El Quijote: Fabled NYC Restaurant closes during Holy Week

Today, on the day that many Christians commemorate the death of Jesus Christ, many New York food lovers will witness the death of an institution. El Quijote, the fabled restaurant on 23rd street, under the famous/infamous Chelsea Hotel, will close its doors after being in operation since 1930. How many restaurants in New York City today can claim that they were open during the height of the Great Depression, and have remained opened ever since.

To dine at El Quijote is to step back in time almost 90 years, which is to say almost a century. The decor has remained the same: a combination of Spanish kitsch and a literature lesson in pictures, figures and statues of Miguel de Cervantes's novel. I'm sure that a list of its patrons would read like a cross section of America's notables. Once I saw actor Fyvush Finkel, one of the last remaining pillars of the Yiddish theater dining there. He was sitting at a large table with family and friends. Fyvush, who died at the age of 96 in 2016 was only eight years old when El Quijote first opened its doors to the public.

For me, El Quijote was all about the shrimp ajillo (shrimp with garlic sauce) a potent mixture that stayed on your breath for hours and was sure to repel potential amorous encounters as well as your common urban vampire. It was always served with yellow rice. Whether or not they used real saffron to make it yellow was irrelevant. Shrimp ajillo with yellow rice was my meal of choice, preceded by a hot bowl of "caldo gallego," the earthy soup from the Northwest of Spain. On a cold wintry day, when the wind blew up and down 23rd street, there was nothing better.

The other drawing card was the sangría, although here one must acquiesce to the way this libation is prepared at that other venerable Spanish restaurant, Sevilla, in the village.  In Sevilla, the sangría has maintained its delicious taste since I first visited this joint in the late 1970s. At El Quijote, the sangría was a movable feast: sometimes too strong, other times too fruity. One time, it was even murky and dark. At Sevilla, the sangría is always clear. El Quijote featured the second best sangría in New York City, let's leave it at that.

The only question left now is will El Quijote open its doors again, and if it does, what will it look like, and what will the food be like? I for one am asking the gods for a speedy resurrection.

James Levine is suing the MET

Will this be the straw that finally breaks Peter Gelb's back? James Levine is suing the Metropolitan Opera over the fact that he was fired after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced.  According to the Hollywood Reporter, the conductor filed a lawsuit on Thursday claiming that the opera company used baseless allegations to tarnish his fabled career. The company went on to fire him without even a telephone call. The suit asks for at least 5.8 million dollars. The MET has not seen the suit as of this writing, and has made no comments. The MET suspended Levine back in December, and started an investigation after the New York Post and the New York Times published allegations of sexual misconduct involving three boys. These events go back decades ago, and Levine said that the accusations were unfounded, and that he had not been charged with any crime.

When all this blows over, and I believe it will, like any witch hunt, I believe there is a good chance that James Levine will come back to the MET. And I also believe that the audience will welcome him with great acclaim. The reason why the MET orchestra is the polished ensemble it is is all due to Maestro Levine. When he returns it will be a very uncomfortable place for Gelb, I'm sure. That might be the moment when the board will finally fire him, and search for somebody who understand the likes and tastes of the New York opera-going public.

Oscars Predictions

The Oscars are tonight, of course.  Here are some last minute predictions:

Actor in a leading role: Gary Oldman

Actor in a supporting role: Sam Rockwell

Actress in a leading role: Frances McDormand 

Actress in a supporting role: Laurie Metcalf

Best Director: Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water)

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049)

Best Picture: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

WACO on the new Paramount Network

Waco, a six part miniseries based on the 1993 siege of the Waco, Texas compound of the Branch Dividians, a millenarian cult led by David Koresh, brings to mind President Trump's recent tweets on the failure of the FBI to get anything right. After a standoff of more than 50 days, the Bureau chose to use might against the cult, which produced a raging fire which brought the ordeal to a tragic end. At the end Koresh, and many women and children Branch Dividians, seventy-six in all, laid dead in the ashes of the inferno. It was one of the most tragic uses of lethal force used by Americans against Americans.

The series began as a project of the Weinstein Company, but soon after reports of sexual allegation surfaced, Harvey Weinstein's name as well as the name of his company was removed from the series. Spike, which was supposed to air the series became Paramount, and the first episode aired on January of this year.

The screenplay by John Eric Dowdle, Drew Dowdle, Salvatore Stabile and Sarah Nicole Jones presents us with a linear account of the events, title cards telling us the number of days of the standoff. What is missing from their script is a serious backward glance at the man who brought all these people to Mount Carmel and convinced them that he was the Second Coming. Koresh's journey as a Seventh Day Adventist, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and his memorization of the Bible before he was twenty years old adds much to his character. What is also missing from their script is the very fact that Koresh was a monster: a self-proclaimed messiah who bullied and mistreated his followers all in the name of dogma together with his preoccupation with the book of Revelation and the End of Days. You wouldn't know this Koresh from the character that actor Taylor Kitsch creates, however. In Mr. Kitsch's sensitive portrayal, Koresh is a well-meaning hippie, who probably took some acid, did some mushrooms and expanded his mind into a Bible-thumping rocker, with a gift of the gab, all tied up with a neat Texan drawl. The screenplay misses the deep allegiance to belief and Scripture that made Koresh so believable to his followers.

Despite some of the lapses in the screenplay, if Mr. Kitsch's Koresh grabs us, so does Michael Shannon's performance as Gary Noesner, the FBI agent who tries against all odds, including his boss's orders, to end the stalemate. Their phone conversations are at the heart of this story, as they show us two determined men in brutally honest conversation. Both Mr. Shannon and Mr. Kitsch through their acting abilities also manage to convey to us that the characters they play know very well in their heart of hearts that their efforts will end badly.

In supporting, but key roles John Leguizamo is excellent in the opening episodes as an ATF agent who infiltrates the Mount Carmel compound and befriends Koresh. Likewise, Rory Culkin, as one of Koresh's disciples gives a captivating, heartfelt performance. Also, Shannon's boss Tony Prince, played by Glenn Fleshler and FBI agent Mitch Decker (Shea Whigham) give credible performances as the villains of the piece. Julia Garner's heartbreaking performance as Michelle Jones, forced to marry Culkin's character, and forced to watch her father's body be buried in a ditch, offers a great contribution to this miniseries.

Waco may not be a revelation, but it expertly handles a very dark page in American history. It is definitely worth your while to watch this excellent miniseries.

BLACK PANTHER: new film from Marvel

 The premise of the comic book Black Panther, now a major motion picture from Marvel Studios, was to be an antidote to the racism found in such movies as the classic King Kong, or the countless Tarzan films, and Saturday morning serials such as Jungle Raiders, from Columbia Pictures. This was popular entertainment that Stan Lee must have eaten up when he was a youth, and which gave him the impetus to create an African superhero at a time of racial upheaval in his own country.

Racist America produced Skull Island, Kong’s domain: a place so backward that prehistoric monsters still ruled the land. That was the way the majority of Americans thought of Africa, if they thought of it at all.  And Kong himself, a kind of mutant giant ape was the perfect Freudian threatening view of a black man lusting after the blond white girl of his dream. “Blondes are scarce around here” is one of the memorable lines uttered by the white hunters when they survey the black tribe that worships the giant monkey. By contrast, Wakanda, the mythical African country where king T'Challa and his Black Panther alter-ego rule, is a technological wonder, decades ahead of any other country in the West, and hiding their advancements for reasons that are never quite made clear. The very idea of an advanced country being able to hide in the age of Google Earth is preposterous, but we must remember that Mr. Lee thought of all this when the very idea of the Internet was science fiction.

The film adaptation is visually quite stunning. The landscape of Wakanda is a cross between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the city of tomorrow, and Disney, Marvel Studios's parent company. Quite impressive to look at, but the film, despite its Afrocentric point of departure, and African American actors and crew, cannot entirely free itself from an essentially phony "Disneyworld's Adventureland" approach to a distant place many of us know very little about.

Black Panther, the film, has shown to be very popular with black families, especially in cities like New York, Detroit, and Chicago. There were, as a matter of fact, many African American families in attendance at the IMAX 2D showing I attended today. I can't keep from thinking that this film might be 2018's version of blaxploitation, the 1970's ethnic genre of films made for black audiences by white filmmakers. Certainly many of the stereotypical tropes of blaxploitation regarding the portrayal of blacks and whites reappear in this film. Whereas the majority of the black characters are shown to have an innate nobility, the white characters in this film are either villainous caricatures (Andy Serkis) or well-meaning, but befuddled allies (Martin Freeman).

How are we supposed to internalize this film? There is more than a hint here that we look at Wakanda with the eyes of Marcus Garvey's utopian Pan-Africanism movement of the early part of the 20th century, where he urged American and Jamaican blacks to return to their ancestral land. Or perhaps we can come to grips with this film if we borrow political theorist Richard Iton's controversial idea that the black diaspora simultaneous causes African Americans to disown and at the same time to desire the continent of Africa. Certainly any African-American watching this film would feel a connection to a utopia in the African continent, even if this wonderful place only exists in the movies.

PARSIFAL at the MET

François Girard's Apocalyptic production of Parsifal is back at the MET this month, with a stellar cast, and under the direction of the soon-to-be MET's Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  This is the first revival of this production which made its debut a few years ago.

Mr. Girard places the opera in a barren landscape with tempestuous, ominous skies. On one side of the stage a group of men sit in a circle, all wearing black pants and white shirts, swaying, as if they were a cult in deep prayer. Meanwhile, the women are dressed in black, silent, and separated from the men by a giant crevice through which a river of blood flows.  Certainly not what Richard Wagner had in mind, but given the liberality of modern Wagnerian stagings these days, this production at least adheres to the concept of a physical grail, and a leader of the cult with a wound that refuses to close. The second act features a pool of blood, perhaps the most interesting part of this production, to represent Klingsor's lair.  The third act takes us back to the barren landscape, where eventually the women and the men will integrate after Parsifal returns the spear, thus uniting spear and grail: the ying meets its yang, and in this production, things get really Freudian when Parsifal dips the spear's point into the grail; the spear's phallic symbol penetrates the holy vessel. This heterosexual ending would have satisfied Wagner to no end, as it does the majority of the patrons of the Metropolitan Opera.

The MET has made certain that it gathered the best singers of today to present this revival. René Pape gave us his familiar reading of Gurnemanz, although I thought he lacked some heft Saturday afternoon.  Is all that nicotine catching up to him? As Parsifal Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang the role at Bayreuth two summers ago, gave us a sweet, lyrical reading of the title character. His voice is perfect for the foolish boy of Act I, but his light timbre is at times unconvincing as the mature Parsifal who comes back to save the knights of the Grail. "Why is Tamino singing Parsifal?" is a comment I have seen more than once in social media. Evelyn Herlitzius, another Bayreuth alumna was a strong Kundry, despite the fact that there were some unsteady moments throughout the performance. Peter Mattei as Amfortas, gave us, by far, the most satisfying vocal and acting performance: a man in deepest physical and mental anguish waiting to die so as to free himself of the duty he no longer wants to perform.

I can't wait until maestro Nézet-Séguin officially takes the reins of the Metropolitan Opera. Tempi always being one of the most argued aspects of this score, on Saturday he gave us a reading trending towards the slow side, especially in the prelude, and overall a masterful dissemination of this complex work.  I found his approach to the tender, quiet moments of Act III, as exciting as the bells and kettle drums of the Transformation Scene in Act I. (Are they using electronic instruments to represent the bells of Montsalvat these days?)

I get to go again on Tuesday, so I'm hoping for a performance as brilliant as the matinee I attended last Saturday.

Catching up with the Awards Season: Phantom Thread

Very few directors can build a sense of dread and maintain it through a three act structure like Paul Thomas Anderson. In his latest film Phantom Thread we sense a supernatural threat from its elegant title, but in this film ghosts might haunt the living, but they are quiet, serene, unsettling apparitions. The real dread comes from the living, especially those that enter the orbit of Reynolds Woodcock, a dress designer of haute couture played with calculated restraint by Daniel Day-Lewis, in what he has promised to be his last screen performance. If this turns out to be true, he has left us the most enigmatic creation in his catalogue of amazing performances.

The House of Woodcock’s artistic denizen as played by Mr. Day-Lewis is a mixture of many famous designers, from Christian Dior to Cristobal Balenciaga (director Anderson became very interested in Balenciaga as he was writing the screenplay), and even the late Gianni Versace and his sister Donatella.  In fact, in this film the backbone of the Woodcock enterprise is Cyril Woodcock, Reynolds's sister, played by the incredible Leslie Manville, a frequent collaborator of director Mike Leigh, an actress who can speak volumes with a raised eyebrow. If Mr. Lewis’s performance is restrained, Ms. Manville’s performance resides in her Zen mask where the audience can project their longings and questions about this story.  Not surprisingly, she offers few answers, keeping her character mysterious and distant.  But when it comes to her relationship with the other characters, especially her brother, she is undoubtedly the commanding one.

On a weekend trip to the country, driving his car as if he was either pursued by the Furies, or wishing to crash, Woodcock meets a waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps), who immediately becomes his latest muse, and moves in with him to his fashionable house/atelier.  They are a mismatched couple from the start.  The exacting Woodcock is bothered by any little noise she makes at the breakfast table, and all he seems to want to do is work, rest, and brood about the proximity of death.  And it is this death wish that propels the character forward, imagining his dead mother dressed in her bridal gown in his room, while maintaining a dominant attitude towards Alma.  But Alma knows that the way to a man's heart might just be through his stomach, and devises a plan where she can switch the established roles in their relationship -- a harrowing decision that adds a dark sense of dominance and submission to their life.

I was able to see Phantom Thread projected in 70mm film this afternoon, a rare treat from years past, perfect for this kind of story that takes place at a time when watching a film was the most common thing in the world.  Paul Thomas Anderson served as his own cinematographer in this film, although he gave his long-time cameraman Michael Bauman the title of "lighting cameraman," shades of what Stanley Kubrick did with John Alcott in Barry Lyndon.  Bottom line is that the film did not get a nomination for its cinematography, which is a shame because it is a sumptuous looking work.

I recommend this film, but only if you enjoy a kind of cinema that does not answer all the questions, and leaves you thinking about possible answers.

Catching up with the Awards Season: THE POST

The Post is Steven Spielberg's film about the publishing by the Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers, classified information detailing how the US government lied about the thirty year involvement in the Vietnam War.  It is also the director's chance to delve into cinematic territory occupied by such great films as All the President's Men, Alan J. Pakula's Oscar winning 1976 film about the Washington Post's investigation of the Watergate burglary, and the more recent Oscar recipient Spotlight, a film by Tom McCarthy detailing the investigation by the Boston Globe of allegations of sexual molestation in the Catholic Church.  Both films are hard-hitting investigating dramas played out in America's newsrooms, noisy, overcrowded work places filled with the clatter of typewriters and the scent of cigarette smoke.  They are also mostly male-driven environments, although both Spotlight and The Post make sure that there are females visible.  Can it be otherwise in these politically charged days?

Spielberg, of course has America's most beloved female actor, Meryll Streep. heading the cast.  As Katharine Graham, owner and publisher of the newspaper, she must decide if publishing such a detrimental story to the Nixon presidency, material that has already gotten The New York Times in trouble, is beneficial to a company which is preparing for its IPO.  Mrs. Graham travels in powerful circles, a blue-blood Brahmin used to giving parties where defense secretary Robert McNamara, the person most responsible for the escalation of the war, is a welcome guest.  But the newspaper business is in her blood.  She inherited it from her father, and she took it over from her husband when he committed suicide.  She is a powerful woman, the kind we ought to like these days, although she is filled with questions and doubts, as any other human being would be. Ms. Streep ably portrays the dichotomy of the character in her usual brilliant way.

In the lion's den that is the newsroom of the Washington Post, the lead gladiator is Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the newspaper, challenging the federal government at every turn in his quest to publish the top secret documents. (Of course, it was his son, Ben Bradlee, Jr. who led the Boston Globe's expose that is featured in the film Spotlight -- thus somehow linking the two films together). Like Ms. Streep, Mr. Hanks offers us a carefully crafted performance. Ms. Streep is unashamed to expose her Yale trained technique as she approaches her character, but Mr. Hanks is all Hollywood method acting, in a performance that at times tends to be quite subtle.  The juxtaposition of acting styles works, and their scenes together makes the film come alive, even when the script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer seems to fail them.

Mr. Spielberg's direction keeps the action going throughout, but I find that he lingers way too long during the third act. Lately, the man is into providing us with epilogues. (The same problem I found with the conclusion of Bridge of Spies.) Is it really necessary to have Justice Black's opinion read out loud in the newsroom in order to stir our patriotic feelings?  And worst of all, is it really necessary to end the film with the Watergate break-in?  Is Mr. Spielberg hinting at a possible sequel (or perhaps a 1970s trilogy ending with the disgrace of Richard Nixon)?  I would remind Mr. Spielberg's of screenwriter/director Billy Wilder's last screenwriting tip:

"The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then — that's it. Don’t hang around."

Frances McDormand and her Three Billboards

Catching up with the possible Oscar nominated films of 2017, I finally got around to see the very fine Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a film by that very talented Irish/British playwright and screenwriter/director Martin McDonagh.  The story of a teenage girl, raped and burned, while the town's police seemingly do nothing about capturing the criminals forces the mother (Frances McDormand) to take the law into her own hands and rent three billboards advertising the inefficiency of the police department, and especially the town's police chief (Woody Harrelson), who is dying of pancreatic cancer. A great story, expertly told, with a great cast giving stellar performances.  I loved the movie, and surely it will receive many Oscars.  My vote would certainly go to its fine screenplay, which surprises a viewer at almost every turn.

Having watched the Golden Globes last weekend, I was overwhelmed by the support given to the issue of sexual harassment. Most of the women wore black, and most winners included some kind of sociopolitical statement that mentioned the recent events that have exploded in Hollywood.

I was bothered by Ms. McDormand's attitude during the broadcast, in particular when she went up on stage to receive her award for her fine performance in this film.  Was it me, or did it seem like she was still acting?  Has she been unable to shed the role of Mildred?  Her actions and in particular her facial expressions seem to come right from the film, and not from an actress in a fancy dinner awards show.  It made her look like a weirdo, which she may very well be, but I thought that her actions were way too close to her character, and this deep association to one's work is off-putting and dangerous.

Let's hope that when Ms. McDormand goes up to receive her well-deserved Oscar (in this year of the woman, she is a shoo-in to win!) she finds it within herself to be more herself.  No need to show us what a great actress you are, this film proves it in spades.

The Top Ten Best Films of 2017

I didn't see them all.  I even missed some of the best, but out of the ones I got a chance to see, these are the top ten best films of the year, in no particular order.

1, Get Out

2. The Florida Project

3. Lady Bird

4. Call Me by your Name

5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

6. The Shape of Water

7. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

8. mother!

9. Coco

10. Blade Runner 2049

Farinelli and the King on Broadway

All hail Mark Rylance!  Four years after his star turn in repertory performances of Olivia in Twelfth Night and the title character in Richard III, he is back at the Belasco theatre in Farinelli and the King, a new play written by his wife, Claire Van Kampen, which first played to critical and audience praises in London at the Globe theatre.

Mr. Rylance plays Philippe V, an 18th century Spanish monarch who has descended into madness. Farinelli is, of course, he famed singer who was castrated at the age of ten becoming the leading "primo uomo" of 18th century operatic London.  Once he became the king's favorite, however, he never returned to Covent Garden, or any other operatic stage, much to the chagrin of his manager and audiences of the time.  The play explores the relationship between the king and his castrato, delving into issues of favoritism and politics, as well as themes of madness, and the way that music can result to be the magic antidote that cures the ills of a politically damaged world.

Every time that Mr. Rylance has stepped on a Broadway stage he has received critical and audience acclaim which has led to multiple Tony award wins.  Here he is poised to repeat this feat.  His performance is deep, multifaceted, hilarious and heartbreaking at times.  You simply cannot take his eyes off him!  And even though there is a familiarity in his voice from performances past, his skill at shaping a character with a simplicity of movement and a turn of the phrase catapults him into one of the greats of our time.

Surrounding him are great actors giving memorable performances.  Melody Grove, as his wife Isabella, and Sam Crane as Farinelli are simply marvelous.  Edward Peel is also quite memorable as Don Sebastian de la Cuadra, the King's chief minister.

One of the chief pleasures of attending this play is the clever set design by Jonathan Fensom, who has transformed the Belasco into a courtly theater with onstage seating for the audience.  This together with Paul Russell's lighting design, which include real candles, makes a welcoming, warm setting.

Throughout the play, and even before the non-curtain goes up, live music by baroque instruments lead us into the world of the baroque.  When Farinelli is asked to sing, Mr. Crane steps aside, and a countertenor steps into the role to deliver some of the great Georg Frideric Handel arias.  During the matinee performance yesterday afternoon, countertenor James Hall filled the Belasco theater with his unique voice.

Once again, New York is lucky to be hosting one of the great actors of our time, in a very interesting, charming play.

A new TOSCA at the MET: who's in, who's out?

In about 24 hours the Metropolitan Opera will unveil the new production of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, a new staging New York opera fans have been waiting for years.  There was a time in the MET's history when Tosca was a perennial work in its repertory.  That all changed when General Manager Peter Gelb decided to scrap the sumptuous 1985  Franco Zeffirelli production, much beloved by the New York public, and replace it with a new setting by Luc Bondy.  This new staging, which many found outrageous, was furiously booed at the 2009 opening night.  I was there, and I had never heard such a fierce reaction from a New York audience.  Clearly, New York wanted the old Zeffirelli production back!  Since that was not going to happen, Gelb announced, a few years later,  that a new production by David McVicar would replace the Bondy fiasco.  He also promised that the new production would bring back the glory of the Zeffirelli production.  In a recent interview Mr. Gelb added “I have learned my lesson from the Bondy production.  When it comes to a classic piece of repertoire, beauty counts — and that’s what the audience wants.”

 The 1985 Franco Zeffirelli production

The 2009 re-staging by Luc Bondy

And that's when the troubles began...

Originally, the cast for this new production included Jonas Kaufmann, arguably the most sought-after tenor in the opera world today.  Mr. Kaufmann, who is known for often cancelling, did so early on, citing that he did not want to be away from his family during the holidays.  Soprano Kristine Opolais bowed out in the summer, and so did her husband Andris Nelsons, who was to conduct the piece.  Metropolitan Opera Conductor Emeritus James Levine took over, but he was recently dropped by the MET when allegations of sexual abuse shook the company.  Superstar baritone Bryn Terfel, the last of the original slated singers, dropped out this month citing vocal problems.  In the history of the Metropolitan Opera there has never been a messier production.  

Currently, conductor Emmanuel Villaume, from the Dallas Opera Company, will lead a cast led by soprano Sonya Yoncheva, tenor Vittorio Grigolo, and baritone Željko Lučić when the production premieres tomorrow, at a New Year's Eve gala.  Amazingly, the MET has been able to put together a world-class cast, even though the current cast is a mere ghost of the original plans.  Perhaps the production will re-gain true star status in April when Anna Netrebko joins the cast.  Unless she cancels, and then the mess will continue all over again.  Stay tuned.

Stars Wars: The Last Jedi

It took me a few days to get to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the latest installment of a cinematic saga that despite its endmost title, is proving to be immortal.  My plan was for the testosterone-fueled fan-boys to have first dibs at it.  In other words, I wanted to attend a showing that was, at least, half crowded.  But nothing doing, today, on a wintry day when the thermometer struggled to reach 25 degrees F. people came out to see Rian Johnson's rewiring of the franchise's mythological elements.  My afternoon showing came close to selling out, thus my plan of watching the film in a solitary screening room did not turn out the way I planned it.  Then again, neither did Luke Skywalker's plan of ending his days alone on a rock in the middle of an ocean work out the way he envisioned it.  I felt I was in good company.

It's almost incredible to realize that Star Wars started back in the second half of the 1970's, a post-Vietnam decade filled with new hope, and fueled by the Bicentennial craze.  The past was very much alive in America in those days, so the prelude moniker of "a long time ago..." that so far has begun every installment of the franchise seemed more than apt in the summer of 1977.  The country was ready to dream again and believe in something, even if the subject of its reverie was a space opera, adapted from Japanese films and World War II combat serials, and filled with mumbo-jumbo dialogue, populated by a bevy of new up-and-coming performers sharing the screen with British character actors royalty.

Star Wars acquired a new lease in life after 2015's The Force Awakens, the first film in the franchise where George Lucas was not directly involved. The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm in 2012, and it was up to producer director J.J. Abrams to revive the story, using some of the characters originally created by Mr. Lucas, while shaping an original story line with a new cast of young performers playing the next generation of heroes and villains.  Thus Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Leia (Carrie Fisher), and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) found themselves surrounded by fighter pilot Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), reformed stormtrooper John Boyega (Finn), and Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) and Daisy Ridley (Rey) who, as the new principal villain and hero, are shaped by their knowledge of the Force.

Mr. Driver's Kylo Ren started as a mask-wearing second generation Darth Vader, but soon enough director Abrams realize that keeping Mr. Driver's unusual angular features right out of a Modigliani painting, hidden was a mistake.  In this new film he destroys his mask exposing the scar on his face that marks him with a Biblical sign of patricide.  Thus far, Kylo Ren is the saga's most charismatic villain.

To compliment him Ms. Ridley's Rey is the driving force behind the new film.  She sets out to the desolate planet Ahch-To, a mountainous rock in the middle of an ocean, where Luke Skywalker has retired, living a solitary monastic existence, waiting for the endgame, thus assuring that the Jedi cult dies with him.  Her quest is to convince Luke to return to Leia, his twin sister, and join once again the good rebel fight.  Along the way, Rey learns that the Force is indeed strong with her, and she asks Luke to become her Jedi mentor.

What I just described is the bare bones of the new film's arc. At a running time of 152 minutes (the franchise's longest film to date) writer director Johnson weaves a number of subplots and characters, some of whom are only seen momentarily (such as an interplanetary codebreaker named DJ played memorably by Benicio del Toro with a sly wink), but who are key to the film's plot, and who might take on greater importance in the upcoming films.

On a deeper level, the film is about the often troubled relationships between master and pupil, associations that run very deep in this mythic story, and which serve as character connections, some going as far back to the original established master/pupil attachment  between Luke and legendary Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness).

Visually, The Last Jedi works best when it returns to the original Lucas sources of inspiration, especially the "Jidaigeki" period dramas of director Akira Kurosawa.  For instance, the stylized throne room lair of Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) seems to come right out of the super saturated red set of Kurosawa's Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior, a samurai epic that was partly financed by George Lucas.  Also, Kurosawa's re-telling of Shakespeare's King Lear, Ran, his last samurai film, looms large in the referential color palette that inspires this film.

The Last Jedi is not to be missed.  An excellent addition to cinema's most lucrative franchise.  Who knows where we'll go from here, but the important thing for the filmmakers to remember is to stay true to the original concept that George Lucas set down decades ago.  As long as future filmmakers do this, we will have plenty of Star Wars fun to last us for a very long time.

La Bohème: Paris, We Have a Problem

The new production of Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème at the Opéra National de Paris takes place one hundred years from now, in a spaceship, and on the surface of the moon.  Claus Guth's take on this beloved classic stems from the work's libretto itself.  Colline, the bohemian philosopher mentions the Apocalypse, and I'm sure this set the German director's mind into imagining the opera as being set during a doomed space voyage, where the majority of the action is a remembrance of things past.

If you are going to set La Bohème in space, then this is the only way to proceed given the fact that Puccini's story does not really lend itself for abstraction easily.  So, four astronauts are running out of air on a doomed spaceship, how do you explain the landlord Benoit's visit asking for their rent?  That's easy, Benoit is a member of the crew who has already died.  One of the bohemians, er...astronauts play with his limp body like a marionette, as if he were alive, and they sing his lines.  What about Mimì?  Where does she come from?  She is in the mind of Rodolfo.  She appears in a beautiful red dress, revealing that Rodolfo must be in dire need of feminine companionship after being cooped up in space.   All this, plus a few stolen ideas from Stanley Kubrick (2001, A Space Odyssey), Andrei Tarkovski (Solaris), and even a mime who looks as if he just stepped out of Federico Fellini's 8½ fills out the evening.

What a mess!  At Bayreuth, at least they wait until the end of the act to boo, but at the Opéra a storm of loud ferocious catcalls greeted Act III, where instead of the familiar Parisian Gate of Hell, we found ourselves in the middle of the lunar surface.  

I'll say this in defense of Herr Guth's vision: it looks really beautiful!  The spaceship set has all the melancholy of 2001's Jupiter Mission sequence, but unfortunately there's no HAL to make things more interesting.  

Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel led a beautiful reading of the score, never overwhelming his talented singers.  Led by the Rodolfo of Atalla Ayan, and the Mimì of Nicole Car, the cast seemed surprisingly comfortable with the staging.

Maybe some operas should never be updated.  And if they are, there's has to be a better idea than this half-baked disaster. 

Maestro James Levine accused of sexual molestation

James Levine, Conductor Emeritus of the Metropolitan Opera is heading for trouble.  The opera company announced that it would look into claims that Levine molested a boy in the 1980s, starting when the child was 15.

Many Metropolitan Opera insiders have said that Levine's alleged behavior was an open secret for years, some dating as far back as 40 years ago.  In the book "Molto Agitato," author Johanna Fiedler detailed some of the salacious rumors surrounding the maestro.  In her book she writes: “One rumor, however, was particularly persistent. Levine, it was said, had had a relationship with a boy whose parents had gone to the Met board, threatening to expose the situation. Supposedly the board then authorized a major payoff to the family,”

The MET's General Manager Peter Gelb said that “we are deeply disturbed by the news articles that are being published online today about James Levine. We are working on an investigation with outside resources to determine whether charges of sexual misconduct in the 1980s are true, so that we can take appropriate action.”

Et, tu Leporello

These days we are not in the habit of editing operas. Go to any performance of Richard  Wagner's works and more than likely you will hear every note he wrote in that score. Not like in the 1940’s when the Metropolitan Opera presented edited versions of not just the Master of Bayreuth's works, but also many others. The few Bel Canto operas that were active in the repertory back then went on the stage heavily edited, with missing cabalettas and shorten scene endings (a practice still happening these days, I'm afraid).  When was the last time you heard all of the music of the end of a Vincenzo Bellini "scena" with all the notes intact, as written by the composer?  These so-called standard cuts are everywhere, but thankfully we are pretty much past the point when an entire aria would be replaced by another, serving the wishes of the singer, as when Wagner wrote an aria for a French bass, replacing the one Bellini wrote in Norma.
 
An accomplished opera company these days pretty much follows the dictum made famous by autocratic conductor Arturo Toscanini: “as written!” He would demand of his orchestra and singers. And his penchant for adhering to the letter of the score, especially when it came to such composers as Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini (both of whom he knew personally, and conducted premieres of their work) led the way to today’s practice to faithfulness to a composer’s work.
 
Now that the media has transformed sexual harassment into the number one flavor-of-the-month crime, will the lyric stage re-start its old practice of purging librettos, especially those that involve ideas celebrating male potency and female subservience? The opera world is filled with moments like these, some possessing the world’s best known music.

Take, for example, Leporello’s catalogue aria in Act I of W.A. Mozart’s amazing Don Giovanni. A masterpiece-of-a-song where the Don’s servant recounts to a young female victim the many amorous conquests brought about by his master’s lust. Numbering over 2000 and counting, the aria tells of an insatiable sexual appetite by a callous aristocrat. The young listener, Donna Elvira, is shocked by the sheer number of women who, like herself, have fallen, tricked by a sexual predator. The aria reveals that she is just another number in the Don’s catalogue.  The sheer joy of Mozart’s music, however, masks a darker, more sinister message. Leporello clearly longs to be like his master, to go through women in a shameless display of male potency, and to catalogue his escapades in a book, just like he is forced to record his master’s debaucheries.  

How does an opera director, or for that matter, how does a singer approach such an aria in these times when powerful men are going down for the same crimes about which this character is joyously singing?  Is the answer to cut out one of the great arias because it exults reprehensible actions?  Certainly not.  Mozart’s work is essentially a comedy, albeit a dark one, a "dramma giocoso" as librettist Lorenzo da Ponte called it.  Should serious events be dealt with in a comic manner?  Of course!  Mozart did it all the time, and mostly with a great deal of success.  In modern times, film director Stanley Kubrick pondered the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the greatest threat ever to face mankind, with the farcical, hilarious comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

In Don Giovanni, the Don is clearly portrayed as a villain. He has always been a villain from his first appearance in Spanish literature in Tirso de Molina's play "El burlador de Sevilla."  His actions are punished at the end of Mozart's opera when he is dragged down to Hell by the statue of Donna Anna's father, one of his conquests. The epilogue that follows the Don's doom assures us all sinners like him will get their comeuppance. We can look back and say that his servant is just mixed up about things, clearly praising wrong choices when he lauds his master’s conquests. 

Obviously, let’s not throw out one of Mozart’s musical jewels.  Come on, would anybody in his right mind throw out one of opera's greatest songs?  One might as well not perform the opera at all!  Instead, let’s be more attentive than ever to the awful, and not funny, story that it tells. Despite its jaunty, happy music, let’s think of it as a homage to hundreds in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and, of course 1,003 victims in Spain.  Perhaps we will hear the aria in a new light from now on.  Perhaps the way that Mozart’s and da Ponte actually wanted us to hear it.

Et tu, Matt

Matt Lauer has been axed from NBC News after a secret meeting between the NBC brass and an alleged victim who accused the longtime broadcaster of inappropriate sexual behavior.

Live on the air, Savannah Guthrie, Lauer's co-host on Today, was visibly shaken by the news.  She announced that "All we can say is that we are heartbroken. I'm heartbroken for Matt. He is my dear, dear friend and my partner and he is beloved by many, many people here. And I'm heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story and any other women who have their own stories to tell." 

Following Lauer's firing, FOX News published an article on its website which featured Katie Couric admitting in a 2012 interview that Matt Lauer pinched her on the ass a lot.

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COCO is a hit!

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend, audiences in the United States flocked to theaters to learn what Mexican moviegoers had proven more than a month ago: that Disney/Pixar’s Coco is an authentic hit.  The animated film soared to a $71.2 million domestic debut to win the five-day holiday frame, topping such superhero behemoths as Justice League and Thor: Ragnarok, according to studio estimates. Coco grossed $49 million for the three-day domestic weekend, and has now pulled in a total of $153.4 million worldwide.

The film was years in pre-production, and this care really shows in its authenticity and respect towards Mexican culture, especially the Day of the Dead, the religious holiday that is at the heart of the film.  The drawings above are two of many that were done in order to achieve the look of the film.  Basically, the Disney/Pixar artists conjured up a city of the Dead where its citizens are happy to be on the other side. I recommend this film, especially during this holiday season.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky is dead at 55

The great Dmitri Hvorostovski, one of opera's great baritones, and a specialist in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi died in London at the age of 55 after a long battle with brain cancer.  He was one of the shining lights of the operatic stage, a dashing, sexy figure with his mane of silver hair which he wore long, which he almost never hid from the public, and which he always successfully incorporated into his operatic characters.  Only once did I see him hide his silver-maned hair: his last Rigoletto at the MET, where, unbeknownst to his adoring fans, he must already have known that he had developed a deadly tumor in his brain.

Hvorostovski learned to play the Metropolitan Opera, a gigantic house that scares many European-trained singers, and where he sang 180 performances. When I first heard him live his voice, though compact, beautiful and secure, sounded small: a perfect voice for a European opera house.  His breathing between phrases was the loudest I had ever heard.  His approach to a score, however, sounded like no one else: always the tell-tale sign of a great artist.  As his voice matured his instrument became stronger, more secure, but the original beauty of his tone always remained.  His performances at the MET, before his illness, were outstanding, and his lieder recitals always revealed a consummate artist comfortable being accompanied just with a piano.  His performances of Russian folk songs and popular romantic songs were very important to him.  In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, he remembered a concert he gave at the age of 22 in a bread factory in central Siberia, near the town of Krasnoyarsk, his birthplace, in below-freezing weather. The audience, wearing fur hats and warm boots, was in tears.

No one looked like him (his hair turned completely white by the time he was 30), no one sounded like him.  Perhaps the complex role of Eugene Onegin, one of his specialties, suited him so well because he was as complex as the title role of that great Alexander Pushkin poem. Now that he has entered immortality, he will be missed.

Et tu, Charlie...

The sexual allegations snowball has rolled over Charlie Rose, the longtime 75 year-old journalist whose longtime PBS show has featured some of the most important figures in the world.  According to the Washington Post, eight women have come forward accusing Rose of unwanted sexual advances, lewd behavior, and nudity.  Five of the women spoke to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity.  The accidents mostly occurred while they were interns at Rose's PBS show. The women range from 21 to 37.

PBS and Bloomberg have suspended airings of his show.  Rose also co-hosts "CBS This Morning" and is a contributing journalist on the prestigious 60 minutes show.  CBS has suspended Rose pending an internal investigation of these allegations.

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