Slow Horses

Stories about the British intelligence and security services have long appealed to literary types. A recent review of a new biography of Ian Fleming--not the first, by the way--received front-page coverage. A collection of John LeCarre's letters garnered wide attention. The stories have been made into movies, tv series, and streaming vehicles. Most have lost count, for example, of how many James Bond pictures have been filmed, long past the slim half-dozen or so novels Fleming wrote.

One series I recently watched after receiving strong recommendations from friends is Slow Horses. It's a British production starring Gary Oldman, who starred as LeCarre's most compelling character in the most recent version--this one on film--of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This new series is about MI5, the British domestic secret service. I haven't read whether the depiction is any more true to form than LeCarre's rendition of "tradecraft." 

Slow Horses is based on novels by Mick Herron. I enjoyed it enough to pick up one of his novels in his Slough House series. Slough House is the decrepit building where agents and other staff at the service are relegated after screwing up in one big way or another. In the tradition of these services appearing as corrupt, usually the innocent, or at least the wrong person is the one sent to this purgatory. Master of the house is a highly capable but totally undisciplined agent played by Oldman. He's cynical to the core, dresses sloppily and totally atrociously, and constantly berates those who work for him as losers. He even farts to emphasize whatever he's saying.

In the end, he and his losers end up solving the mysteries, exposing either the incompetence or malfeasance, even complete corruption, of the somewhat pompous leadership of the service and the denizens of headquarters. Reality is conveyed when attractive and shrewd agents at Slough House whom you've come to enjoy fall off the series, usually violently.

Oldman has the chance to depict a character far more amusing yet brilliant as George Smiley, LeCarre's favorite spymaster. He wears suits and shirts that may have been laundered ages ago, constantly shows up the bosses--in this case, the "Second Desk," or deputy chief, perfectly played by Kristen Scott Thomas. The internal affairs crew are the major villains, along with dubious cosmopolitans who usually are Russian agents. Internal affairs ruffians are "the dogs." 

These in-group slang titles are reminiscent of LeCarre's "lamplighters" and "scalphunters." The plots are well-crafted and the personal lives and idiosyncrasies of the Slough House rejects are explored to great dramatic as well as comic effect. I'm enthusiastic enough to have picked up Herron's new novel in this series, The Secret Hours. I can't reveal the ending even f I wanted to play the spoiler, because I just started reading it, and I never know whodunit until the final page, when I'm usually surprised. My wife, who devours mysteries, often has a clear idea of the ending by the time she finishes the first chapter.

Glenstone and The Holdovers

Had a wonderful time today on my first visit to Glenstone, the art museum set in a sprawling grassy and woodsy large expansive setting out in Montgomery County, Maryland. There's a number of large outdoor pieces by Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, and quite a few others. The two buildings complement each other. The Pavilions are about a dozen large- and small-room galleries with a beautiful central pool that has grasses along the sides and a nice deck to sit out on. 

An Ellsworth Kelly retrospective was the featured exhibition covering his whole and varied career. Other rooms featured many different contemporary painters and sculptors. The Gallery was a more traditional design with an exhibit called Iconoclasts that had many well-known moderns--Calder, DeKooning, Pollock, Krasner, Yves Klein, Franz Kline, and many others. Two nice places for coffee and lunch--the Patio is outdoors and the Cafe indoors. Nice walks all around and between the installations and buildings.

Watched The Holdovers on streaming channel and thoroughly enjoyed it. Paul Giamatti is one of the most consistently superb actors who is on scene for the whole picture. His character is somehow likeable despite being deeply cynical and somewhat mean to his students at a classic New England prep school. He opens up when he's stuck staying at school over the Christmas holiday with a few students who also have no place to go home to. 

The settings are beautiful, of course--New England in the winter--and a trip to Boston allows some nice shots of familiar and other places there. Good performances by everyone but Giamatti holds the pic together in fine fashion. He was put up for the Best Actor Oscar but it was clear that that was the recognition he would get, not the Oscar; he's deserved one for many of his film performances.

La Forza del Destino at the Met in HD

The matinee yesterday of La Forza del Destino was magnificent. I saw it in a movie house that carries The Met in HD series. I wanted to see it because this is an opera I love, for the music and singing. It is as good in those respects as any Verdi opera, beginning with the overture which is probably the best of any of Verdi's and is often played on its own by orchestras. The outstanding conductor was the Met's current Music Director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, who also conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra and produced an immaculate musical rendition.

This performance was a chance to see the Met's new production, the first in 30 years and apparently the first series of performances in 20 years. It's hard to believe that it's been that long. The Met used to put this opera on frequently. Some of the Met worthies interviewed during the intervals claimed that it was the need for several great singers that caused the lengthy hiatus.

If so, Lise Davidsen, our Leonora, is the answer to the prayers of  lovers of La Forza. The Norwegian soprano has conquered many of the world's greatest opera stages in the past couple of years, and now she has added something, something wonderful, from the Italian repertory to her triumphs with Wagner and Richard Strauss. She has a lovely clear tone and can ascend to any note without any straining. In the opening scene, her formal dress was not as flattering as the trench coat and hermit's robe she wore in subsequent scenes. I'd have been satisfied whatever she wore, but she is a handsome woman who looked good in the coat and robe.

Her Pace, pace mia Dio near the end of the opera conjured up memories of hearing Leontyne Price, who loved this opera, sing the great concluding aria. She has already sung the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and next season will perform the title role in Tosca.

 I was not familiar with the rest of the cast, but that just is evidence of the few operas I've seen or hard in the past years of the pandemic. Tenor Brian Jagde as Don Alvaro started out a bit cold in the opening scene--he's only on stage then for 10 minutes--and would not appear for another hour after both the Inn and Convent scenes. He shone in his duets with Igor Golovatenko, the baritone who was a superb Don Carlo, one of the most revenge-fueled characters in all of opera. He reminded me of the wonderful Siberian baritone of only a few years ago, Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 

Patrick Carfizzi was an effective grouchy Melitone, if not particularly oriented toward the basso buffo comedic side of the role. With his gray brush cut, though, he was a perfect figure of a priest. Judit Kutasi was an entertaining Preziosilla (mezzo), although her Rataplan somehow didn't pack the punch this lighter interlude usually provides in the middle of the opera. It may have been the paucity of her camp followers in the scene when she sings that catchy number that limited the impact of the scene.

Soloman Howard, a young and very formidable bass, was cast both as Padre Guardiano and Leonora's father, the Marquis of Calatrava. I especially enjoyed his deep tones as the Padre and felt that having him return in the closing scene as the father was totally wrong-headed. The new production is set in today's world, which is not an easy thing to do with a plot and libretto that are extremely unbelievable even for opera. Mostly, it worked as most productions of truly great operas usually do. The crazy libretto, however, may have kept the Met from reviving La Forza for so many years. It was fun to see everyone in the cast included in the closing (and only) curtain call.

I think the relatively short run at the Met, which began in late February and now is either finished or nearly so, reflected a fear that so many opera people are unfamiliar with this fine middle-period Verdi stalwart. They shouldn't have worried, at least about attendance at the opera house, because Ms. Davidsen undoubtedly is already a huge draw. I was disappointed that the theater where I saw the opera, in Ballston in Arlington, Va., was not at all packed. Previously, meaning four or five years ago, this theater was full for the Met offerings. Probably the lingering fears, especially of older patrons, diminished the size of th audience. 

I had contemplated going to New York but will admit that ticket prices, along with travel costs, militated against the trip. The production by itself would win no plaudits, but just seeing and hearing the opera is worth any price of admission. This opera was often onstage during the golden Met years in the 20s and 30s with Rosa Ponselle and many other storied sopranos taking the leading role, along of course with th great Leontyne Price.

Bad Days for the Establishment

The parlous situation in which Harvard found itself over the past weeks probably found many observers exhibiting a full dose of schadenfreude--pleasure at seeing the oldest and probably most prestigious American university roasted over the coals of truly bad publicity. After its governing body, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, known as the Harvard Corporation, had stood behind the university president, Claudine Gay, when she and the presidents of MIT and Penn had fallen into a trap before a Congressional committee intent on taking them down and using the schools' weak response to anti-Semitism on their campuses as a means of attack, it was getting harder for the governing board to keep supporting Gay.

They had named a special committee to investigate some charges of plagiarism by the president. As expected, this inquiry cleared her. But further allegations of plagiarism or miscitation or no citation kept dribbling out. This, more than the concentrated attacks from major donors and right-wing agitators, made the board increasingly unwilling to keep backing the president as it seemed she was digging herself deeper each day. 

It's likely that the Harvard Corporation had resisted the pressure initially because of the Harvard attitude that it didn't take direction from outsiders, and especially not from politicians, such as the Congresswoman who had shown up the three presidents and was herself a Harvard graduate. This is the university where, long ago, when a caller asked to see the then-president of Harvard, Charles Eliot, his secretary responded, "The President has gone to Washington to see Mr. Taft."

Harvard seems to have had little experience in crisis management. A large portion of the faculty had registered its support of President Gay. But it would appear that no one on the governing board or its staff had taken the time to explore with Gay whether there was more to the plagiarism charges. There was. Thus the Corporation was caught in the worst kind of posture: more charges and evidence dribbling out when they had thought they had doused the fire.

This turn of events also diminished the Corporation's reliance on Harvard's long-established hauteur. Unlike most institutions, Harvard's natural response to anyone criticizing the university was to ignore allegations as beneath its dignity even to respond. Since the charges didn't go away even after the Corporation had initially cleared Gay and reiterated its support, the rarely challenged Corporation had no place to go but to fold.

It now appears that Gay was told to get her resignation statement ready and the Corporation prepared its own announcement. Fortunately for the governing board, a qualified Provost was on hand to serve as interim President. When the leading critics--representing right-wingers and major donors--were savoring their victory, a counterattack was launched at MIT, whose leader, the third president at the hearing, had withstood pressure to resign. It turned out that an MIT academic who was the wife of one of the loudest major donors had been accused of plagiarism similar to what Gay had been accused of, and had apparently skated through the inquiry.

The donor responded by promising to launch a plagiarism investigation of the MIT President and just about everyone on the faculty at the school. This may have been an unwise feint in that it seems inevitable that any such inquiry would take time--presumably the donor could afford the significant cost--and would likely result in all kinds of difficult cases that inevitably arise in this area of academic misbehavior. The institutions could hold out while this fishing expedition searched through huge amounts of paper, all of which would need to be evaluated.

Lastly, the defense of free speech offered by the three presidents at the hearing was vitiated by the sorry history of the institutions' hypocrisy. They insisted that statements favoring genocide and that were thus anti-Semitic might not be held violations of the schools' conduct codes unless the speech became conduct. This is an admittedly complex area but the schools were defending free speech after coming down hard on those faculty members who resisted such requirements as using a student's preferred pronouns.