fellow Wagnerites, who include filmmaker Hans Jürgen Syberberg, author Penelope Turing, the Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Opera, Kasper Bech Holten, baritone Detlef Roth, and many others. Enjoy!

Here We Go Again!

2008-12-06T09:07:00.005-05:00

It's Groundhog Day at The Metropolitan Opera -- all over again.

Illnesses and tenor replacements in the opera Tristan und Isolde have been the norm at the MET for a long time while, at the same time, rock-solid Isoldes have been able to survived whole runs of the opera unscathed. The most famous of these events, of course is when powerhouse soprano Birgit Nilsson sang the role with a different Tristan for each act.

Last year, the broadcast of Tristan und Isolde featured tenor Robert Dean Smith who flew in to New York to replace the ailing Ben Heppner. Smith had been the Tristan in the new production at Bayreuth, and although the American tenor had some problems tackling the monumental role up at the Green Hill, he did a satisfying and creditable job as a replacement here in New York last March. In my own review of the performance on this blog, I called his coming to the rescue a triumph.

Also, I don't think we have forgotten that Mr. Smith debut at the MET was just the tip of the iceberg to another multi-leveled drama that occurred last year. John MacMaster, Heppner's replacement was himself replaced after being boed during one of the Tristan performance. It was after that event that Gary Lehman came in, and he was warmly greeted by the MET audience. Of course, this is the same Gary Lehman who at the next performance clunked his head on the MET's prompter's box when the contraption where he lies on in Act III barelled down the inclined stage of the MET, out of control. He would have gone right into the orchestra pit like an out of control toboggan, had his head not stopped the momentum of the speed at which he was sliding down. Incredibly, he finished the performance, although friends that were there told me that he just wasn't the same after the incident. Despite everything, many people last season believed that Mr. Lehman sang very well and deserved to sing the radio broadcast.

This year he is getting his chance. Peter Seiffert, this season's Tristan is ill. The tenor has only sung the opera's premiere (the evening I attended), and rumors are wild as to whether or not he knows this role well enough: at the premiere he was spotted wearing a prompter's electronic earpiece. At the second performance on December 2nd, Gary Lehman filled in for Sieffert. This afternoon he is scheduled to sing the role of Tristan at the Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast. Let's see how he comes across. This might be the beginning of something big for this rising opera performer.

Confessions of a MET insider

2008-11-30T14:47:00.005-05:00

This was sent to me today, and I thought that it would be appropriate to post here. Here is some of the musical backstage drama that occurred last week as Daniel Barenboim was preparing his MET opera debut conducting Tristan und Isolde.

"His approach to the orchestra was very arrogant. He has a way of presenting his ideas as though it is our fault that we didn't think of them. Nevertheless I think most people admired his musicianship and either learned or were reminded of a lot of important musical values. On the other hand, while every phrase was beautiful, I don't think he got the same shape, intensity, and drama that Levine gets. I think a lot of the problems resulted from his disorganization at the rehearsals.

"We had nine hours of rehearsal with the orchestra alone, and other than a cursory run of the Vorspiel, we never played longer than 10 seconds at a time. He jumped around from spot to spot for 3 long mornings, unsure of how to proceed. It's very difficult to recover from that sense of disjointedness and disorientation. Once we reached the pit, he decided after an hour that our usual setup would not work, so he radically reorganized our seating. Whereas we usually sit more or less like a normal orchestra (with the winds in the middle) he moved all the strings left and all the wind and brass right. The 1st Violins were moved into a formless mass surrounding the podium and the seconds to where the firsts normally sit. The winds are now way off to the right. I happen to like this seating, mostly because it brings the string section together as a unit, but it takes a lot of getting used to, esp after years the other way. I think he likes to keep everyone (including himself) guessing. It's a power thing. I suspect the performances will improve as we remember the sweep of the piece and get used to the new seating. It's been refreshing… it's always great to do something differently, and Barenboim is very good at demanding accountability from everyone (not JL's strong point). We are all on the edge of our seats, in a good way, but I miss a certain depth that Levine gets from this most profound piece."

Tristan und Isolde und Barenboim at the MET

2008-11-29T21:31:00.011-05:00

The commentary that I hear most often by New York seasoned opera goers is that the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is a well-oiled machine. Even I, after a particularly satisfying performance, have used similar words to describe this fine orchestra. I have always understood this comment to be a loving compliment which has its roots as a response to the many years when the pit at the MET was not the best musical ensemble in New York City. On the whole, however, I object to this robotic comparison which seems to turn the players into a group of automatons where the conductor pushes a button and off they go playing whatever score is in front of them as predictably as the holes in a piano roll. I am sure that the majority of the players, as a result of their musicianship and the repetitive aspect of opera production, know their parts inside and out, but I hardly think that they should be compared to a heartless machine that just plays the right notes. The greatest achievement that James Levine has accomplished with the orchestra is that he has populated it with intelligent musicians who are flexible enough to be responsive to just about any conductor who comes in to lead them.

This is exactly what happened on Friday night when Daniel Barenboim finally made his debut at the MET conducting the 450th performance of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Peter Seiffert might have been singing his first Tristan along with Katarina Dalayman's first Isolde, but as far as Friday night's audience was concerned all eyes and ears were on the debut occurring in the pit. And the orchestra did not let him down. It responded to Barenboim's baton with such incredible passion and precise playing that in gratitude the maestro made the orchestra stand up to receive the audience's enthusiastic ovation at the beginning of each act.

What does it take to get this incredible sound? An orchestra of accomplished flexible musicians. Under Levine, Tristan und Isolde is a robust wonder, sure of itself at all times and marvelously sonorous. In Levine's hands we are reminded that this opera brings the Romantic movement to its apogee while destroying it completely. In contrast, Barenboim elects to concentrate less on musical history historic; instead his Tristan und Isolde reaches into the dark night of love via his expansive tempi, slowing down the rhythms, and causing the final "Liebestod" conclusion to explode with incredible passion. At the risk of making it all too simplistic, Levine is about precision and brains, while Barenboim is more about instinct and heart. And over and over again, the MET orchestra delivers no matter who carries the baton.

On stage, the musicianship was equally strong. Both Seiffert and Dalayman were excellent in the title roles. Acts I and II were simply perfect. Seiffert survived the musical onslaught of Act III, although his voice was, at times, pushed to its limit. Dalayman sang a very strong Act I and II. However, when she came in at the end of the opera to sing its famed conclusion, it seemed as if her voice had lost much of the warmth we had heard earlier. The "Liebestod" came out a bit breathy, the sound quality totally different from the previous two acts.

Gerd Grochowski's splendid, vocally secured Kurwenal was greeted with enthusiastic applause, and Michelle De Young's Brangäne was a tower of strength in all three acts. The biggest ovation of the evening was reserved for René Pape who returned to the MET to reprise his well-known characterization of King Marke. A very popular singer at the MET, Pape never disappoints. His expressive phrasing and clear diction always make his Act II monologue heart wrenching. Pape will be singing the role for only two performances. South Korean bass Kwangchul Youn, one of the current staples at The Bayreuth Festival for the past few summers, will replace him starting with the December 6th performance.

New York is once again enjoying a very strong revival of Tristan und Isolde. This is probably one of the strongest casts that can be assembled for this opera. It will be playing throughout the month of December. Don't miss it!

Tonight: Daniel Barenboim at the MET

2008-11-28T11:32:00.008-05:00

When Argentinian-born Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim leads a world-class orchestra, the performance immediately becomes a high profile event. When Barenboim conducts the music of Richard Wagner, the event transcends the boundaries of art and enters into the realm of politics, with ramifications that stretch from the Middle East right to New York City.

In 2001 when Barenboim decided to conduct Wagner's music in Jerusalem at the annual Israel Festival his decision was met with severe criticism from many prominent Israelis, including Ephraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who said that what Barenboim did amounted to "cultural rape." The state of Israel has always had an unwritten ban on Wagner's music because he was Adolf Hitler's favorite composer and because Wagner's music was instrumental in the inspiration of the Nazi cultural propaganda that sprang in the decade of the 1930's and on through the War Years.

If you remove Barenboim's outer layers of virtuoso pianist and world-class conductor, however you will find in his inner core the role of humanitarian and peacemaker. As Oliver Mark reported in Time magazine:

"A classical-music conductor taking the podium always becomes a peacemaker of sorts. The central mission of conducting, after all, is to dispel discord and bring dozens of competing voices into concert. The Israeli maestro Daniel Barenboim, 65, sees in this act the opportunity to bring a deeper kind of harmony to one of the most violent and vociferous regions in the world: the Middle East."

One of the maestro's current projects is the West-Eastern Divan Youth Orchestra, an organization that he formed with the American-Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. The ensemble draws together Israeli and Arab musicians, many from disputed territories. The orchestra under Barenboim's direction has played in Weimar, Germany under the shadow of the ruins of the Buchenwald Nazi death camp, as well as in Ramallah in the West Bank, where the musicians played under armed guard.

In January of this year it was reported that the conductor was granted Palestinian citizenship. He is believed to be the first person in the world to possess both Israeli and Palestinian passports.

Now he finally comes to New York to make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera conducting a stellar cast in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The same work with which he opened La Scala, in Milan this season. It is not the first time that New York will hear his "Tristan." He also conducted the work back in the fall of 2001 in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall.

His MET debut tonight may not have the political gravitas of his daring historic concerts in the Middle East, however we must not forget that New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel and that when it comes to the music of Wagner and particularly when the anti-semitic aspect of Wagner the man is brought to the forefront, emotions can and do run high. It promises to be a very interesting and important debut tonight.

La Damnation de Faust at the MET

2008-11-15T00:33:00.003-05:00

The Metropolitan Opera has not staged La Damnation de Faust since the beginning of the twentieth century (1906); however, this season the MET has revived this unusual work by Hector Berlioz in a decidedly 21st century production. Not entirely big enough to be called an opera, and at the same time too grand to be labeled a mere oratorio, La Damnation de Faust is a unique work that even though might defy categorization ends up being one of the composer's most satisfying creations.

The MET's new production by Robert Lepage (who will be directing the MET's upcoming new Ring of the Nibelung production) makes extensive use of interactive video projections that seem to react to the movement and voices of the actors (Is this the stylistic and directorial approach that he will take with the MET's new Ring?). The result is a phantasmagoric, and at times surreal staging that requires a degree in computer sciences to fully understand, but which manages to be artistic and relevant to Berlioz's music drama.

The composer is just one among many who obsessed over Goethe's epic drama Faust. History tells us that Berlioz read it constantly in a French prose translation by Gérard de Nerval. He even co-wrote the libretto along with Almire Gandonnière. When it came time to write the music, Berlioz created a score of extreme beauty and great power. I think he knew that it was impossible to match the breath and scope of Goethe's masterpiece, but it didn't stop him from letting his own genius go to work on the Faust legend. The result is one of the great adaptations of Goethe's work, rivaled perhaps only by Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele.

Had the MET mounted this work twenty-five years ago, it would have starred Plácido Domingo, Jessye Norman, and Samuel Ramey and I am sure that it would have been one for the ages. The current cast, which features Marcello Giordani as Faust, Susan Graham as Marguerite and John Relyea as Méphistophélès may not ignite the vocal fire of my dream team, but they each do a fine job throughout. John Relyea is particularly strong in the vocally showy role of the devil. His costume, which is reminiscent of the garb usually worn by bass-baritones performing Gounod's Faust circa the late 1890's, is memorable in an old fashioned way, and it makes for an excellent contrast to the otherwise ultra-modern production.

James Levine conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with great flair. The result was a polished reading of Berlioz's quirky score which was matched only by the intensity and polish of the MET's chorus under the direction of Donald Palumbo. Their singing was one of the true highlights of the evening.

Nixon in China comes to the MET

2008-10-22T17:54:00.009-05:00

I was very happy to find out this week that the opera Nixon in China is finally coming to The Metropolitan Opera. John Adams's first work for the lyric stage, last seen in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the late 1980s, will be presented by the MET in the original Peter Sellars production. This will happen during the 2010-2011 season.

I remember vividly when I went to see one of the sold-out performances of Nixon in China at BAM. It was an event! Everyone there knew that they were witnessing the birth of an important new opera, something rare for our times. I remember that in those days I was just getting interested in minimalism. I was no stranger to the music of Philip Glass, whose Einstein on the Beach had made its MET debut, for one performance on a Sunday, years earlier. I remember that at that time I found John Adams's score more symphonic, and filled with more details than any Glass score I had heard. Glass treated the entire orchestra as if it was one big repetitive instrument, while Adams's orchestration brilliantly showcased the different parts of the ensemble. I also remember that during the first intermission I caught sight of Philip Glass sitting down a few rows behind me. In my mind Glass had come in to get some pointers, perhaps steal a few musical ideas here and there from John Adams: I was so young at the time!

I find it interesting that Peter Gelb has decided to present Nixon in China in the original production devised by Peter Sellars, and thus patch things up with the director-librettist. Every John Adams opera has had Sellars in the role of collaborator, and it is good that he will be represented alongside the composer when Nixon in China makes its debut.

Of course, we all know that Gelb did not think much of Sellars's original conception of Doctor Atomic and thus had a new production mounted for that opera's MET debut last week. In many ways it was sad that Sellars's production did not grace the MET's stage. It had proven itself to be worthy in San Francisco as well as Chicago. Some critics even preferred it to Penny Woolcock's current production at the MET. Sellars was nowhere to be seen during the curtain-calls at the MET premiere even though he is the opera's librettist. Let us hope that the new production of Nixon in China buries the hatchet between the MET and Peter Sellars.

In the meanwhile, I can't wait for the 2010-2011 season to get here.

Doctor Atomic premieres at the MET

2008-10-14T21:21:00.010-05:00

Doctor Atomic is the third major work for the operatic stage by composer John Adams. It was given its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in 2005 in a production by its librettist, Peter Sellars. Since then that production, which revolves around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the first detonation of an atomic bomb, has been performed at Lyric Opera of Chicago and in Amsterdam. On Monday, Doctor Atomic came to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in a whole new production staged by Penny Woolcock.

Twenty years ago I attended one of the performances of Nixon in China at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Adams's first work for the operatic stage was a landmark late 20th century production, and it catapulted this composer to the forefront of the operatic world. Minimalism is still the driving style of this work, but don't expect the easy chord progressions and consonance that made Nixon in China so appealing. Doctor Atomic is a mature work. and Adams's music now features more dissonances and complex rhythms than ever before. Also, the opera is filled with instances of electronic sounds as well as recorded rumbling effects that were so powerful that they gave the impression that they were dangerously shaking the very foundations of the opera house.

If at times Doctor Atomic appears to be a bit episodic and disjointed, the culprit might just be Peter Sellars's libretto which is made up of memoirs, letters, and transcripts of conversations (which recently became declassified) of the actual members of the Trinity project at Los Alamos. Adding further distance, Sellars also weaved into the libretto poems by John Donne, Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Baudelaire. The first act ends with Oppenheimer singing an aria whose words are adapted from John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV "Batter my heart, three person'd God." It ends up being the most moving and memorable part of the entire evening. In the second act there is an amazing choral number based on the text of the Bhagavad Gita (which Oppenheimer could read in its original Sanskrit), where the wrath of the god Vishnu, the preserver of the universe, is invoked as the minutes tick down to the first nuclear blast.

Many of the singers at Monday's premiere were reprising their roles from the San Francisco world premiere. These include Gerald Finley as Oppenheimer, Richard Paul Fink as Edward Teller, and Eric Owens as General Leslie Groves. All of them gave wonderful performances. Gerald Finley was in astonishingly good voice on Monday, and his portrayal brought out all the complexities, doubts and fears of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The production by Penny Woolcock, with sets by Julian Crouch, sets the action on a unit stage of compartmentalized niches, flying debris and white sheets which are suspended on wires to form New Mexico's Oscura Mountains. For most of the evening, the bomb, which is a gray iron orb covered with a maze of dangerous looking wires, hovers above the action like a malignant moon.

Doctor Atomic is not an easy evening at the opera, and if you don't like modern music, you should stay far away. But if you are interested in operatic theater that attempts to broaden the horizons of the art form, then make sure that you catch the remaining performances of this important new production.

The NY Film Festival concludes with The Wrestler

2008-10-13T12:31:00.017-05:00

In Darren Aronofsky's sentimental new film The Wrestler, which closed this year's 46th annual New York Film Festival last night, Mickey Rourke, in a comeback role reminiscent of John Travolta's in Pulp Fiction, plays Randy "The Ram," a down-and-out, has-been wrestler preparing to stage a jingoistic re-match with an old arch-enemy named the Ayatollah. Nevermind that after a lifetime of steroid and physical abuse, Randy should not be anywhere near a ring, especially after suffering a near fatal heart attack. In the course of the film, Randy exiles himself from the ring, and takes a job at the deli counter of a supermarket to pay the bills. Needless to say, it is a career move that can neither sustain nor contain him. In Aronofsky's world the wrestler is a mythic American hero, and wrestling is not just a sport, but the call of the wild which can only be answered by a chosen few. "The Ram" shares a direct link to the cowboy heroes of our film history: men who cannot be domesticated and must wander the American landscape in search of adventures.

Randy repeatedly must take on the lonesome road, and he does it alone, listening to rock-and roll, like a latter-day Wim Wenders wanderer. He is a modern Shane, a modern Ethan Edwards. His destinations are high school gyms and civic centers where he participates in sad, ill-attended autograph sessions with other older, retired, infirm wrestlers. Now and then, crowded, poverty-row wrestling matches are set up for the delight of an insatiable bloodthirsty crowd. These are the last grounds left where the modern hero can trod.

It is a gritty kind of romanticism, the kind that we see in Wallace Beery wrestling films (like 1932's Flesh) as well as the classic The Champ from a year earlier. Even Randy's quasi-girlfriend, a topless dancer (Marissa Tomei in a daring performance), is a caring single mother who knows where to draw the line between her seedy business and her personal life. Further on, when The Ram stages a meeting with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) their scene is punctuated with tears, and they both end up dancing a sad waltz in a dilapidated condemned building. This is very old-fashioned, predictable filmmaking in many ways, and the knee-jerk reaction we get is that we've seen all of this before. The Wrestler is definitely not a Rocky, and it isn't even a Raging Bull (although it shares many similarities with Martin Scorsese's film). In many ways, as wacky as it may sound, it is the movie that Barton Fink was supposed to write in the Coen's brothers 1991 Hollywood send up.

Mickey Rourke is perfect in this film. After years of rehab, multiple arrests, and his own decision to alternate show-business with a boxing career (he was billed as "Marielito"), he has come back full time to the movies with an intense passion for the craft that once made him one of the most sought-ought actors in Hollywood. His looks are gone, and his face is now a mask of broken dreams and botox. But his frightening appearance is the catalyst for the total depth that he achieves in the role. Robert De Niro carefully morphed his appearance for Raging Bull, but Mickey Rourke seems to have fallen into his present physical state, and he is making the best of what he can with it -- and when you are talking about Mickey Rourke, that's pretty good. Thank goodness that his years away from Hollywood have not made him forget what is like to craft a performance in front of the cameras. Arguably, this Mickey Rourke has incredible gravitas, Aronofsky has extracted an unforgettable performance from him, and he is now a deeper, more convincing actor than he ever was. Already there is a very creditable early Oscar buzz about him. And why not! He received a wonderful ovation last night at the New York Film Festival -- he truly deserves it.

Changeling at the New York Film Festival

2008-10-06T13:52:00.009-05:00

Changeling is Clint Eastwood's 28th feature film. He is the director of such diverse fare as Play Misty for Me, Unforgiven, and Space Cowboys. His work shows an incredible track record which is at once uneven at the same time that it is prestigious. For every Million Dollar Baby there's a Honkytonk Man or a Breezy lurking around in the celluloid shadows of his lifetime achievement. It may just be the reason why we think of Clint Eastwood first as an actor. His work in front of the camera arguably casts a longer shadow, and might just be superior to his efforts as director.

Changeling, which premiered this weekend at the New York Film Festival, is one of Eastwood's greatest films. Based on a true story, the period piece (the narrative starts in the late 1920s) stars Angelina Jolie as a single working mom who comes home one day to find that her son has been kidnapped. Set in Los Angeles at the time when its police department was facing charges of corruption, the film narrates the "Film Noir" ordeal that Jolie's character undergoes in her search for the truth about her child's whereabouts in a labyrinthine urban maze. Ms. Jolie's character works for the telephone company, although ironically for most of the story she is never in communication with the true facts of what really happened to her son.

Changeling will remind you of some recent noirish films. The corruption, the period costumes, the cars, and the sets will bring to mind Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Eastwood's film even begins in black & white, with Universal's old 1930s logo stretched to fit the film's widescreen academic ratio. The music of this film (for which Clint Eastwood takes a credit) is also vaguely reminiscent of Chinatown's cool Jerry Goldsmith jazz score. While watching Changeling this weekend, I was also reminded of LA Confidential, Curtis Hanson's fine film that exposes the underbelly of LA's police department.

The film has Oscar written all over it. Mr. Eastwood, who took over the project when director Ron Howard abandoned it, is sure to earn a well-earned nomination, and so will Ms. Jolie. Her heart wrenching portrayal of a mother whose only wish in life is to be reunited with her son is nothing short of brilliant. For years paparazzi have reminded us that Ms. Jolie knows something about children, and we as an audience react to this and readily accept her in this mom role. She also gets to downplay her glamorous looks and hide her famous tattoos as she dons tweeds and hats, and morphs into the perfect late 1920s housewife. Her incredible lips, painted beautifully ruby red, however, are the only hint that this is one of the most glamorous stars of our time. She can't hide those lips, and Eastwood's cinematographer, Tom Stern doesn't want to, as he photographs her in such a way that we can't help but be fascinated by the contours of her mouth.

Working from a tightly-written script by the ubiquitous J. Michael Straczynski, Eastwood tells his tale in a leisurely manner, at times punctuated by powerful, gripping scenes which have the power of hammer blows. Eastwood excels in this type of story structure, and this kind of script is tailor-made for his talents.

Given the title of this movie and Clint Eastwood's erratic artistic output, the question that rises in our minds is "will the real Clint Eastwood please stand up?" However, I can assure you that this time the real thing has appeared. Changeling might just be his best film, and it is one of the strong early contenders for this year's Academy Awards race.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: latest Woody Allen film

2008-08-28T12:49:00.007-05:00

There was a time when Woody Allen mattered. When one of his new movie came out, you had to see it on the first day (for fear that everyone would spoil the jokes for you), and preferably you had to see it on the Upper East Side (like at the Beekman Theater) where it didn't matter that you had to wait on line for hours. His movies spoke to audiences with a high-brow comic clarity that was unique in cinema. We understood his language and he defenitely spoke ours. His likes and dislikes were pretty much ours as well, and the relationship between artist and audience which began in the late 1970s, survived almost intact until Shadows and Fog (1992), to my mind, the film that detached him from his audience. His greatness is that he keeps on making films, although his audience of disciples seems to be shrinking.

In his latest film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, he essentially explores the impossibility of living "a trois," as he traces the triangles and quadrangles of the geometry of love. He travels to the lovely city of Barcelona, which his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe has lit with lovely golden sunset colors, in order to narrate the story of how two American tourists (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) meet Juan Antonio, a Spaniard artist and bon-vivant (Javier Bardem), and how their lives are forever changed when Juan Antonio's former wife (Penélope Cruz) arrives on the scene. Surrounded by all the modernista Antoní Gaudí architecture Allen seems to be an ageless tourist with a passion for life and an uncanny eye for beauty, whether that be the neo-barroque curves of Catalan arquitecture or the heavenly bodies of the three main female stars.

For all its charming qualities, the film feels at times like a beta version of François Truffaut's Jules and Jim -- arguably the director's greatest, and most romantic film. Allen is no stranger to postmodernism, and has always been ready to pay homage to the giants on whose shoulders he likes to stand: Federico Fellini, once in a while, and more often, Ingmar Bergman. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, he yearns to channel the spirit of the French New Wave complete with scenes of couples bike riding in a pastoral countryside, and a narrator who tells us more often than not what we already know or what we could have figured out for ourselves. But the spirit of Truffaut's film is ellusive and hard to capture. Truffaut's work is essentially grand and tragic, and in this film Allen is unable or unwilling to escape his comic background. This makes Allen's film feel inferior and light by comparison, and the end result is a bittersweet movie which aims high but falls short of the mark it might have intended.

The cast is just right, though, and whatever enjoyment you can get out of this film is attributed to their performances. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are perfectly cast as the Barcelonian artist couple. It is great to see Bardem playing a likeable character once again after his Academy Award performance in No Country for Old Men. Likewise, Penélope Cruz is perfect in the part of the "other woman." The Spanish banter between them when they fight (which sounded improvised) was delicious, although it would have been more believable had they been able to do it in Catalan.

Scarlet Johannson is now enthroned as Woody Allen's muse (rivalring Leonardo Di Caprio for Martin Scorsese) with a total of three films for the director. As the outright winner of the judgement of Woody, the golden apple that this goddess received is her ticket to join the list of Lasser, Keaton, and Farrow. As of yet, of course, there are no believable romantic rumors between director and star, and I hope that it continues this way. Better a Svengali-Trilby relationship for this Hollywood couple than to see Woody Allen displayed on the pages of the New York Post all over again.

I enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but because of its imperefections I did not love it. One thing's for sure: the film's images continue to linger in my mind, and something tells me that they might be deepening with time.

HAIR in Central Park

2008-08-16T14:46:00.017-05:00

The Public Theater is ending its summer Shakespare in the Park season at the Delacorte Theater with an awesome production of one of their own creations: 1967's Hair. Billed as the "American Tribal Love Rock Musical," Hair was the first show mounted by producer Joseph Papp after he bought the old Astor Library on Lafayette Street and converted it into The Public Theater. In 1968, the musical moved to Broadway (featuring such unknowns at the time as Ben Vereen, Melba Moore, and Diane Keaton), where it played a smash run of 1, 750 performances, was a critical and popular hit, and forever changed the landscape of the American musical.

Hair is a landmark work. When you consider some of the other offerings of the Great White Way at that time: Fiddler on the Roof, George M, and Zorba, the tribe of hippies that landed at the Biltmore Theatre must have looked to the average theater-goer of that time like an invasion from another planet. But make no mistake about it, Hair accomplished many things that no other musical had even attempted. It was one of the first to use rock as the musical idiom of choice, it featured a racially integrated cast, it called for young people to use drugs, rebel against society and adopt as a lifestyle all aspects of the sexual and drug revolution that characterize the 1960's.

This musical is the spiritual granddaddy of many successful shows that could not have been created had Hair not paved the way for them. A Chorus Line (a show that also began its life at the Public), Rent, and Spring Awakening are three works that come to mind immediately.

This production at the Delacorte is Hair's first major New York production since its initial run. This revival shares a powerful link with the original production. Not only is it a Public Theater production, but the work's inherent anti-war message speaks very clearly to us in our post 9/11 world.

Removed from its time, but with a clear voice for a new generation, the show might look a bit too manicured and polished for my taste. I remember the 1960's as a bit more gritty. Still, the young cast is a joy to see, and the energy level is so high that their enthusiasm becomes infectious. All the old songs are there: the great classics like "Aquarius" and "Good Morning, Starshine," as well as the sillier ones like "Frank Mills," which I have always argued is the most curious song ever written for a Broadway musical.

Hair saves its most powerful moments for the end. The closing moments of this work are some of the most powerful I have seen in quite a while, and this production manages a memorable coup de théâtre with the song "Let the Sunshine In." I dare anyone not to be moved, enthralled, and even angered during the closing bars of this score.

This production is so wonderfully polished, though, that I hope there is a future for it on Broadway. Come award time, I can even see it winning best revival, even though the original production was not even nominated for any Tony award. Will it come to Broadway? Well, let's just say that if there is a Republican win in November, then we really need this production of Hair, with its message of love and peace, to come to Broadway immediately to rescue us.

Katharina's Meistersinger: Year Two

2008-08-05T18:35:00.024-05:00

This year the Bayreuth Festival took the show on the road to city plazas and home computers near you. During the spring months leading up to the festival, the Bayreuth website was updated to include information in German and English, and in the weeks prior to opening night virtual tickets were sold (at the price of 49 euros) to view a telecast straight from the stage of the Festspielhaus. The result was that thousands were able to experience Katharina Wagner's controversial staging of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg through their computer in a live video webcast. In addition, a large screen set up outdoors in one of Bayreuth's squares presented the performance to an estimated 35,000 spectators.

This is the second year for this Meistersinger, and those of you who read this column regularly will remember that I blogged extensively about this new production last year, basing my reports on whatever information I could get my hands on: mostly still pictures and various reviews from many periodicals. This year, however, I was able to actually see the work itself (via the webcast) and my conclusion is that this production has to be seen to be believed.

I wish that they would have done a webcast like this for Christoph Schlingensief's infamous production of Parsifal, which lived its short lifespan on the Green Hill amid jeers and loud boos. That certainly was a stage work that demanded to be seen as well as heard, although its enemies will argue that it never should have seen the light of day. Wagner's famous idea of "total art work" demands that the visual element be as important as the music. In this respect, this year's computerized marriage of audio and visuals brings Bayreuth to a larger public in a way that Wagner himself might have approved.

While on the subject of approval: I am not sure that Wagner would approve or even understand what is currently passing as his Meistersinger at Bayreuth these days. If you know the work and have grown up with a traditional staging of it, such as the Otto Schenk staging at the MET, this production contains so many "what the f**k" moments that save for the music it is really impossible to recognize Katharina's production as a Richard Wagner opera.

This staging is so different and shocking that the feeling you get is that you are watching a whole new work. Turn down the sound and you won't recognize what opera you are watching from the staging. There is very little of Die Meistersinger in this Meistersinger. Transposed to modern times, the old singers are now academic gown-wearing teachers in an art school where the pupils wear drab uniforms. Hans Sachs is a chain-smoking, nonconformist writer who likes to walk around in his bare feet, while Walther is a paint-splashing SoHo "Aktionkunstler" who bears more than a slight resemblance to Schlingensief himself.

Given these inherent changes, there is very little in the opera that can be presented in any way resembling the traditional way, and Katharina makes sure that tradition is thrown to the four winds at every turn. In Act II, for instance, sneakers rain down on the performers while Sixtus Beckmesser practices his song with Hans Sachs, and the act ends with an uproarious melee featuring, among many things, half-naked men wearing giant Campbell soup cans on their heads. As if this was not enough, Ms. Wagner leaves the best for last. In Act III, during the introduction of the various guilds, Ms. Wagner stages a sort of dream sequence where big-head caricatures of famous Germans suggestively play with each other while topless show girls attempt to give Hans Sachs a lap dance. During the song contest, Beckmesser sings his half-learned nonsensical tune wearing a Dr. Frankenstein apron while bringing to life a naked man who rises out of a bed of dirt like a newly awakened golem. By the end of the opera Hans Sachs and Walther have both turned into suit-wearing conservative while Beckmesser, wearing a black t-shirt with the English words "Beck in Town," has transformed himself into a radical.

Although everything is pretty imaginative in an absurd kind of way, there is really nothing here that remotely has anything to do with Wagner's original story. The production ends up suffering because it tries to incorporate too much of everything, and nothing of what it puts in was intended to be there in the first place. Katharina's theater is one of provocation making her the absolute center of attention. "Look, everybody," she seems to be saying, "I'm here, I've arrived, daddy is stepping down, and I'm running the show now!" The boos that greeted her curtain call appearance were as loud as those heard when Schlingensief stepped before the curtain after the first performance of his 2004 Parsifal; and like Schlingensief, Katharina Wagner seemed to relish the audience's disapproval of her work. The more they boo the greater the provocation, and therefore the greater the success. The icing on the cake is that everybody got to see it live around the world; and for those who missed it, the DVD comes out just in time for Christmas 2008.

To be totally fair about it, the production is never dull, and when it does come out on home video you might want to pick it up to see what the hullabaloo is all about. It is a wacky look at Wagner's human comedy, and Katharina makes it even more human than we thought possible. It certainly is not one for the ages, but it does introduce the next generation of the Wagner family that will run the festival, and that alone makes it an important piece of history.

Parsifal at Bayreuth: Calling All Angels

2008-07-26T12:56:00.011-05:00

As I listen to Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin (singing beautifully with a cold!) ignite the Bayreuth Festival in Tristan und Isolde, I would like to post some information about yesterday's new production of Parsifal.

A big reason why WagnerOperas exists is due to a large part to my interest towards the Christoph Schlingensief production of Parsifal that has been replaced this year. That production was perhaps the most controversial that Bayreuth ever witnessed, and year after year it was booed so riotously that the performers must have felt some kind of indignation towards the audience. Of course, as Alex Ross music critic of The New Yorker noted in his initial review of this production back in 2004 that's exactly the kind of thing that the director was aiming for in the first place: "the provocateur will always have the upper hand against the provoked. 'If my enemies shout ‘boo’ at the première, then all is in order,' Schlingensief (said). Indeed, when the curtain fell, the audience responded with the loudest, lustiest boos I’ve heard outside of Yankee Stadium. Less than a third of the audience applauded when Schlingensief took his bow. In other words, a triumph."

Now the Schlingensief production is history, and it has been replaced with a new staging from Norwegian director Stefan Herheim. I know little about him, except that his background is both musical and theatrical: he studied the cello in his youth, and later toured Norway and Germany with his own puppet theater. His concept for this production (as best as I can tell from the pictures and from the reviews and interviews) is a kind of time travel through the history of Germany, starting at Wahnfried and ending in the rubble of the Reichstag after World War II.

As you examine the photographs of this production you will also find many winged characters. Most notably, Kundry, sung by Mihoko Fujimura, is dressed like Marlene Dietrich, straight from the film Morocco, complete with top hat and tails. The addition of a huge pair of wings on her back however is more reminiscent of Bruno Ganz in Wim Wenders's great film Wings of Desire.

In a recent interview, Herheim promised that his vision of Parsifal would be controversial. Perhaps, but you couldn't tell from the opening night audience reaction. After the first act there was only one person booing, and he was rapidly out-shouted by roars of applause, cheers, and bravos. As the evening continued, the loud approvals became even more evident. Whatever the critics think of this Parsifal, the audience seemed to love it. Of course, after three years of Schlingensief's images of rotting bunnies and African tribes the mainly conservative audience at Bayreuth is prepared for anything. This production even has a grail: of course they're going to like it!

And for such an expansive cavalcade through German history and culture, who better to conduct the Bayreuth orchestra than Daniele Gatti, whose lush reading of the score almost forced time to stand still, bending tempi every which way possible, and offering perhaps the most Italianate reading since Arturo Toscanini was invited to conduct the festival back in the early 1930's.

I hope you have a chance to listen to a rebroadcast of the performance, or better yet, if you are lucky, I hope you get a chance to see it at Bayreuth. Do let me know what you think of this new production.

The Last Laugh

2008-07-22T09:28:00.013-05:00

As he proved in Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger could carry a picture. But in the last stages of his short-lived career, he also proved time and again that his name did not always need to be the first one on the list in order to be memorable and steal a scene or two. He did it last year in I'm Not There, where he was one of the many performers who channeled the living spirit of Bob Dylan. Now, after his tragic passing earlier this year, he is doing it again: making The Dark Knight his very own with his demonic, impish portrayal of the Joker.

The Joker is the most popular villain in the Batman series. Going against the grain of Bob Kane, the creator of "The Bat-Man" for DC comics, Cesar Romero made the Joker a campy, nasty clown in the 1960s television series, and Jack Nicholson was highly praised when he played the villain as a buffoon with a decidedly deadly streak in Tim Burton's resurrection of the Batman story. Both Romero and Nicholson offered ideal characterizations of this character for their time and their particular venue. The campy TV series needed Romero's outlandishness, and although Nicholson was far deadlier and nastier than Romero could ever be, their styles were not too different and both sprang from the same clown college. They could have both ended up as washed-up performers at some third-rate big top in the sticks.

Heath Ledger's Joker inhabits another world. Although he has stepped inside the high-tech noir universe that Christopher Nolan has fashioned in this latest take of the Batman story, his low-tech crime wave contrasts brilliantly with the polished world of billionaire Bruce Wayne, and the space-age, computer driven, gadget-replete caped crusader alter ego thus making him the perfect villain outsider.

Visually, this incarnation of the Joker is truly a sight to either behold or, better yet, to turn your eyes away from. A Medusa-like sprout of dirty matted green locks hang limply on a ravaged face where slovenly-applied makeup barely hides more than just scarred tissue. This Joker's soul seems to have been hacked into deeper than his skin. Ledger finds the key to the character by delving into his tortured soul, and he comes up with truly brilliant acting results. What must have been the character's old habit of licking the wounds on the side of his face have now turned into an even nastier habit of darting his tongue in and out of his dirty, yellowed-teeth mouth. It's a great way of reminding the audience of his serpent-like qualities. If William F. Buckley, Jr. had mated with a reptile while on a Republican junket to Gotham City, probably the Joker would have been the result.

Heath Ledger's look for the Joker references the world of film that inspired the character. The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 silent classic based on a novel by Victor Hugo, is the genesis of this character. In that story a small boy's face is disfigured into a perpetual smile, pretty much mirroring the tale that the Joker relates of his disfigurement in this film. Further referencing other movies, my friend Skydin noted that Heath Ledger's visual conception of the Joker bears more than a passing resemblance to Brandon Lee in the film The Crow -- another movie where an actor met an untimely death (that time on the set of the film itself) and left behind the work for which he will arguably be best remembered.

In Tim Burton's movie, we witness how Jack Nicholson's Jack Napier becomes the Joker. In Nolan's film the Joker already is. In fact, it is the character of Harvey Dent, marvelously brought to life in a breakout performance by Aaron Eckhart, who undergoes a disturbing transformation from high profile District Attorney to disfigured-beyond-belief Two-Face: a deranged character whose penchant for throwing up a coin and leaving fate to chance might just make him get along really well with Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh in last year's No Country for Old Men.

Nonetheless, this does not make The Dark Knight a lopsided movie when it comes to its selection of villains. The story is well crafted and the late transformation of Harvey Dent does not feel like a late inclusion just for the sake of having yet another twist of plot. Unlike last summer's unfortunate Spider-Man 3, where the appearance of villain upon villain, late in the film, kept nullifying whatever had happened before, Two-Face and the Joker in this movie come together and share an unbelievable scene in a hospital. As a matter of fact, it is thanks to the tutelage of the Joker that Harvey Dent finally goes overboard and achieves true comic book villainy and fully transforms into a fiend.

The greatest aspect of Batman has always been that he is one of the best anti-heroes that has appeared in popular culture. As much a rebel and a criminal as he is righteous, this mysterious character, born out of the mire of Pulp novels and predating Hollywood "Film Noir" (his first appearance in DC Comics was in 1939!) by a few years, casts his longest shadow when America feels confused about itself and begins questioning its own values. Our very own War on Terror is the perfect landscape for Batman. At the end of this film there is a great scene between Batman and the Joker in which they dissect their roles of hero and villain. A similar scene, albeit less serious, occurs in Tim Burton's version, where both characters engage in a discussion of their doppelgänger existence.

But at the end of Burton's film, the Joker is disposed of, and Batman stands as a beacon for Gotham City to stand behind -- the perfect Ronald Reagan American hero to an America that was so full of itself (the film came out in Reagan's last year as president). In the last frames of Christopher Nolan's movie, Batman is a criminal on the run, the people of the city bewailing that they got the kind of hero that their society deserves. That's who we are! That's present day America.

Every hero-less American teenage kid (of whom there are millions) should adopt Batman as their hero. Why not! He is the hero we deserve.

Live Stream Webcast of Bayreuth Opera

2008-07-20T10:52:00.008-05:00

Historic events have occurred at the Green Hill since the 2007 Bayreuth Festival ended. The old generation is giving way to the new as Wolfgang Wagner prepares to give up the reign of the family business to the younger members of his quarrelsome family. When it comes to the festival's online presence, there is also good news to report. Bayreuth's clunky old website has been replaced by a modern portal which, although still totally in German, promises to have a mirror in English soon.

The real exciting news for those of us unable to be at Bayreuth this year is that for the first time in its history an opera will be telecast live over the Internet. Katarina Wagner's controversial staging of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, will be playing in a computer near you on July 27 at 4pm. The time of the Live Stream is CEST (GMT +2), so that would be 11:00am Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

The Bayreuth Festival has always had a fine tradition of broadcasting on the radio the opening days of the festival. Further, in the last few years these broadcasts could also be heard on the Internet via various online radio stations. This year for the first time you will be able not only to hear the opera, but see the controversial staging that everybody was talking about (and booing!) last summer.

But here's the best part: when you purchase a ticket to the webcast you are also buying access to see and hear the work on demand whenever it is convenient for you between July 27 and August 2.

I've already bought my ticket. Let's hope that the technology works, and that the broadcast is as historic as it promises to be. Here is the Bayreuth Festival's website if you would like more information about the webcast or the repertory for this year's festival.

http://www.bayreuther-festspiele.de/

Die Soldaten at the Park Avenue Armory

2008-07-11T22:55:00.015-05:00

Two amazing things happened at the Park Avenue Armory this evening. The first was that nobody around me walked out of the incredible staging of Die Soldaten, a complex, 12-tone serial opera by composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann: the kind of work that would usually have them walking up the aisles even before the intermission. The second amazing thing was that there was not a single cough heard in the house during the entire length of the work. If this opera would have been staged at a venue like the MET, let's say, a good number of the audience would not have returned for Act II, and the chorus of coughs would have been deafening.

The improved audience behavior I experienced tonight is the result of taking a knowledgeable opera audience, removing them from the warm confines of a proscenium theater, and throwing them into an alternative barn-like space for the ride of their lives -- literally. Sitting on motorized platforms, the audience travels up and down the length of a t-bar stage. This is an incredibly brilliant staging that eliminates the distance between performers and audience. The 110-piece orchestra sits on the left, while across from them a smaller satellite percussion "banda" contributed to the stereophonic effect. The singers were miked, of course, due to the size of the space. But given the fortissimos that composer Zimmermann achieved in his score, those microphones really came in handy for the cast. Thankfully, the enhanced sound felt quite natural and unobtrusive.

I am a newcomer to this work and to its composer, but I am no stranger to Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, and Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu, the other seminal works of the 12-tone musical period. Die Soldaten might have been new to me, but I was familiar with its musical terrain. Let's just say that the dissonances did not disappoint. It was one of the most exciting and dense writing I have heard, rivaling the best moment of the better known serial composers. Schoenberg's musical invention was supposed to revolutionize German and world music. However, like Hitler's one thousand year Reich, Schoenberg's musical empire crumbled as a result of its inherent monolithic approach. As a matter of fact, by the time that Bernd Alois Zimmermann started working on the first version of this work in 1957, serialism was no longer avant-garde, and the Cologne Opera rejected the work as unplayable. The same accusations that were hurled at the score of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde a century earlier.

Die Soldaten might not have the classical structure of Wozzeck, or the mathematical precision of Moses und Aron, but it is brilliantly orchestrated, and Zimmermann never runs out of musical inventions. The prelude and the last scene, in particular the very last chord, are instances of sheer virtuoso writing.

This is one of those productions that New Yorkers will talk about for years. I am happy that Die Soldaten has led the way for the Park Avenue Armory to become a venue for challenging 20th century opera. The next operatic work to be staged at this space will be Oliver Messiaen's Saint François D'Assise, which will be presented in mid December. This is a truly wonderful way to celebrate the anniversary of Messiaen's 100th birthday.

You have one more chance to see this production of Die Soldaten (July 12): don't miss it!

Mad Men: Season Two

2008-06-22T12:25:00.016-05:00

Last week, I attended, as a guest of AMC, the sneak preview of the first episode of the second season of Mad Men, the show that has been hailed by The New York Times as: the smartest show on television." Written, created and executive produced by Matthew Weiner, Mad Men has become the darling of critics and critical viewers alike. And with good reason: the show creates a world of hard drinking, Madison Avenue ad-men in the 1960's Camelot that was lost never to be regained again. These Mad Men shaped the way America thought, and they accomplished it all with a martini in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and prodigious juggling acts that balanced wifes and mistresses in ways that corporate American males of today could not compete. Don't look at it as nostalgia, but more like a carefully crafted, beautifully researched slice of life of a time gone by.

The Museum of Modern Art, where the screening took place, could not have been a better venue to show off the first installment of the second season. In the same building where the principal works of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock hang, Matt Wiener's series feels right at home. New York was the center of the art scene at the time that Mad Men takes place. And even though it might be a stretch for these corporate characters to share excitement about the artistic experimentations of the Abstract Expressionists, the precise writing, sleek design, and cool look of the show is definitely influenced by this downtown movement. In future episodes, I can most definitely see Sterling Cooper acquiring a nice Clifford Still: it would complement reception's decor rather nicely.

Talking with Matt Weiner after the screening, I shared with him my thoughts that it was very satisfying and rare to get a chance to watch the show with a large audience, a treat that most television viewers never get. On the small screen the details are more vivid and the viewer easily focuses on subtleties. Watching it on TV is like looking at an artist's sketch. At MoMA's theater, HD projection is like standing in front of those Abstract Expressionist canvases that hang at the museum upstairs. I am convinced that home viewing is the ideal home for Mad Men because it best serves the show's stylistic landscape. At the same time, it was a wonderful experience to share those great dramatic and comic moments in such a unique communal fashion.

I'm excited about the second season of Mad Men. After watching the first show, I'm certain that the second season of the series will be extremely successful. Lightning can definitely strike twice; I'm just curious about how it will streak across America's screens this summer.

In the Heights heading for Tony Glory

2008-06-06T23:16:00.021-05:00

You don't have to be Latino to enjoy In the Heights, but it definitely helps. The salsa driven, hip hop-infused musical by Broadway newcomers Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes about Washington Heights is selling out every night at the Richard Rodgers Theater thanks to its infectious score, feel-good story and lovable characters. Further, in a weak year for new shows this work is well on its way to winning the Tony Award for best musical of the season.

Washington Heights has always been a neighborhood in transition. The area has been home to Jewish and Irish communities over the years, but it is the current Latino residents of the neighborhood, in particular the Dominican enclave, that sets the tone as well as the beat for Mr. Miranda's very likable musical.

Any art work which is based on a particular geographical place mythologizes its terrain. Benjamin Britten transformed Aldeburgh, on the coast of Suffolk, England into his opera Peter Grimes, and Spike Lee forever changed our perception of "da hood" in his film Do the Right Thing. As portrayed in this musical (which at times feels very close in spirit to Spike Lee's film) this is a Washington Heights of the mind and of the heart. A neighborhood filled with patience and hope where there is never any mention of drugs, crime, urban blight or HIV. The NYPD doesn't even show up in this story! You might argue that it is, after all, a musical and that matters ought not to get that serious. I would argue back that in West Side Story, that landmark musical about the tough gritty New York streets, there is a sardonic song dedicated to a police officer, and that when bloody violence erupts it is to the tune of some of the greatest music ever written for the American stage. But is is unfair to compare these two musicals -- absurd, really.

In the Heights borrows from many urban artistic elements and manages to lay down a very convincing geography populated with some stereotypical, yet lovable characters, and it accomplishes this very well. Among the recognizable barrio types are the matriarch grandmother, the gossipy hairdresser, and the lovable bodega owner. The only stock characters missing are the domino-playing Greek chorus. But, who knows, they might be waiting around in the wings in case the show develops a sequel at some future point in time.

Despite all its faults, In the Heights is not a dreary experience whatsoever, quite the opposite: its Latin beat suffused with more than a dash of hip hop makes it a toe-tapping, head-bobbing evening. Even actor Billy Crystal, who was sitting in the row in front of me, stood up at the end to give the show a standing ovation.

Giving excellent performances are Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia, Robin de Jesús as Sonny, and Priscilla Lopez (Diana in the original production of A Chorus Line) as Camila. It is a true ensemble musical, and the entire cast is quite energetic and they work well together.

At the center of it all, Lin-Manuel Miranda is the glue that keeps it all together. It is his show, his conception, and he stands out above the rest of the performers. The rest of the cast sings and dances boleros, sons, and merengues, but Mr. Miranda raps, and although his rhymes, lyrics and music lack the subtlety and flair that once made Broadway unique, his whole-hearted belief in his little show and his incredible energy wins us over to his side.

In the Heights might not reach the stratosphere that it aims for, but it does offer an entertaining night at the theater.

Indiana Jones is Back!

2008-05-24T19:15:00.011-05:00

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull brings back to the summer screens one of the biggest franchises in the history of the movies. Indiana Jones has returned, and this time he is battling Soviets, South American Indians, the FBI, and 1950's post-war complacency. Dr. Henry Jones has finally achieved tenure in his manicured academic world, but he is as restless as ever. He is also a bit older, a bit grayer, and his politics appear to be a little more confusing. His hatred for the Nazis in the first installments of the series was well documented, and now this same hatred has switched to the Soviets. For such a free spirit adventurer, however, the words "I like Ike," which he utters early on in the film in order to prove his patriotism, don't really register as the kind of political allegiance that Dr. Jones would have. Indiana Jones a Republican -- who knew!

For anyone who watches Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (now, that's a mouthful! That's the longest name for a sequel since Benedict the Sixteenth replaced John Paul Two) one question definitely comes to mind: why didn't they do this fifteen years ago when it would have all been more believable? It's not just that Harrison Ford is looking considerably older, it's that this kind of filmmaking has already exhausted itself in the previous three films. The franchise is starting to feel its own age.

But make no mistake, despite its occasional creakiness, the movie is a very enjoyable ride. Steven Spielberg has returned to the kind of populist filmmaking that only he can pull off. The special effects are awesome to look at, the performances strike the right chords, and there are enough references to the past three films to make any fan of the series happily nostalgic. In addition, the brisk pacing the film makes for an enjoyable summer popcorn movie.

One very good reason not to miss it is Cate Blanchett. As Irina Spalko she is one of the greatest villains this series has ever had. Cold as ice, Ms. Blanchett has never look prettier on screen, while at the same time creating an unforgettable menacing figure. With her Louise Brooks hairdo, her sword, and her immaculate gray communist uniform she looks as out of time and place as the crystal skull that the principals chase down.

Less successful is Shiah LeBeouf as Indy's young sidekick and fellow adventurer. Playing the role as a junior Marlon Brando in The Wild One, this character aims to be a wannabe Indiana, and ends up, time after time, rejecting the old fashion values, such as education, that makes the old man a credible character.

Karen Allen is also back as Marion, but the movie is almost half way over before we see her. As Mr. Ford, Ms. Allen has aged more or less gracefully into an older version of her original role, but one gets that same feeling when we watch her that this Indy return would have made more sense a decade or two ago. Newcomers to the cast are John Hurt and Jim Broadbent. I am sure that both picked up hefty paychecks for playing two-dimensional characters who occupy very little screen time.

If you read Erich von Däniken's 1970's bestseller Chariots of the Gods? or know the theories behind that book, then you will figure out the inspiration for this movie. It's odd that this Indiana Jones film is so careful not to portray third world caricatures (Soviet caricatures are all right, it seems!) and yet, von Däniken's theories about the achievements of the ancient people of South America are some of the most racist views ever expressed. His bestseller argues that the Mesoamerican people could not have achieved such high levels of learning, mathematics and architecture without the aid of extraterrestrial beings. The days of such lines as "Ah, fried monkey brains..." coming from third-world, dark-skinned characters might be gone from Indiana Jones, but that good ol' racism (which comes right from the 1930's serials that Indiana Jones is based on) is still very much present in the series.

This film is a mixed bag, but it is a well-made, fast-paced summer entertainment. Thankfully it does not destroy the legacy of the franchise (are you reading this George Lucas!) Go see it, it might just become your favorite Indiana Jones film -- or maybe not.

The Very Best Wagner Music on CD's

2008-05-04T15:19:00.008-05:00

If you follow this link, you will come to a page loaded with recommendations for complete Richard Wagner operas, as well as highlight discs of these works. This is a list of the best recordings available. You can buy them at my Wagneroperas.com megastore website through Amazon.com.

Among the recordings you will find are the fabled live Bayreuth recording of Tristan und Isolde with Birgit Nillson and Wolfgang Windgassen, as well as the complete Ring Cycle conducted by Sir Georg Solti. Check it out!

The Hardball Tango

2008-04-28T22:00:00.004-05:00

Brian Carson, the announcer on my WagnerOperas Podcast was the videographer on this new video that was just put up on YouTube. Enjoy!