This year's five Kennedy Center Honorees--Mel Brooks, Grace Bumbry, Dave Brubeck, Robert De Niro, and Bruce Springsteen--represented the kind of eclecticism that these selections have manifested over the years. It does seem that the producers are having a harder time coming up with performances truly responsive to the particular outstanding characteristics of the honorees, but all in all, it was a pleasant evening. I'm also continually amazed--and pleased--that tv is willing to put on without censoring the production numbers of "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers. It's also something in D.C. when controversial people get picked for things like this: I recall watching the Pete Seeger documentary on PBS last year and hoping he might be selected, only to learn a few moments later that he had been so Honored in 1994. No one ever looked less comfortable in black tie than Pete. At the other end of the spectrum, Charlton Heston was included in 1997, well after he had become a prominent right-wing spokesman.
That said, a word is needed about one of this year's Honorees, because her career peaked so many years ago that I suspect few watching had much awareness of how great she was. I refer of course to Grace Melzia Bumbry, who built a stellar reputation in the leading opera houses of Europe in the 1950s and 1960s before being acclaimed here in her own country. It was wonderful seeing the black-and-white tapes of her performance at the White House during the Kennedy years.
Bumbry excelled in almost every kind of opera: the bio film at the Honors began by showing how she conquered Bayreuth with her Venus in Wagner's Tannhauser, a role until then reserved--even after World War II--for "Nordic" performers. You could also see from the old footage how absolutely beautiful she was. She was one of the pathbreakers in showing the operatic world that singers could look the part in terms of increasing their dramatic effect.
One had to put the operatic equivalent of two and two together watching the program, however, top discern one of the most amazing aspects of Bumbry's magnificent career. They had clips of her singing the Habanera from Carmen and Vissi d'arte from Tosca. The first is probably the greatest role on the operatic stage for a mezzo-soprano; the latter is a major role for a soprano--Bumbry could do both. Not only that, the Tannhauser excerpt showed she could sing Wagner as well. This demonstrates a range of capabilities that should amaze anyone. And everything she sang was performed in a first-rate manner.
As for the others, Jon Stewart probably was the funniest in his presentation of The Boss. Who knew that the maestro of the Daily Show was from Jersey? Herbie Hancock was able to convey some of the sheer pleasure that all the performing musicians exuded as they played variations on Brubeck's Take Five. Carl Reiner, the straight man for the 200-Year-Old Man routine, was totally straight in introducing Mel Brooks, who was starting to look more like his 2000-year-old character. Meryl Streep, whom I just saw in It's Complicated over the weekend, presented De Niro and made us realize that it is only a matter of time before she is Honored at this event.
Some years ago, I attended this event on a couple of occasions, accompanying my father, who was invited in his capacity of supervisor of benefits for the entertainment unions. They used to have the five Honorees appear together on the stage in those days and it wasn't a great idea--James Cagney, near the end of his life when Honored, was only slightly more mobile than the ageless but 95-year-old leading lady Lynn Fontanne, and one longed for the time when he would dance up the side of the proscenium in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
What Kind of Year?
Getting together with some people who just returned from overseas gave me a chance to ask them how our situation is now seen from abroad. I expect to be out of the country myself in just about a month from now--and one gift I always receive from travel outside the U.S. is to get a far clearer picture of what the world is thinking of what we're doing.
Not surprisingly, the rest of the world thinks Obama has done a lot more than people in the U.S. seem to think. My view is that he's trying to change things and it's far far easier to work to keep the status quo. However, it does also seem that his campaign, which ran like clockwork, has faltered and sputtered this year. Yes, there's a health bill. Could it have been better? Did he really stay out of it and let Congress take the lead so he could be held up by Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson?
But the rest of the world sees how hard it is to get out two places we never should have committed large-scale forces to: Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is simple. The past administration defiantly expanded on the truth of even the sleazy intelligence they had. I think they lied. As for Afghanistan, we should have been chasing Ben Laden and Co., not trying to create a democracy where none has ever existed and trying to control a place where the Russians and the British failed miserably. (Actually, one might even say that Alexander the Great couldn't do it...and he met his death nearby.)
We have to continue to rebuild our alliances and relationships, not taking the position that we will always be the military intervention arm. Example from where my friends just came: Nepal. I was there a few years ago, too. The Maoists--namely, Communist rebels--are winning because the government is corrupt and unrespected. But no one has ever tried to send forces into that unwelcoming terrain at the top of the world. (Yes, the Chinese took over Tibet over the mountains, I know.)
Instead of our organizing some assemblage to go in there, we will likely leave it to India. As well we should. They share a religion, and to some extent, a language, and in many respects, a culture. It's also directly in India's interest not to have a Communist-run state in addition to China on its border. India has been doing far better economically and can also afford to get involved if necessary.
Indonesia has been showing us how it effectively deals with terrorists. We do not need to intervene there. In fact, we will create hatred for the U.S. where little exists in the world's largest Muslim country if we were so short-sighted as to go in there. There are columnists in the Philippines who think the U.S. is poised to take back that country as a colony again. Little do they realize that the U.S. has far greater problems facing us to deal with--beyond taking responsibility for a country that economically remains in trouble because it is run by oligarchs. There has been some cooperation on terrorism. At least that makes sense--since terrorists have hung out down in the south of the Philippines where it is closer to Indonesia than to Manila.
Back home, the media might cut Obama some slack. The market is up significantly. Companies are doing better. Jobs are not. The damage done to our economy by the giveaways of NAFTA perpetrated by Clinton, as well as the corporate international affinity Reagan and both Bushes had have all combined to do a number on our middle class. No country like ours survives without a strong middle class. Roosevelt saved it in the 30s, no matter what some naysayers say now.
Even a watered-down Employee Free Choice Act would help revive the union sector and through it, the middle class. With the number of antiunion people in Congress, Obama will not get the whole thing through--but anything here is better than nothing. Bush 2 slashed away at the middle class, or let corporate America do so, with a Louis XV apres moi, le deluge attitude. It's going to take a good while to undo the damage, and some of it will never be undone. But it can only happen if we keep Obama and the Democrats in and begin to get our fellow citizens to see what the rest of the world does about us.
Not surprisingly, the rest of the world thinks Obama has done a lot more than people in the U.S. seem to think. My view is that he's trying to change things and it's far far easier to work to keep the status quo. However, it does also seem that his campaign, which ran like clockwork, has faltered and sputtered this year. Yes, there's a health bill. Could it have been better? Did he really stay out of it and let Congress take the lead so he could be held up by Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson?
But the rest of the world sees how hard it is to get out two places we never should have committed large-scale forces to: Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is simple. The past administration defiantly expanded on the truth of even the sleazy intelligence they had. I think they lied. As for Afghanistan, we should have been chasing Ben Laden and Co., not trying to create a democracy where none has ever existed and trying to control a place where the Russians and the British failed miserably. (Actually, one might even say that Alexander the Great couldn't do it...and he met his death nearby.)
We have to continue to rebuild our alliances and relationships, not taking the position that we will always be the military intervention arm. Example from where my friends just came: Nepal. I was there a few years ago, too. The Maoists--namely, Communist rebels--are winning because the government is corrupt and unrespected. But no one has ever tried to send forces into that unwelcoming terrain at the top of the world. (Yes, the Chinese took over Tibet over the mountains, I know.)
Instead of our organizing some assemblage to go in there, we will likely leave it to India. As well we should. They share a religion, and to some extent, a language, and in many respects, a culture. It's also directly in India's interest not to have a Communist-run state in addition to China on its border. India has been doing far better economically and can also afford to get involved if necessary.
Indonesia has been showing us how it effectively deals with terrorists. We do not need to intervene there. In fact, we will create hatred for the U.S. where little exists in the world's largest Muslim country if we were so short-sighted as to go in there. There are columnists in the Philippines who think the U.S. is poised to take back that country as a colony again. Little do they realize that the U.S. has far greater problems facing us to deal with--beyond taking responsibility for a country that economically remains in trouble because it is run by oligarchs. There has been some cooperation on terrorism. At least that makes sense--since terrorists have hung out down in the south of the Philippines where it is closer to Indonesia than to Manila.
Back home, the media might cut Obama some slack. The market is up significantly. Companies are doing better. Jobs are not. The damage done to our economy by the giveaways of NAFTA perpetrated by Clinton, as well as the corporate international affinity Reagan and both Bushes had have all combined to do a number on our middle class. No country like ours survives without a strong middle class. Roosevelt saved it in the 30s, no matter what some naysayers say now.
Even a watered-down Employee Free Choice Act would help revive the union sector and through it, the middle class. With the number of antiunion people in Congress, Obama will not get the whole thing through--but anything here is better than nothing. Bush 2 slashed away at the middle class, or let corporate America do so, with a Louis XV apres moi, le deluge attitude. It's going to take a good while to undo the damage, and some of it will never be undone. But it can only happen if we keep Obama and the Democrats in and begin to get our fellow citizens to see what the rest of the world does about us.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Race
It shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm a terrific fan of David Mamet. He's the only contemporary writer I can think of who puts out there how he sees the world--totally unvarnished, highly cynical, and predictable only to the extent that there appears to be no limit to the venality of many of his best characters. Icing the cake is their extraordinary ordinariness. For example, the real estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross are nothing special. They are caught in a no-escape situation and when so trapped, behave like carnivorous hamsters in the cage.
His only weak moments are when he tries to convey an idealistic character such as Karen, played in the original Broadway production of Speed-the-Plow by none other than Madonna. Added to Mamet's seemingly difficulty with capturing the essence of his women characters, Karen never achieves full-dimensional reality.
In his latest, Race, which I saw this afternoon at the wonderful Ethel Barrymore theatre on West 47th St., N.Y., he gives us two lawyers who resemble his usual mainstays--one's white, the other's black, they are partners, and they both seem expert at cutting through all illusions in the best Mamet manner. The other two characters are problem characters--a young black woman lawyer who works with them and has different views of the work, and a white client who poses all the usual problems criminal defendants muster up for their lawyers.
The play has a nice tight plot and some decent interchanges among the characters on the subject most would recognize as the most difficult for any of us to confront. Reviewers have been hard on Mamet, for some reason insisting that he is either too cynical or too presumptuous or too something or other. I felt he tackled a really tough issue and gives us a decent exposition by employing his well-honed ability to cut through a lot of pettifogging and euphemism.
For those of us with a legal background, he also throws around a whole bunch of points and issues, but he subordinates them to the underlying and overarching title subject. This does tend to give the legal side an aura of perhaps less importance and there's some room for argument about how the legal issues relate to the racial ones. Mostly, he is just entirely cynical about the law. Suffice it to say that hardly any party--present on stage or unseen--behaves with any hint of ethics. Law thus to Mamet is merely another field on which the big questions of race may be contested.
His only weak moments are when he tries to convey an idealistic character such as Karen, played in the original Broadway production of Speed-the-Plow by none other than Madonna. Added to Mamet's seemingly difficulty with capturing the essence of his women characters, Karen never achieves full-dimensional reality.
In his latest, Race, which I saw this afternoon at the wonderful Ethel Barrymore theatre on West 47th St., N.Y., he gives us two lawyers who resemble his usual mainstays--one's white, the other's black, they are partners, and they both seem expert at cutting through all illusions in the best Mamet manner. The other two characters are problem characters--a young black woman lawyer who works with them and has different views of the work, and a white client who poses all the usual problems criminal defendants muster up for their lawyers.
The play has a nice tight plot and some decent interchanges among the characters on the subject most would recognize as the most difficult for any of us to confront. Reviewers have been hard on Mamet, for some reason insisting that he is either too cynical or too presumptuous or too something or other. I felt he tackled a really tough issue and gives us a decent exposition by employing his well-honed ability to cut through a lot of pettifogging and euphemism.
For those of us with a legal background, he also throws around a whole bunch of points and issues, but he subordinates them to the underlying and overarching title subject. This does tend to give the legal side an aura of perhaps less importance and there's some room for argument about how the legal issues relate to the racial ones. Mostly, he is just entirely cynical about the law. Suffice it to say that hardly any party--present on stage or unseen--behaves with any hint of ethics. Law thus to Mamet is merely another field on which the big questions of race may be contested.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Patience
It's not easy for someone who used to have a sign on his desk that said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I'd ask for it tomorrow" to counsel patience. But I've been watching as the pundits and various talking heads keep complaining that the President hasn't done this or that already. There are some excellent reasons why he hasn't and I wish we'd hear more about them instead of this carping.
First of all, he inherited an unholy economic mess. We now have a bunch of worriers about the federal debt who never muttered a word during his predecessor's budget busting. We have Wall St. types still aiming to do business the old-fashioned way--by selling crap, dressed up so most people don't understand what it is.
Most important, he inherited a war that was started on lies and weakened the U.S. ability to fight a real war--against Al Quaeda, not Iraq or even Afghanistan. He's in both of those places, stuck because despite his belief that the war was wrong, he won't just pull up stakes.
Next, the Democratic Party doesn't function the way the Republicans do, for better or worse. The GOP is intent on pure destruction. Democrats are usually afraid to stand up for their principles. They are phony populists--if only because they look to big money for their campaigns and there is none in populism. That's why people like Rubin and Summers and Geithner are still around. They weren't actually crooks like Ken Lay and the Enron-ers but they really don't care if Wall Street lays still more eggs that sink the economy.
Bill Maher put it best: we have two partys, a center-right party called the Democrats and a totally crazy party called the Republicans. Democrats were afraid to really go after Bush II or Reagan, despite the expressed intent of both to wreck everything the Democratic Party supposedly stands for. I'll give Obama credit for trying to work with Republicans and look what he's gotten for it. He might as well get ready to unload on them with both barrels--it seems that they do that and everyone expects it. Today is the ultimate day to preach turn the other cheek but I'm afraid it doesn't work in American politics.
I'm slightly disappointed in Obama myself because I thought he stood for something. He doesn't seem to want to get out there and get his hands dirty fighting for anything except to get the bill passed. The Clintons were not very different, as it turned out. I'm starting to think that change is hard to produce in this country today because (1) no one really says how hard it is to attain, given the money needs of political campaigns and the lobbying and (2) there are too few Democrats of the Hubert Humphrey-Ted Kennedy type who will really fight. I'd certainly take LBJ today in view of how he knew how to work the Hill and his own dedication to principles that he wanted advanced, like civil rights--even though he knew it would lose the South for the Democrats for a generation.
Kennedy made political mistakes (I really care little about his or any of their personal lives.) such as going along with S.1, the crime bill. It took a fairly conservative Supreme Court to give federal judges back the sentencing power that bill took away from them and gave to prosecutors. It also ensconced ridiculously low levels in the law for conviction on drug crimes so we still have prisons filled with people who don't belong there, at huge cost. Yet Kennedy was almost always there for the good fight and he won a lot of them.
It's sort of sad now when the only folks who aren't afraid to come out strong and tell the real facts about so many things are people perceived as so far out they don't get taken seriously in Washington, such as Bernie Sanders or Alan Grayson.
First of all, he inherited an unholy economic mess. We now have a bunch of worriers about the federal debt who never muttered a word during his predecessor's budget busting. We have Wall St. types still aiming to do business the old-fashioned way--by selling crap, dressed up so most people don't understand what it is.
Most important, he inherited a war that was started on lies and weakened the U.S. ability to fight a real war--against Al Quaeda, not Iraq or even Afghanistan. He's in both of those places, stuck because despite his belief that the war was wrong, he won't just pull up stakes.
Next, the Democratic Party doesn't function the way the Republicans do, for better or worse. The GOP is intent on pure destruction. Democrats are usually afraid to stand up for their principles. They are phony populists--if only because they look to big money for their campaigns and there is none in populism. That's why people like Rubin and Summers and Geithner are still around. They weren't actually crooks like Ken Lay and the Enron-ers but they really don't care if Wall Street lays still more eggs that sink the economy.
Bill Maher put it best: we have two partys, a center-right party called the Democrats and a totally crazy party called the Republicans. Democrats were afraid to really go after Bush II or Reagan, despite the expressed intent of both to wreck everything the Democratic Party supposedly stands for. I'll give Obama credit for trying to work with Republicans and look what he's gotten for it. He might as well get ready to unload on them with both barrels--it seems that they do that and everyone expects it. Today is the ultimate day to preach turn the other cheek but I'm afraid it doesn't work in American politics.
I'm slightly disappointed in Obama myself because I thought he stood for something. He doesn't seem to want to get out there and get his hands dirty fighting for anything except to get the bill passed. The Clintons were not very different, as it turned out. I'm starting to think that change is hard to produce in this country today because (1) no one really says how hard it is to attain, given the money needs of political campaigns and the lobbying and (2) there are too few Democrats of the Hubert Humphrey-Ted Kennedy type who will really fight. I'd certainly take LBJ today in view of how he knew how to work the Hill and his own dedication to principles that he wanted advanced, like civil rights--even though he knew it would lose the South for the Democrats for a generation.
Kennedy made political mistakes (I really care little about his or any of their personal lives.) such as going along with S.1, the crime bill. It took a fairly conservative Supreme Court to give federal judges back the sentencing power that bill took away from them and gave to prosecutors. It also ensconced ridiculously low levels in the law for conviction on drug crimes so we still have prisons filled with people who don't belong there, at huge cost. Yet Kennedy was almost always there for the good fight and he won a lot of them.
It's sort of sad now when the only folks who aren't afraid to come out strong and tell the real facts about so many things are people perceived as so far out they don't get taken seriously in Washington, such as Bernie Sanders or Alan Grayson.
Friday, December 4, 2009
What to Do This Month
Reading Friday's edition of the Washington Post's Weekend section made me think about how much there is to do this month and how hard it is to get organized in time to do a lot of those things. So here's a rundown in no particular order of stuff that, given my druthers, I'd make sure to be on hand for this December:
1. The Messiah sing-along at Kennedy Center December 23. I haven't attended this in several years. They used to make you line up in the early morning hours about three weeks ahead on a Saturday to get the free tickets. Now they hand them out at 6 P.M. on the performance night, and advise you to be there somewhat earlier. It's a lot of fun, especially if you, like me, was thrown out of chorus in the fourth grade for singing out of tune or key--I think the real reason was that I had just moved from being a boy soprano to my now-natural baritone. Can I carry a tune? Who knows, but I love singing the bass part.
2. Christmas lights at Gunston Hall. Gunston Hall is the partially restored home of George Mason, another one of the Founders who declined to sign the Constitution, for, I believe, the reasons given by a fellow non-signer, Patrick Henry, that the document had no Bill of Rights. James Madison did draft one soon thereafter, but that's another story. Now George Mason has his name represented by an up and coming university and his old home is lit by candlelight in this holidayseason. They now serve candle- lit dinners for a couple of nights soon. It's a kick.
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a new show called Velaszquez Rediscovered. Seems that a painting in the Met's collection as to which the attribution has long been unclear has now been declared by various experts to be a true Velaszquez. This is another small show, I gather, of the kind the Met put together for Vermeer's The Milkmaid (see my blog on that). It's always worth seeing a "new" Velaszquez or even the Met's finest holding by him, Juan de Pareja's portrait.
4. I hope to attend my first Metropolitan Opera live broadcast in a local movie theater--which will occur on Saturday, December 19, and is none other than one of my all-time faves, naturally, Les Contes d'Hoffman, or Tales of Hoffman. This is a new production opening soon at the Met and has been highly touted in advance. I also hear that the sound and video quality of the transmission is great.
5. The Kennedy Honors on TV, sometime right around Christmas. Yes, years ago I was lucky enough to be taken to this show (which probably will occur this weekend, I believe) by my dad, who was a regular invitee through his position at Theatre Authority. In fact, my fondest memory was at the same time seeing both an ancient James Cagney on stage, where the once-nimble Yankee Doodle Dandy was barely able to make it but steel-faced, made his way without a misstep and afterwards, at the dinner in the Kennedy Center lobby, sat with his old sidekick Frank McHugh and others, and then the by-then legendary Lynn Fontanne, the she of the Lunts, who also managed to make her way--at 95--as a trouper.
And I'm probably the last of us to have seen, just last night, the road company that played the National here with Jersey Boys. What a total delight! As noted, I doubt I need to tell you what fantastic fun it was--all the songs, and the nicely-stitched plot presented in turn by each of the original foursome. It's only here another week and it may even be sold out for that--if any of you have waited this long, as I did, to enjoy such completely delightful entertainment!
1. The Messiah sing-along at Kennedy Center December 23. I haven't attended this in several years. They used to make you line up in the early morning hours about three weeks ahead on a Saturday to get the free tickets. Now they hand them out at 6 P.M. on the performance night, and advise you to be there somewhat earlier. It's a lot of fun, especially if you, like me, was thrown out of chorus in the fourth grade for singing out of tune or key--I think the real reason was that I had just moved from being a boy soprano to my now-natural baritone. Can I carry a tune? Who knows, but I love singing the bass part.
2. Christmas lights at Gunston Hall. Gunston Hall is the partially restored home of George Mason, another one of the Founders who declined to sign the Constitution, for, I believe, the reasons given by a fellow non-signer, Patrick Henry, that the document had no Bill of Rights. James Madison did draft one soon thereafter, but that's another story. Now George Mason has his name represented by an up and coming university and his old home is lit by candlelight in this holidayseason. They now serve candle- lit dinners for a couple of nights soon. It's a kick.
3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a new show called Velaszquez Rediscovered. Seems that a painting in the Met's collection as to which the attribution has long been unclear has now been declared by various experts to be a true Velaszquez. This is another small show, I gather, of the kind the Met put together for Vermeer's The Milkmaid (see my blog on that). It's always worth seeing a "new" Velaszquez or even the Met's finest holding by him, Juan de Pareja's portrait.
4. I hope to attend my first Metropolitan Opera live broadcast in a local movie theater--which will occur on Saturday, December 19, and is none other than one of my all-time faves, naturally, Les Contes d'Hoffman, or Tales of Hoffman. This is a new production opening soon at the Met and has been highly touted in advance. I also hear that the sound and video quality of the transmission is great.
5. The Kennedy Honors on TV, sometime right around Christmas. Yes, years ago I was lucky enough to be taken to this show (which probably will occur this weekend, I believe) by my dad, who was a regular invitee through his position at Theatre Authority. In fact, my fondest memory was at the same time seeing both an ancient James Cagney on stage, where the once-nimble Yankee Doodle Dandy was barely able to make it but steel-faced, made his way without a misstep and afterwards, at the dinner in the Kennedy Center lobby, sat with his old sidekick Frank McHugh and others, and then the by-then legendary Lynn Fontanne, the she of the Lunts, who also managed to make her way--at 95--as a trouper.
And I'm probably the last of us to have seen, just last night, the road company that played the National here with Jersey Boys. What a total delight! As noted, I doubt I need to tell you what fantastic fun it was--all the songs, and the nicely-stitched plot presented in turn by each of the original foursome. It's only here another week and it may even be sold out for that--if any of you have waited this long, as I did, to enjoy such completely delightful entertainment!
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