In the Supreme Court

Yesterday I sat in on a Supreme Court argument for the first time in several years. It's always a bracing experience although I left with the feeling that this court has less understanding of and appreciation of the real world than ever, and that cuts right across the ideological spectrum--limited as it now is on the court: from center-right to extreme right.

Zillions of people seem to want to catch a glimpse of the court in action but relatively few are there to listen and follow the arguments themselves. The first case--at which I arrived halfway through, concerned when a criminal defendant needed to request the results of DNA testing. The argument became caught up, as they usually do, in the intricacies of state procedure. I had come to hear the next case--a Fair Labor Standards Act case. A lawyer I know works for the defendant company so this made me interested enough to attend the oral argument.

The case went off on whether an employee needs to put an intent to complain under the FLSA in writing or whether mentioning the intent orally to a superviser constitutes adequate notice to the company. There was a lot of interplay about what the word "filed" means but not until the end of the arguments did a real issue emerge. Justice Ginsburg spoke about intent of the 1938 statute--as it happens, Justice Scalia, the apostle of originalism, cracked that the FLSA was an "old fogey" statute, apparently because it was passed in 1938--namely, that the law intended to enable illiterate workers to register complaints without having to put them in writing. The court almost drew a deep breath because it had not been something that anyone else had even thought of, apparently. Justice Breyer seemed surprised in a sympathetic way and Chief Justice Roberts in a negative tone.

Not that I expect that this kind of basic issue will necessarily make it into the opinions. The last time I attended an rgument it was also about a notice issue--how long should prisoners be allowed to bring an internal grievance to prison authorities. Justice Stevens had posed the question of what was a reasonable time to the Solicitor General's rep who was appearing in support of the state prison authorities. The issue remained unresolved and was totally ignored in Justice Alito's opinion although mentioned in Stevens's unanswered dissent.

Justice Kagan did not sit on the labor case because it involved the SG's office, which appeared in support of the employee. I did see her in the criminal case and it was interesting to see her and Justice Sotomayor questioning heartily from opposite ends of the bench. All of them have their special ways of questioning--these two fired lots of theoretical questions. Breyer still puts forth complex hypotheticals. Kennedy asks tight questions aiming to provide some kind of basis for a ruling. Scalia and Roberts push their right-wing views. Not only does Thomas never ask a question but he often looks like he's sleeping.

The young lawyer from the Solicitor General's office brought some concreteness back to the employee's case by referring to the comparable language to what was at issue in this case to many other similarly-drafted statutes. The employer was well represented by one of the regular members of the Supreme Court bar; he again proved to me the value of retaining one of these frequent advocates. The lawyer for the employee showed some enterprise in rebuttal by picking up on Justice Ginsburg's point and emphasizing what the purpose of the statute was. But since his time ran out when he was not answering any justice's question, Roberts cut him off in mid-sentence.

La Stupenda

It's not often that you can observe with absolute confidence that someone was or is the best. But that is the accurate, if concise, description of Joan Sutherland, the coloratura soprano who died yesterday at 83. I was lucky enough to see and hear her sing several times and I have never heard another soprano who could perform some of the hardest roles in opera with such ease and confidence. There was never any struggling with Sutherland--whether it was a trill, a run, or just a series of incredible high notes that others might not dare to try, not only did she manage all of it successfully butshe made it look easy.

Although the obits focused on Lucia, in which she made her debuts at both the Met and La Scala, to me her finest moments came in Bellini's Norma. Callas had revived this pillar of the bel canto repertory but it had languished in the years since her passing from the scene. We also should recall that despite Callas's fantastic dramatic presence--on and off the stage--she was not always anywhere close to perfection in her singing. Sutherland famously played a bit part to Callas's Norma at Covent Garden--it is instructive that Maria told her that she had a great future.

Norma is a brute of an opera. First of all, it is long and the demands on the title role never diminish. Luckily for Sutherland, she was matched in the Met's great production with Marilyn (Jackie) Horne, a mezzo whose range in her realm was comparable to Sutherland's mastery of the top of the scale. Their duets as Norma and Adalgisa became the classic renditions of those beautiful operatic moments.

My first chance to see this spectacle was at a ridiculous venue, the Hynes Auditorium in Boston where the Met then appeared on the first stop of its annual national tour, now sadly discontinued. The Met reputedly had never before sold standing-room tickets at Hynes but this time, the clamor was so overwhelming that they made an exception and I was among the standees, off on yet another diversion from studying for my first-year law school exams. Like everyone else, I was amazed at how easy Sutherland made this challenging role--one that even Callas had had her problems handling--and what a beautiful sound she produced.

Living in New York, I managed to see the next great Sutherland occasion--the revival of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Regiment--the Italian composers often had French libretti for the Paris Opera). This was where she took the stage with someone she had a major part in discovering, the young Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who joined her in hitting the parade of high Cs,Ds, and Es with which Donizetti, last of the bel canto maestri, laced his score. Not only was this a singing triumph for both of them, but I felt this was the one time when the costume designers served Sutherland, a large woman, well, as she appeared throughout the first act in a snappy, attractive military uniform.

While I never did see her in Lucia--although I heard her on broadcasts several times--I feel I was greatly privileged to have witnessed Sutherland at her best, and she never did give a bad performance. It was just something she didn't do. Had she lived in an earlier age, she might have given us as a present what Nellie Melba, the only other Australian soprano to whom she could conceivably be compared, sometimes performed as an encore: the Mad Scene from Lucia. She of course is preserved on records and tapes--we have next to nothing good of Melba, alas--and perhaps my favorite moment to listen to comes from her recording of Verdi's Rigoletto, made with Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, when she sings the great duet--usually called a cabaletta--at the end of Act II (or III, in the original and old Met version) with Milnes in the title role and they each reach for a high note in succession just as the curtain is about to fall.

Hearing the massive applause that invariably followed that rendition--alas, not present on the recording--is perhaps the best testimony to the excitement that Sutherland engendered in the opera house. There was no one in her class in my time.

Opera at the Movies

The Met has been broadcasting live performances into movie houses for a couple of years now but I only got around to giving it a try this past Saturday, when they did Das Rheingold, the first installment in the Ring cycle with which they opened the season a week or two ago. This opera has lots of plot and is short--for Wagner, that is--at 2 1/2 hours or so. They make up for the brevity by having no intermission so it's still a long haul in that respect.

I loved the whole thing. The sound brought Wagner's fantastic music to the theater at a very high quality level. The picture was HD and with the closeups, you got a far better view of everything than would be possible even in a great seat at the Met. The massive 45-ton set came across wonderfully on screen and unlike opening night, it worked each time the slabs were moved.

I also thought the singing was good. The Washington Post's wonderful music critic, Anne Midgette (she used to be at The Times) was apparently at the Met Saturday and said the performance was not half so impressive in the opera house. She reported that several singers were hard to hear and apparently didn't have voices capable of filling the 3,000+ seat house or just couldn't meet the challenge. To me Bryn Terfel was a wonderful Wotan and Eric Owens an unusually strong and compelling Alberich. The rest were not as overwhelming--and I apologize for having qualms about a great singer, Stephanie Blythe, who was Fricka, but who is a huge woman and seems to stand for everything that dramatic opera is moving beyond. Especially on screen, she just is difficult to accept, although the matronly goddess Fricka (Wotan's wife) is probably an acceptable role for someone her size.

As always, it is the music--not even the singing or in this production, the amazing technology--that always is in charge with Wagner. It is absolutely glorious and James Levine, despite his many ailments, got another marvelous performance out of the Met orchestra. They did have a precurtain feature showing how they had the Rhinemaidens "flying" up the slab set to imitate their being in the river, but I thought the orchestral component was the key factor here. Ms. Midgette didn't like the costuming or the acting--both quite traditional and would not have been out of place in the now-retired very literal Otto Schenk production--but I find them at worst unobjectionable if not compelling.

I always learn something from a performance--especially here because the subtitles on the movie screen are exceptionably accessible. Wagner made Loge, the tricker and con artist who is the god of fire, only a demigod so he could set himself apart from the others. His role is key and was well sung. The Freia was appropriately fetching. Although I have no problems whatsoever with Wagner on a philsophical ground, it was at the least distracting that the god Froh looked like the Aryan model for Hitler Youth.

Deborah Voigt, who unlike Miss Blythe, has shed major amounts of avoirdupois, was the precurtain interviewer and I do indeed look forward to seeing her make her debut next spring onscreen as Brunnhilde in Die Walkure. That, of course, is to me and many others the truly greatest segment of the Ring cycle and it is nice even now to be able to look forward to it.

Back to '08--and How We Got There

I noticed a fairly inane comment--where else but on Facebook?--saying we needed to have someone who would get us back to where we were in 2008, meaning of course that Obama should go. Tempted to respond--always a reaction that should be repressed re Facebook--I might have noted: sure, tax breaks for the rich and the corporations, who either spend or invest their cash abroad, moving jobs there simultaneously. And oh yes, the market tanked--and it was Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, who led the bailout, yes supported by the Dems in Congress, but it truly was a rare bipartisan effort. We are left as it happened with banks still too big to fail, which means they can continue to invest anywhere but here and then be rescued by Uncle. And there were no jobs created in those years. That was the GOP legacy.

The continuing story, however, is far more insidious. We have been told we can't afford to spend on what we need to spend on, for among other things to get the country out of the recession, which for all too many people off Wall Street, has not ended yet. Our governments are starved because the hidden persuaders--not the ad men but the rich men--convince people that too much is spent and get them to vote for dumbass stuff lile Proposition 13 and when revenue drops, they then claim there's no money for anything--except to give them more tax breaks. The media do their bidding--wittingly and unwittingly--by giving all this attention to the carefully-created phony movement called the Tea Party. They try to make their prediction of a Republican landslide come true.

It does look like the Dems are finally waking up. Maybe it won't be too late--like 1968, when we got Nixon for our sins. Nixon, though, really was an outsider. He had a few rich backers but he really did annoy the Establishment. And we thought it couldn't get worse than him. Reagan served the purpose of the hidden persuaders by convincing every yokel that government was the problem. The Bushes just did the bidding of the rich. And then they finally got the Supreme Court majority--far more dangerous now than when FDR tried to take on the Four Horsemen of Reaction--to allow the hidden persuaders to stay hidden, so no one knows who's sponsoring the total b.s. you see all over the airwaves and the phony news stories, etc etc.

I suppose I find it amazing--even after all this--that people don't respond with outrage to the GOP defense of tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. Even Bill Gates's father campaigns to restore the estate tax as a fair measure of what those folks owe the rest of us. I guess that old lottery trick--refined on a million midways of carnival America--that you will be the big winner so don't vote to take anything away from the big boys--still works. The marks are still there to be taken--on a national scale now.