Phèdre at the National Theatre

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.