I was heading to Indianapolis for a conference so I decided to make a real trip of this jaunt, riding Amtrak's Cardinal through Charlottesville, Staunton, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Cincinnati to Indianapolis; then, three days later, hopped on the Hoosier State at 6 one morning, then changed in Chicago's Union Station to the Southwest Chief for Los Angeles.
Each train was either on time or early, not that Amtrak doesn't pad the schedules just a bit. But the ride was a delight--especially the Chief, which is a direct descendant of the Santa Fe's famed Super Chief, heading west through Galesburg, thence across the Mississippi at Fort Madison, Iowa, on to Kansas City, then past Dodge in the middle of the night and across southeastern Colorado to New Mexico, Arizona, and on into L.A.
Remember the old trick question that the Santa Fe never did go to Santa Fe--some folks I met on board got off at Lamy, where you shuttle from the dusty station named after Willa Cather's memorable archbishop to New Mexico's capital. The Chief is among Amtrak's premier western trains--full diner, lounge car with dome-like windows, good service. The Cardinal is a much smaller train--the Capitol Limited makes the Washington-Chicago run through Pittsburgh in faster time but runs almost entirely at night--with only one sleeper (the Chief had four or five) and a half-diner where the waiters were hard put to fit everyone in and get them served very efficiently.
We came back on a quick United flight from LAX, under five hours. It was fine but when you take the train, you really get an idea of what this country is like. Lots of open space still out west--sure, someone owns it and is mining it if there's anything underneath worth extracting--but miles of sagebrush and mountains and deserts.
The Hoosier State runs from Indy to Chicago on the days the Cardinal doesn't. It had about eight deadheads--empty cars being taken to Chicago for use on other trains--but only two open coaches, no diner, no cafe, no nothing, lucky we had rest rooms, I suppose, for the five-hour journey. But you only realize that Indiana and Illinois are mostly flat prairies while right over the river in Iowa, you go through hills aplenty.
Chicago's Union Station, now handling what it once took four separate stations to operate, seems bustling since all four long-distance western trains leave within a two-hour span. And Amtrak treats the sleeper passengers nicely--a lounge serves you as well as any airline's, not that that's saying that much.
L.A., of course, welcomes you at the wonderful southwest-styled Union Station--I almost looked for the Fred Harvey's--which is also busy with commuters and the new LA subway system. Much still to see and do in the greater LA world--the LA County Musuem of Art, the new American art building and Chinese garden at the Huntington, and yes, the Nixon library and museum in Yorba Linda, which offers some light relief, even after the government took it over from the glorifying foundation.
Saw the Pacific on a drive down to La Jolla and it remains a fabulous sight to behold. And then there's the Valley, replete with marvelous delis and the Brat Brothers on Ventura, celebrated on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Ives, Bernstein & Rouse
A brief visit to New York included my first New York Philharmonic concert in years. We were attracted by the scheduling of Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony, which requires resources of orchestra, chorus, and rehearsal such that it doesn't get on symphony programs all that often. Plus many people put Ives in the rather massive category of modern music they don't get.
Ives, however, has wonderful uber-American elements in his music. He loved bands and church hymns, so his works are full of them. I had forgotten that he was so sophisticated a composer that the references are often brief and not all that long and thus not always able to register as you move from hearing one and listening for more.
The symphony runs about 35 minutes and is sufficiently complex as to require a second conductor to assist the Philharmonic's dynamic young leader, Alan Gilbert. I gather that the second conductor (the NY Phil's associate conductor) guides selected parts of the orchestra but I can't be definitive on that. There was also a large chorus, made up of apparently star members of major New York choral groups and styled as the New York Choral Consortium. They sang hymns in the first movement and then briefly in the finale--I wished they were involved in more.
The Ives left us at the end feeling a bit less than overwhelmed. Lots of clashing sound and yes, fury, but not much became clear as to what he was really aiming to achieve. I always loved the concept that motivated him--he liked trying to compose what it would sound like if two bands marched toward each other--but in the hall, it was hard to discern what was going on.
The Bernstein was a serenade, which really was a violin concerto, and featured the marvelous soloist, Joshua Bell. His virtuosity, combined with Bernstein's usual exciting, attracting themes, made this the highlight of the evening, even if the programmatic reference to Plato's Symposium may have left me less than able to grasp everything he may have intended to convey in the piece. Bell always is exciting to watch as well as hear--he does fantastic things with his fiddle.
The curtain-raiser (even if there was no curtain, of course) was Christopher Rouse's short piece based on Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It was echt-modern and not as exciting or interesting as the Ives. Using a Poe story is fine but I can't say that the product stirred much response; it proved very difficult to gather what he was seeking to do.
I'm not sure if this was a typical Philharmonic crowd--compared to years ago, when I last attended one of their concerts in the Pierre Boulez days, and half the audience walked out after Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht--but the house was mostly full and these days, most folks don't dress up for concerts any more. On that front, it was fun to see the orchestra players in full evening dress--tails--while the conductors and soloist were attired in fashionable black "modern" non-suit suits.
Ives, however, has wonderful uber-American elements in his music. He loved bands and church hymns, so his works are full of them. I had forgotten that he was so sophisticated a composer that the references are often brief and not all that long and thus not always able to register as you move from hearing one and listening for more.
The symphony runs about 35 minutes and is sufficiently complex as to require a second conductor to assist the Philharmonic's dynamic young leader, Alan Gilbert. I gather that the second conductor (the NY Phil's associate conductor) guides selected parts of the orchestra but I can't be definitive on that. There was also a large chorus, made up of apparently star members of major New York choral groups and styled as the New York Choral Consortium. They sang hymns in the first movement and then briefly in the finale--I wished they were involved in more.
The Ives left us at the end feeling a bit less than overwhelmed. Lots of clashing sound and yes, fury, but not much became clear as to what he was really aiming to achieve. I always loved the concept that motivated him--he liked trying to compose what it would sound like if two bands marched toward each other--but in the hall, it was hard to discern what was going on.
The Bernstein was a serenade, which really was a violin concerto, and featured the marvelous soloist, Joshua Bell. His virtuosity, combined with Bernstein's usual exciting, attracting themes, made this the highlight of the evening, even if the programmatic reference to Plato's Symposium may have left me less than able to grasp everything he may have intended to convey in the piece. Bell always is exciting to watch as well as hear--he does fantastic things with his fiddle.
The curtain-raiser (even if there was no curtain, of course) was Christopher Rouse's short piece based on Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It was echt-modern and not as exciting or interesting as the Ives. Using a Poe story is fine but I can't say that the product stirred much response; it proved very difficult to gather what he was seeking to do.
I'm not sure if this was a typical Philharmonic crowd--compared to years ago, when I last attended one of their concerts in the Pierre Boulez days, and half the audience walked out after Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht--but the house was mostly full and these days, most folks don't dress up for concerts any more. On that front, it was fun to see the orchestra players in full evening dress--tails--while the conductors and soloist were attired in fashionable black "modern" non-suit suits.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Getting Obits Right
Neither of the two newspapers I read daily seems to get their obituaries right. The Washington Post does try to run an obit for almost anyone, but rarely runs them before weeks have passed since the subject's death. You have to be very important to have a story run the day after or even the next day after that.
Being very important doesn't get you an obit in the N.Y. Times anymore. Now the obituaries there--yes, if you're a truly world figure, you'll get one as a news story--focus on people who are, for lack of a better word, quirky. Someone who gave an unusual performance of something or other or someone who excelled in an art that remains mostly obscure.
I thought about this today when I read the death notices--the ones in tiny print--in the Times. This is where people who previously were regarded as significant, people who had made major societal contributions or been influential leaders of powerful or prominent or vital institutions, now are remembered. In previous Times, the paper would have written obits about them--now their heirs or institutions pay premium prices for lengthy recitations in the agate type.
Two notices--both very long--stood out today. One was about a Dr. Richard A. Bader, who clearly was a major medical figure with a distinguished career at Mt. Sinai in New York, complete with major research, fabled teaching and clinical prowess, and overall lasting impact on generations of patients, colleagues, and students.
The other was about Dr. Gerald W. Lynch, who was president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York, for decades. Dr. Lynch, I learned from the notice, had actually saved the college back in the '70s when budget-cutters wanted to kill it. Not only did he preserve it, he was the mastermind behind a new campus and was lauded by the present incumbent and the Chancellor of CUNY at the time of Lynch's retirement.
At one time, there would have been genuine obituaries about these major New York City figures. But not now. The rather warped view the newspaper now takes in seeking out rather weird deaths to report reminds me of when it reformed its obituary practice many years ago--in the 1960s, I believe--to make obituaries less worshipful and more news-oriented. The then-new style presented the pluses and minuses of the deceased, something different from the prior practice of respectful attention to career and accomplishments.
In retrospect, I should have seen where that shift would lead--to the present strange kind of obit. One of the first major figures chronicled in the new, very critical kind of obituary was, as the princes of the church were then styled, Francis Cardinal Spellman, long one of New York's and the nation's most powerful clerics.
The late cardinal certainly had both fervent admirers and harsh critics. One who had great regard for him was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. In a column he noted that how the Times had approached writing about the cardinal produced something less than worshipful prose. He added deliciously that the cardinal's power during his life had been so great that Buckley believed the newspaper would never have written something so critical of the cardinal had the latter still been alive. It was, he concluded, all the more reason to mourn his passing.
April 24 Post-Script: I was wrong about the Times, as a day or two later, they ran a fairly long obit on Gerald Lynch. Oh well, there are plenty of other juicy long death notices most days that don't get full obit treatment.
Being very important doesn't get you an obit in the N.Y. Times anymore. Now the obituaries there--yes, if you're a truly world figure, you'll get one as a news story--focus on people who are, for lack of a better word, quirky. Someone who gave an unusual performance of something or other or someone who excelled in an art that remains mostly obscure.
I thought about this today when I read the death notices--the ones in tiny print--in the Times. This is where people who previously were regarded as significant, people who had made major societal contributions or been influential leaders of powerful or prominent or vital institutions, now are remembered. In previous Times, the paper would have written obits about them--now their heirs or institutions pay premium prices for lengthy recitations in the agate type.
Two notices--both very long--stood out today. One was about a Dr. Richard A. Bader, who clearly was a major medical figure with a distinguished career at Mt. Sinai in New York, complete with major research, fabled teaching and clinical prowess, and overall lasting impact on generations of patients, colleagues, and students.
The other was about Dr. Gerald W. Lynch, who was president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York, for decades. Dr. Lynch, I learned from the notice, had actually saved the college back in the '70s when budget-cutters wanted to kill it. Not only did he preserve it, he was the mastermind behind a new campus and was lauded by the present incumbent and the Chancellor of CUNY at the time of Lynch's retirement.
At one time, there would have been genuine obituaries about these major New York City figures. But not now. The rather warped view the newspaper now takes in seeking out rather weird deaths to report reminds me of when it reformed its obituary practice many years ago--in the 1960s, I believe--to make obituaries less worshipful and more news-oriented. The then-new style presented the pluses and minuses of the deceased, something different from the prior practice of respectful attention to career and accomplishments.
In retrospect, I should have seen where that shift would lead--to the present strange kind of obit. One of the first major figures chronicled in the new, very critical kind of obituary was, as the princes of the church were then styled, Francis Cardinal Spellman, long one of New York's and the nation's most powerful clerics.
The late cardinal certainly had both fervent admirers and harsh critics. One who had great regard for him was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. In a column he noted that how the Times had approached writing about the cardinal produced something less than worshipful prose. He added deliciously that the cardinal's power during his life had been so great that Buckley believed the newspaper would never have written something so critical of the cardinal had the latter still been alive. It was, he concluded, all the more reason to mourn his passing.
April 24 Post-Script: I was wrong about the Times, as a day or two later, they ran a fairly long obit on Gerald Lynch. Oh well, there are plenty of other juicy long death notices most days that don't get full obit treatment.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
The Milk Snatcher
She was a mean, hard-ass woman who screwed up Britain just like Reagan started the move toward greater inequality in the U.S. And many, many people in the UK understood her for what she was: a single-minded fanatic determined to steal from the poor to aid the rich. Only the U.S. media remains enthralled by her--reflecting the indirect influence of the malign Rupert Murdoch.
Most Americans know little about her and care less. But to the Brits, she was the personification of the "bloody Tories." Reactionaries on both sides of the pond have made great gains in the past few decades mostly because pusillanimous opponents--like Clinton and Obama--won't take them on directly. The GOP and the Tories have no reluctance to engage in the most down-and-dirty tactics but we have a President now who tries to compromise with people who have no interest in it. He also paid no attention to the sleaze and dirty tactics that the Republicans used to capture the House and take charge of gerrymandering districts across the country to keep control even when the Dems got more votes last year.
With Thatcher, what you saw was what you got. She was a shameless apologist and advocate for no-holds-barred capitalism--this precipitated the financial crisis here and in Britain for which almost no bankers or other fiscal denizens have paid any price whatsoever. She started as education minister and did indeed show her true stripes by cutting out support for poor families' children getting milk at school.
Unlike our supine and hogwashed public, Brits don't ;pay as much mind to what their often blatantly biased media spout. As noted, it remains totally wrong to me to assume that Americans thought very much of her or even thought about her or knew about her at all. She of course benefitted from a low level of opponent--Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot--not bad men but somewhat inept politicians. Tony Blair played a con game by convincing the Labour Party that he could win by riding the middle. So we get a conservative regime followed by a moderate one that does nothing much to turn things around.
The same was true of Clinton. Blair, of course, was sufficiently off his rocker to be persuaded by, of all people, Bush Junior, to support the Iraq war. He also must have tired of holding off Gordon Brown, and must have gotten some minor schadenfreude from seeing the clumsy Brown blow his big chance to get elected in his own right.
Right now, even with a centre-right coalition governing in Britain, things look more promising than they do here. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is gaining in repute as the weaknesses of Cameron--the perfect Etonian--are becoming clear even to the Tories. But if you read or listen to American media, you would think that the left everywhere are inept.
Most Americans know little about her and care less. But to the Brits, she was the personification of the "bloody Tories." Reactionaries on both sides of the pond have made great gains in the past few decades mostly because pusillanimous opponents--like Clinton and Obama--won't take them on directly. The GOP and the Tories have no reluctance to engage in the most down-and-dirty tactics but we have a President now who tries to compromise with people who have no interest in it. He also paid no attention to the sleaze and dirty tactics that the Republicans used to capture the House and take charge of gerrymandering districts across the country to keep control even when the Dems got more votes last year.
With Thatcher, what you saw was what you got. She was a shameless apologist and advocate for no-holds-barred capitalism--this precipitated the financial crisis here and in Britain for which almost no bankers or other fiscal denizens have paid any price whatsoever. She started as education minister and did indeed show her true stripes by cutting out support for poor families' children getting milk at school.
Unlike our supine and hogwashed public, Brits don't ;pay as much mind to what their often blatantly biased media spout. As noted, it remains totally wrong to me to assume that Americans thought very much of her or even thought about her or knew about her at all. She of course benefitted from a low level of opponent--Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot--not bad men but somewhat inept politicians. Tony Blair played a con game by convincing the Labour Party that he could win by riding the middle. So we get a conservative regime followed by a moderate one that does nothing much to turn things around.
The same was true of Clinton. Blair, of course, was sufficiently off his rocker to be persuaded by, of all people, Bush Junior, to support the Iraq war. He also must have tired of holding off Gordon Brown, and must have gotten some minor schadenfreude from seeing the clumsy Brown blow his big chance to get elected in his own right.
Right now, even with a centre-right coalition governing in Britain, things look more promising than they do here. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is gaining in repute as the weaknesses of Cameron--the perfect Etonian--are becoming clear even to the Tories. But if you read or listen to American media, you would think that the left everywhere are inept.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Take Out the Prexy
Not that the rapid firing of the Rutgers basketball coach was a surprise once the conclusively incriminating--ah, the legal influence persists, but more on that later--video went viral, as they now say, but with the fairly speedy subsequent ousting of the athletic director, attention should now focus on the justly-maligned President, Barchi.
Apparently he had already alienated the faculty by dint of his appointment and efforts to effectuate the cost-cutting campaign envisaged by the overrated Gov. Chris Christie. But lawyers especially should have seen through the main smokescreen he threw up that the university was obliged to pay the departing coach his $100K bonus because Rice wasn't fired for cause. I've dealt with public-sector personnel processes enough to know how arcane they can be and frustrate the most well-intentioned manager. But if you can't say that firing a coach for striking players and aiming basketballs at them clearly seeking impact was for cause, well, what can you fire him for?
This statement was not challenged by anyone I could notice. Barchi openly based his outrageous position on advice provided by legal counsel. Those lawyers should be hung out to dry because it was an attempt to provide what today has become the ultimate cover for bad behavior: we had to do it under contract.
Of course, sanctity of contract remains more than a legal maxim--it's close to holy writ for our Supreme Court, among others. And institutions which enter into dumb contracts deserve to pay the price. Yesterday, for example, the Justice Department was told by an arbitrator that it had failed to follow proper procedures in slapping the wrists of the prosecutors who witheld evidence in the Ted Stevens case. You will recall that Attorney General Holder had to move to dismiss the case post-conviction and posthumously in the case in Stevens because of these missteps. The Department had been dissatisfied with a review by a line attorney--required by the rules--so they had a more pliable upper-level manager re-review the matter and reinstate the ordered discipline, which was quite modest in any event. They lost before the arbitrator because he rightly held that they had violated their own procedures.
When I was heading a court office, we caught an employee processing phony vouchers. Of course, when dealing with someone in a fiscal position, we wanted to fire her. I had to restrain the then-chief judge from doing just that--by court order, of course--because I knew that the employee would be reinstated by an arbitrator or other review panel. Eventually the employee quit, recognizing that ultimately she would be ousted for cause. So it's not always simple, direct, or easy to get rid of someone who has clearly violated relevant and important rules. And it's absolutely right that those in charge must pay attention to the rules and follow the proper procedures.
That said--Barchi and his counsel should be fired just for presenting the situation so wrongly and for attempting to place the focus on their being constrained by rules instead of their ignoring the whistle-blower and his information until the world got to see the video evidence. They wanted to be in the Big Ten and some coach flipping basketballs at players wasn't going to stop them. Instead, they are now trying to sic the FBI on the whistle-blower for extortion, having trumped up a case to fire him instead of the offending coach.
Compared to this coach and these administrators, Joe Paterno at least did what he thought he was required to do by the rules as he knew them: report the complaint to those in authority above him. Yes, it turned out not to have been enough under all the circumstances but at least he was doing what he knew he had to do. Rutgers clearly learned nothing from the Penn State debacle and is digging itself ever deeper into ignominy.
Apparently he had already alienated the faculty by dint of his appointment and efforts to effectuate the cost-cutting campaign envisaged by the overrated Gov. Chris Christie. But lawyers especially should have seen through the main smokescreen he threw up that the university was obliged to pay the departing coach his $100K bonus because Rice wasn't fired for cause. I've dealt with public-sector personnel processes enough to know how arcane they can be and frustrate the most well-intentioned manager. But if you can't say that firing a coach for striking players and aiming basketballs at them clearly seeking impact was for cause, well, what can you fire him for?
This statement was not challenged by anyone I could notice. Barchi openly based his outrageous position on advice provided by legal counsel. Those lawyers should be hung out to dry because it was an attempt to provide what today has become the ultimate cover for bad behavior: we had to do it under contract.
Of course, sanctity of contract remains more than a legal maxim--it's close to holy writ for our Supreme Court, among others. And institutions which enter into dumb contracts deserve to pay the price. Yesterday, for example, the Justice Department was told by an arbitrator that it had failed to follow proper procedures in slapping the wrists of the prosecutors who witheld evidence in the Ted Stevens case. You will recall that Attorney General Holder had to move to dismiss the case post-conviction and posthumously in the case in Stevens because of these missteps. The Department had been dissatisfied with a review by a line attorney--required by the rules--so they had a more pliable upper-level manager re-review the matter and reinstate the ordered discipline, which was quite modest in any event. They lost before the arbitrator because he rightly held that they had violated their own procedures.
When I was heading a court office, we caught an employee processing phony vouchers. Of course, when dealing with someone in a fiscal position, we wanted to fire her. I had to restrain the then-chief judge from doing just that--by court order, of course--because I knew that the employee would be reinstated by an arbitrator or other review panel. Eventually the employee quit, recognizing that ultimately she would be ousted for cause. So it's not always simple, direct, or easy to get rid of someone who has clearly violated relevant and important rules. And it's absolutely right that those in charge must pay attention to the rules and follow the proper procedures.
That said--Barchi and his counsel should be fired just for presenting the situation so wrongly and for attempting to place the focus on their being constrained by rules instead of their ignoring the whistle-blower and his information until the world got to see the video evidence. They wanted to be in the Big Ten and some coach flipping basketballs at players wasn't going to stop them. Instead, they are now trying to sic the FBI on the whistle-blower for extortion, having trumped up a case to fire him instead of the offending coach.
Compared to this coach and these administrators, Joe Paterno at least did what he thought he was required to do by the rules as he knew them: report the complaint to those in authority above him. Yes, it turned out not to have been enough under all the circumstances but at least he was doing what he knew he had to do. Rutgers clearly learned nothing from the Penn State debacle and is digging itself ever deeper into ignominy.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Bellini & Kurt Weill
True opera devotees would not readily miss seeing any performance of Bellini's Norma, which opened at the Washington National Opera at Kennedy Center last night. One reason is that this is a magnificent piece of music, with perhaps the finest singing for a great coloratura soprano and a mezzo, too. It's always been a well regarded opera but Callas gave it new life in the 50s, although she also got hooted off the stage--mostly in Italy, of course--when she dared to perform when not in good voice. It is so demanding that few sopranos would try to sing it unless confident that they could negotiate its major demands on the singer's prowess.
My first time seeing it was when the Met used to go on tour, beginning in Boston, where I happened to be in law school. The stars that night who lit up even the drab and ill-suited Hynes Auditorium were none other than Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne. They were fantastic. Some years later at the Met in New York I saw Montserrat Caballe, who was also excellent.
Last night the young soprano--she won the Met auditions two or three years ago--Angela Meade tried her hand at this huge challenge for any singer. I thought she was marvelous. She captured the great first-act aria, Casta Diva, which she had performed for her audition--it was presented in the documentary The Audition on PBS, which I saw. Like Sutherland, she sang it beautifully without straining--both made this torturously difficult aria sound almost easy. The veteran mezzo Dolores Zajick was Adalgisa to Meade's Norma, and both excelled in the famous duets, especially Mira o Norma.
I'm always surprised that this is an opera that is not as well known outside opera circles because its demands make its performances always special occasions. Perhaps the last time I recall opera making the front page was in the 50s when Callas walked out before the scheduled performance at the Rome Opera, leaving, among many others, the President of Italy in the lurch. Don't miss it--if you're now in or coming to D.C. in the next few weeks or whenever you might see it scheduled.
Today we saw a local company, the IN Series, mount From Berlin to Broadway With Kurt Weill, which I believe played in New York some years ago. It's a nice compilation of some of his best work--first half the works with Brecht that he composed in Germany, the second his Broadway phase from arriving here in 1934 until his untimely death in 1950. The strong first half featured several selections from The Threepenny Opera, which was memorably performed in English in the 1950s at what was then the Theatre de Lys in the Village. A friend who was with us was put off by what she called the lack of edge to this performance--it was too "nice" in that it lacked the cutting guttural sharpness that Weill's spouse, Lotte Lenya, as well as others possessed--including whoever played the narrating Streetsinger in the 1950s production.
The singers were young and energetic and I still adore "Pirate Jenny", made famous by Lenya. In the Broadway half, the show-stopper was "The Saga of Jenny" (a different Jenny, to be sure) from Lady in the Dark, a Weill musical I'd love to see, and which perhaps we may get a chance to see, since revivals are now the thing. It was staged by Moss Hart and was the first gig as lyricist by Ira Gershwin, one of the greatest of lyricists, after George's death. One is overwhelmed by the writers who provided lyrics for Weill, in addition to Bertolt Brecht (in German) and Ira Gershwin, there were Ogden Nash, Langston Hughes, and Maxwell Anderson, who rose to the challenge of Lost in the Stars, based on Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing many Weill songs that were new to me, and I also recalled that much as I like the recording by the original singer of "September Song"--Walter Huston, of all people, in Knickerbocker Holiday, no one would suggest that he had even a good voice. Yet his rendition had great charm. Here, the young man singing it was fine, but I realized how much Huston's style meant to his performance's strong impact.
My first time seeing it was when the Met used to go on tour, beginning in Boston, where I happened to be in law school. The stars that night who lit up even the drab and ill-suited Hynes Auditorium were none other than Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne. They were fantastic. Some years later at the Met in New York I saw Montserrat Caballe, who was also excellent.
Last night the young soprano--she won the Met auditions two or three years ago--Angela Meade tried her hand at this huge challenge for any singer. I thought she was marvelous. She captured the great first-act aria, Casta Diva, which she had performed for her audition--it was presented in the documentary The Audition on PBS, which I saw. Like Sutherland, she sang it beautifully without straining--both made this torturously difficult aria sound almost easy. The veteran mezzo Dolores Zajick was Adalgisa to Meade's Norma, and both excelled in the famous duets, especially Mira o Norma.
I'm always surprised that this is an opera that is not as well known outside opera circles because its demands make its performances always special occasions. Perhaps the last time I recall opera making the front page was in the 50s when Callas walked out before the scheduled performance at the Rome Opera, leaving, among many others, the President of Italy in the lurch. Don't miss it--if you're now in or coming to D.C. in the next few weeks or whenever you might see it scheduled.
Today we saw a local company, the IN Series, mount From Berlin to Broadway With Kurt Weill, which I believe played in New York some years ago. It's a nice compilation of some of his best work--first half the works with Brecht that he composed in Germany, the second his Broadway phase from arriving here in 1934 until his untimely death in 1950. The strong first half featured several selections from The Threepenny Opera, which was memorably performed in English in the 1950s at what was then the Theatre de Lys in the Village. A friend who was with us was put off by what she called the lack of edge to this performance--it was too "nice" in that it lacked the cutting guttural sharpness that Weill's spouse, Lotte Lenya, as well as others possessed--including whoever played the narrating Streetsinger in the 1950s production.
The singers were young and energetic and I still adore "Pirate Jenny", made famous by Lenya. In the Broadway half, the show-stopper was "The Saga of Jenny" (a different Jenny, to be sure) from Lady in the Dark, a Weill musical I'd love to see, and which perhaps we may get a chance to see, since revivals are now the thing. It was staged by Moss Hart and was the first gig as lyricist by Ira Gershwin, one of the greatest of lyricists, after George's death. One is overwhelmed by the writers who provided lyrics for Weill, in addition to Bertolt Brecht (in German) and Ira Gershwin, there were Ogden Nash, Langston Hughes, and Maxwell Anderson, who rose to the challenge of Lost in the Stars, based on Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.
I thoroughly enjoyed hearing many Weill songs that were new to me, and I also recalled that much as I like the recording by the original singer of "September Song"--Walter Huston, of all people, in Knickerbocker Holiday, no one would suggest that he had even a good voice. Yet his rendition had great charm. Here, the young man singing it was fine, but I realized how much Huston's style meant to his performance's strong impact.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Seeing the Supremes
Every so often I spend a morning at the U.S. Supreme Court watching oral arguments--I go every few years when there's a case that may have some relevance for me and my work, or when it just seems too interesting to resist the pull. This past Tuesday, I went there to see a case dealing with whether a prisoner at the Lewisburg penitentiary in Pennsylvania could sue the U.S. Government when he was allegedly assaulted by some correctional officers, which is what you call guards if you want to sound like you know something about the prison biz.
Briefly, when you sue the government you in effect have to get the government's permission--it waives a defense called "sovereign immunity" which derives from old legal rules that make it impossible to sue the king, or the sovereign. The U.S. Government allows you to sue it by complying with the Federal Tort Claims Act, which says when you can sue the government. There's an exemption--meaning you can't sue--when a law enforcement officer is performing law enforcement functions. This was what the case I heard was all about.
The most interesting development came after the intermediate appellate court had upheld a trial court ruling that said the prisoner couldn't sue the government because of the exemption. Apparently, all the other regional appeals courts that had ruled on this point had decided the other way, saying the prisoner could sue. Differences among the circuit courts are often the best way to get the Supreme Court to take the case so it can decide which intermediate court decision to uphold.
And the whole picture became even more interesting because the U.S. Government, acting through the person who handles all of its cases in the Supreme Court--the Solicitor General, or the SG--decided to change the government's position after it had won in the intermediate court. The SG filed a brief in the Supreme Court saying that the government had changed its mind, and now said that the other appeals courts were right and that the prisoner could sue the government.
As you might expect, this doesn't happen all that often. The Solicitor General has the authority to tell most other government agencies whether they can appeal to the Supreme Court or not. He claims to act in the interest of justice as well as the interest of the government. This was one time when he clearly was deciding that the government agency--the Bureau of Prisons--was wrong and the prisoner whom the government had defeated in two courts previously was really right.
That's all well and good but the Supreme Court may or may not agree. When the SG changed his mind, the Supreme Court appointed a lawyer to argue the side that otherwise would not have been heard--that the intermediate appellate court that had ruled for the prison was correct. Both lawyers were pretty good--the lawyer for the prisoner, who was from New York, and the appointed lawyer representing the point of view of the intermediate court (and the prison) who was from D.C. The Solicitor General's lawyer, who wears a morning coat to court, also argued--he was given ten minutes of the prisoner's lawyer's half hour. Usually the side with which the SG agrees gives his lawyer that 10 minutes because the SG's office has a lot of credibility with the Supreme Court and often does a better job in its 10 minutes than other lawyers do in a half hour.
There were a lot of questions from the justices--most trying to get to the issue of whether the correctional officers (COs) were law enforcement officers under the relevant legal provision and whether what they were doing was properly defined as a law enforcement function. After the argument was over, I had the feeling that none of the lawyers or the justices really had a very clear idea of what goes on in real-life prisons.
This was the same feeling I had after the second case--which had attracted a lot more attention and dealt with Monsanto, the chemical company, suing a farmer whom the company said had violated its contract with him as to the use of the hybrid, genetically-modified seeds he had bought from the company. This is a big deal case because it conceivably concerns large amounts of money especially if the farmer managed to win. I don't think he will, possibly because he doesn't deserve to win, but also because I didn't think his lawyer was all that effective, and in this situation, he needed to be if the farmer was to have a chance.
The company had one of the small number of real pros who argue cases in the Supreme Court: a former Solicitor General. He did a great job. But I was left with a similar feeling to what I felt after the first case: these lawyers, despite trying hard, didn't really understand the way farms and farmers operate. The lawyers are very sharp but as litigators they learn about lots of businesses or operations in a short period and then go on to the next case. Even these top-drawer legal eagles seemed to lack really solid knowledge and familiarity with the nuts and bolts of how things work, in this case, in the real fields.
I often feel that way about the justices, too. They try to show that they have read the briefs and other documents but sometimes they display the limitations of the process. You just can't know all that you need to through this process. It is clearly a shortcoming of the adversary legal system. And this week, I felt that both cases showed that it makes a big difference at times.
Briefly, when you sue the government you in effect have to get the government's permission--it waives a defense called "sovereign immunity" which derives from old legal rules that make it impossible to sue the king, or the sovereign. The U.S. Government allows you to sue it by complying with the Federal Tort Claims Act, which says when you can sue the government. There's an exemption--meaning you can't sue--when a law enforcement officer is performing law enforcement functions. This was what the case I heard was all about.
The most interesting development came after the intermediate appellate court had upheld a trial court ruling that said the prisoner couldn't sue the government because of the exemption. Apparently, all the other regional appeals courts that had ruled on this point had decided the other way, saying the prisoner could sue. Differences among the circuit courts are often the best way to get the Supreme Court to take the case so it can decide which intermediate court decision to uphold.
And the whole picture became even more interesting because the U.S. Government, acting through the person who handles all of its cases in the Supreme Court--the Solicitor General, or the SG--decided to change the government's position after it had won in the intermediate court. The SG filed a brief in the Supreme Court saying that the government had changed its mind, and now said that the other appeals courts were right and that the prisoner could sue the government.
As you might expect, this doesn't happen all that often. The Solicitor General has the authority to tell most other government agencies whether they can appeal to the Supreme Court or not. He claims to act in the interest of justice as well as the interest of the government. This was one time when he clearly was deciding that the government agency--the Bureau of Prisons--was wrong and the prisoner whom the government had defeated in two courts previously was really right.
That's all well and good but the Supreme Court may or may not agree. When the SG changed his mind, the Supreme Court appointed a lawyer to argue the side that otherwise would not have been heard--that the intermediate appellate court that had ruled for the prison was correct. Both lawyers were pretty good--the lawyer for the prisoner, who was from New York, and the appointed lawyer representing the point of view of the intermediate court (and the prison) who was from D.C. The Solicitor General's lawyer, who wears a morning coat to court, also argued--he was given ten minutes of the prisoner's lawyer's half hour. Usually the side with which the SG agrees gives his lawyer that 10 minutes because the SG's office has a lot of credibility with the Supreme Court and often does a better job in its 10 minutes than other lawyers do in a half hour.
There were a lot of questions from the justices--most trying to get to the issue of whether the correctional officers (COs) were law enforcement officers under the relevant legal provision and whether what they were doing was properly defined as a law enforcement function. After the argument was over, I had the feeling that none of the lawyers or the justices really had a very clear idea of what goes on in real-life prisons.
This was the same feeling I had after the second case--which had attracted a lot more attention and dealt with Monsanto, the chemical company, suing a farmer whom the company said had violated its contract with him as to the use of the hybrid, genetically-modified seeds he had bought from the company. This is a big deal case because it conceivably concerns large amounts of money especially if the farmer managed to win. I don't think he will, possibly because he doesn't deserve to win, but also because I didn't think his lawyer was all that effective, and in this situation, he needed to be if the farmer was to have a chance.
The company had one of the small number of real pros who argue cases in the Supreme Court: a former Solicitor General. He did a great job. But I was left with a similar feeling to what I felt after the first case: these lawyers, despite trying hard, didn't really understand the way farms and farmers operate. The lawyers are very sharp but as litigators they learn about lots of businesses or operations in a short period and then go on to the next case. Even these top-drawer legal eagles seemed to lack really solid knowledge and familiarity with the nuts and bolts of how things work, in this case, in the real fields.
I often feel that way about the justices, too. They try to show that they have read the briefs and other documents but sometimes they display the limitations of the process. You just can't know all that you need to through this process. It is clearly a shortcoming of the adversary legal system. And this week, I felt that both cases showed that it makes a big difference at times.
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