Manet's Seascapes

An article (Manet au sommet de la vague, July 29) by Jean Pierrard in Le Point describes an exhibit (Édouard Manet: Impressions of the Sea) at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, until September 26:

One's appreciation should be nuanced, however, because when you look closely, however Manet may paint a Norway pine or the Folkestone mail carriage, there is never a misplaced pulley or rope on his ships. The sea? Manet had a professional's knowledge of it! Did it not earn him his first adult emotions when, at age 16, between two failures at the Naval School, he set out as a ship's pilot for Brazil?

A voyage of initiation, not technically that different from the one undertaken a few years earlier by his friend Baudelaire. On board the Havre et la Martinique, when he was not sketching the crew, Manet spent his nights noting down the play of light and shadow between the waves. During the day, he tirelessly measured the horizon. The lesson had not been forgotten when, sixteen years later, he attempted his first seascapes.

Of course, this show has already appeared at the Art Institute of Chicago, from October 20, 2003, to January 19, 2004 (where Terry Teachout saw it and wrote about it, memorably, for About Last Night on January 7, as did Amanda Paulson for the Christian Science Monitor on October 24), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, from February 15 to May 31, 2004 (where Roberta Fallon saw it and wrote about for Artblog on March 17). I found it interesting to compare the three Web sites for this exhibit:

· Van Gogh Museum: three small images of paintings and not much else (cost of ticket: €12.50 [$15])

· Art Institute of Chicago: 18 nice images of paintings and lots of narrative (cost of ticket: $12 on weekdays or $15 on weekends)

· And the clear winner, Philadelphia Museum of Art: 10 nice images of Manet paintings (and a handful by other painters), a Teacher Packet of information and images, a nifty online form of Manet's Boulogne Sketchbook, and a section called Manet for Kids (cost of ticket unknown)

If you use all three of these sites, you can see a fair number of works in the show, but not all of them. Grrr.

That's Good Reading: Fully Credited Links

From The Literary Saloon, a Brief NYTBR rant hits the target with deadly accuracy, in our opinion:

We've pretty much held our tongues about The New York Times Book Review, waiting to see how the new guy in charge settles in, but, faced by another disappointing issue yesterday, we have to rant a bit. [...]

And -- ah, we can't help ourselves -- foreign literature ? We had to go back four issues, to that of 4 July, to find any review of a book originally written in a foreign language (in the "Books in Brief" section) -- and back another two issues, to the 20 June issue, to find a full-length review of any book originally written in a foreign language (there were two; predictably, they were both works of non-fiction).

There is little more embarrassing to the United States, in my opinion, than our cultural jingoism, in film and literature, especially, and also in music and art. This is why I read as many foreign newspapers as I can, to try to take myself out from behind the America-only lens. My next point may not be related to this question, but I would really appreciate it if venerable institutions like the New York Times would stop considering reports on television programs as "Arts coverage." See link above for what could take the space used up by that fascinating information on the latest reality television drivel. (See Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation for some other good ideas for what the NYTBR should and should not be reviewing.)

Blake Gopnik's review (How Grotesque! How Grand!) in last Sunday's Washington Post is an account of a new biennial show at Site Santa Fe, a place I somehow missed on my last trip to New Mexico:

Ask around at art schools and you'll hear that a good many of their prospective students submit portfolios of wacky doodles. The grotesque has clearly trickled down so far that it's become the norm when art is meant to impress. Weird and comic transformation is the order of our day, right across the spectrum from art school to art gallery.

Because you just can't have enough coverage of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, you should be reading Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise every day for some great photoblogging. In response to my survey of reports on the audience's reception of the Schlingensief Parsifal (see post on July 26), Alex says the booing beat out the ooing. The critics at Le Figaro have turned in long reviews of the festival's Parsifal (Jacques Doucelin, «Parsifal» : polémique rentrée, July 28):

It was no longer a question of pink slips, trials, excommunications, since the aborted scandal of Parsifal: no one had lost face—especially not the proud and vindicative director—but Wolfgang Wagner had won. One more time, for the more than half-century that he has ruled with an iron fist over his grandfather's heritage, like the dragon of the Ring over the Nibelung's gold.

In another article the day before (Wagner et le petit lapin, July 27), however, the same critic made clear his disdain for Schlingensief's production:

As far as causing a scandal, it was a rabbit's fart. Let's just say that it was less provocative than it was shaggy and clumsy. Anyway, who can say that those rumors of scandal had not been shrewdly orchestrated by one certain Wolfgang Wagner, Richard's grandson and current director of the Festival, who is about to celebrate his 85th birthday in August?

The same critic also wrote about the Tannhäuser production (Jacques Doucelin, Wagner retrouve ses droits, July 28). No confusion about the audience's appreciation for this production, which was a rousing success, according to Doucelin.

If you want to see what would happen if you put a dozen music critics in a room, with nothing but one of those "big topics" to chew on for a couple days, you should check out Critical Conversation: Classical Music Critics on the Future of Music, the latest brainchild of Douglas McLennan at ArtsJournal (the experiment will continue through August 7). If there is indeed a "future" for classical music, these people will know. I will be teaching a course on opera in the 20th century this fall, so I am thinking about this question in the context of opera history these days. When you have to choose a syllabus of operas to represent the last century, you look at this question in a rather different light. What 20th-century operas do you just HAVE to discuss in a course on the subject? I will be blogging about that course this fall, so you can follow along with the students. I have fifteen weeks, and I look forward to see what Ionarts readers think about my choices.

A little article (Bulgarie: une maison de 8.000 ans, July 26) from France 2 says the following:

Bulgarian archeologists have discovered an 8,000-year-old house near Veliko Tarnovo. The archeologists found a wall, chimney, and ceramic utensils that were in this house of about 50 square meters [538 square feet], dating from the 6th millennium B.C. An altar made of ceramic plates bearing signs, before which the house's residents prayed to the forces of nature, is apparently the "most precious discovery."

Another interesting archeological find is described in an article (Gerard Seenan, Dig hits rich vein of medieval history, July 29):

The jewelled cross pulled from an archaeological dig in rural Aberdeenshire does not, admittedly, look like much. Caked in heavy mud and withered by age, it could easily be overlooked. But the cross is the latest piece in a jigsaw puzzle that is casting new light on the remarkable life of a medieval community. "It promises quite a lot," says Penny Dransart, who is leading the dig at Fetternear. "We don't clean items like that on site so we can't say too much about it yet. But, at the very least, it will add to the cumulative knowledge we are building about life at Fetternear."

Finally, it's not just the Elgin marbles anymore, as the list of disputed art treasures gets longer (Countries battle over artefacts, July 27, from BBC News): the Rosetta Stone, the bust of Nefertiti, the Lindesfarne Gospels. Where will it all end? Museums are becoming afraid to lend artwork for fear they will never see it again, as happened recently to the British Museum (UK exhibits seized in Australia, July 27, from BBC News).

Redemption the Redeemer

A Parsifal at Bayreuth is always an event. Wagner's Bühnenweihfestspiel is—together with the Ring—the most important opera on the "Green Hill" in Bayreuth, and this year the direction of the new production fell to the hands of opera neophyte Christoph Schlingensief.

In a response to (just) criticism about his autocratic and inflexible leadership, Wolfgang Wagner (the master's grandson and brother of the wonderful director Wieland) surprised Wagnerites by handing the 2004 Parsifal and the 2005 Ring to relatively young newcomers to the world of opera: theater director Schlingensief and filmmaker Lars von Trier (Zentropa, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville), respectively. The latter, very unfortunately, gave up on the daunting project, apologizing for not feeling that he would be up to the challenge (see post on June 7). Schlingensief, infamous for having staged a Hamlet in Zurich with a cast made up entirely of neo-Nazis and skinheads, however, did pull his vision through and—A. C. Douglas's opinion notwithstanding—succeeded.

His Parsifal was calmly hailed by the press (see post on June 26) and many viewers alike as being interesting, bold, attractive, and at the very least a Parsifal that does not allow the viewer to nod off at any moment during the production. "Interesting" could be interpreted as damning it with faint praise, but Schlingensief's production is not one to be reacted to with blasé, mild approval. His cluttered, ethnically enriched, video-enhanced Parsifal was provocative (as good opera should be), generally considered "difficult" and laden with symbols—probably (and forgivably, for a novice) far too many of them. Parsifal was Jesus-like, with the blood of representatives of the world's religions on his garb. Klingsor was demonic, in a costume that befitted a villain in computer RPGs with a heavy part black voodoo magician. Video projections, many of them done by Schlingensief for other works of his in the past, added another, sometimes confusing, layer on top of the singers and their surroundings. Set with very dim lighting (a Bayreuth tradition, almost), the colorful costumes could not be appreciated until curtain, and at times it was apparently difficult to distinguish between singers and "stuff" on stage. But it did sweep away the 70-year-old tradition of offering minimalist, geometrically designed sets off the Bayreuth stage that had been the opera's hallmark. (This is only the seventh new production of Parsifal in Bayreuth since its premiere in 1882.)

Christoph Schlingensief, director of Parsifal

Parsifal, Bayreuth Festival, 2004

Endrik Wottrich as Parsifal, Bayreuth Festival, 2004

An art cemetery, Andy Warhol's Cans, Albrecht Dürer's hare (see post on September 5, 2003) make cameos—and that's just Act 3. Scenic reductionism is not what this Parsifal is about, then. The scandal that many expected and even more had hoped for did not occur. The fairly decent amount of boos were predictable and premeditated, the applause generous. For all the hoopla of bringing a directing novice to the sacred Wagner temple, Wolfgang Wagner wanted to be safe on the musical side and brought in Wagner veteran, l'enfant terrible-turned-Keeper-of-the-Grail Pierre Boulez to conduct the affair. His Wagner conducting—fast, crisp, ascetic, with heavy accents—was radical when he had the musical direction of the Patrice Chereau Ring (1976) or Parsifal in 1966; it isn't anymore, though. The press reacted differently to the music: the German press was reserved and indifferent to critical, referring to Boulez's own words on his approach to Wagner rather than bothering to explain, and the foreign press was more enthused about the musical quality. The Bayreuth choir, everyone agreed, was in top form. The singing, and agreement, here, too was barely up to Bayreuth standards, however. Boulez's thin approach to the score helped, in that it meant that the singers did not have to yell. Endrik Wottrich (Parsifal) did it anyway, Eleonore Büning from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wryly remarked. Alexander Marco-Buhrmester and Kwangchul Youn (Amfortas and Titurel, respectively) were the only ones to get high marks in her book.

But who cares about the performance when—also a Bayreuth tradition—there is a scandal to talk about, after all. Not about the direction or the singing, but involving the director and a singer. The first tremors were felt when Endrik Wottrich (Parsifal) panned the production in an interview a few days before the premiere (mentioned by A. C. Douglas at sounds & fury). Wolfgang Wagner was surprisingly lenient, though that might just have something to do with the fact that his daughter and scheduled successor to his position, Katharina Wagner, is "good friends with" Wottrich. Wottrich having his own opinion about a production is fine, but he wasn't very diplomatic about it. Schlingensief, of course, not averse to a good exchange on artistic visions, had his way of getting back, mentioning that Wottrich had problems with the African elements of the opera (he had said so himself) and objected to "Negroes" running about the stage. Schlingensief went on to say that he didn't share Wottrich's concept of "purity" for Germany—which, if you know anything about Germany, is tantamount to firing the silver bullet without looking vicious yourself. Wottrich fired back. He was not going to let someone like Schlingensief dictate whether he could say "Negro" (the German Neger, which isn't a terribly bad thing to say, but politically incorrect for at least a decade and a half) and anyway he didn't have a problem with blacks but would equally object if white homeless bums were on stage. At any rate, it was dragging Wagner down into the dirt and Western Civilization was far too good for that. Finally it was really Schlingensief who was the racist and Nazi, because he put blacks into roles associated with serving others in Parsifal.

If Wottrich, the archetype of a cultural conservative with a lack for subtleties in public perception, helped himself much with the rebuttal is for others to decide, but it made and still makes for a juicy little éclat. In the end he called Schlingensief's production "dirt" and "trash" and vowed not to sing it again next year. Which, just from the position of someone appreciating good singing, is probably not so terrible a loss. But who will provide the scandal?

Ionarts in Manchester: Biber's Rosary Sonatas

This is the conclusion of the Ionarts coverage of the the Eleventh Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Manchester, England. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Available at Amazon: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Rosenkranz-Sonaten, Musica Antiqua Köln

On the last night of the conference, we heard another concert, featuring Tassilo Erhardt on violin, Robert Rawson again on bass viol, and Pieter Dirksen on harpsichord and organ. The program honored two tricentennials, the 300th anniversaries of composers Georg Muffat and Heinrich Biber, who both died in 1704. (It is also an anniversary year for Marc-Antoine Charpentier: see the review of the first concert at this conference, on July 25.) Three pieces by Muffat opened the concert: the Passacaglia in G minor, played on harpsichord, the Sonata Violino Solo (1677), for violin and continuo, and the Toccata no. 10, played on the modern organ in the Brown Shipley Concert Hall. What concluded the first part of the concert was far more noteworthy, the Chiacona in C for violin and continuo by Antonio Bertali (1605–1669). This sort of piece was a standard in the 17th century, the simplest harmonic bass pattern that repeats over and over in a persistent variation. The effect it inevitably creates is a hypnotic suspension of the normal rules of harmony, allowing Baroque composers to introduce daring progressions. The spell of this sort of composition is an interesting precursor of what Philip Glass and the other minimalists would start in the 1970s. By the end of it, Tassilo had had quite a workout with the endless divisions.

On the second half of the concert, there was one piece by Vincent Lübeck (1654–1740), a prelude and fugue in A minor from 1728. The rest of the program belonged to Biber, especially two pieces from the famous Rosary Sonatas, composed around 1674. This is a set of sixteen pieces, each one accompanied by a picture of the fifteen mysteries of the rosary (increased to 20 by the present pope in 2002) and the last one—the Passacaglia in G minor, which we heard on this concert—with a picture of a guardian angel leading a child. The other piece from the group that we heard was the Sonata in G, the tenth in the collection, corresponding to the image of the crucifixion of Jesus, the last of the five sorrowful mysteries of the rosary. These sonatas are infamously difficult, especially because of the scordature, or special retunings required of the violinist, and it was a treat to hear them.

Tassilo is a gifted violinist and scholar (he gave a paper at the conference on the exegetical tradition regarding the canticle of Moses in Exodus, sung after crossing the Red Sea, and how it may have influenced Baroque depictions of the music of the Israelites), and he gave a spectacular performance at this concert. He will soon be married to Peter Holman's daughter Sally, and their performing group, Apollo and Pan, won the Early Music Network International Young Artists' Competition in 2001. Pieter Dirksen, who is also based in Utrecht, was excellent as well.

After this final pleasure for the ears, the only conference business remaining was to decide where the next party would be held. After hearing three proposals at the Sunday morning business meeting, the conference attendees voted overwhelmingly to hold the conference in 2006 in Warsaw. I have always wanted to visit Poland, and now I have a great excuse.

American Paintings at the National Gallery

There is a little two-room exhibit on the East Building mezzanine of the National Gallery of Art here in Washington, called American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection. (Joseph Smith played a concert of America music on May 23, as part of the gallery's famous concert series, which was reviewed on Ionarts on June 6.) The Web feature for this exhibit is particularly extensive, for such a small show, including a narrative description of the show and beautiful images of the paintings and other works (including this nifty zoomable slideshow). What this sort of Internet presentation says to me is, "We know that everyone around the world won't be able to come to Washington to see this exhibit, and we want to make the art available to those people." That is exactly what museums should do. Why don't more of them do it?

Dr. John Wilmerding teaches art history, formerly at Dartmouth and now at Princeton, and was for about a decade curator and then deputy director of the National Gallery. His books and exhibit work have focused on American art, a passion that he indulged as a collector, too. It may seem strange to think that Dr. Wilmerding would have to keep the fire of American art alive, while teaching in the United States and curating at the National Gallery, but according to their press release, "when the National Gallery of Art opened in 1941, its collection included fewer than a dozen historical American paintings." Dr. Wilmerding has been at least partially responsible for righting that outrageous wrong. These 51 works from his own collection, now donated to the museum, signify Dr. Wilmerding putting his money where his mouth always was.

Some of the artists (Andrew Wyeth, John Marin, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, George Caleb Bingham) represented here have become familiar enough, but there were many names new to me, like Frederic Edwin Church, Alvan Fisher, William Stanley Haseltine, Martin Johnson Heade, Fitz Hugh Lane, Adelheid Dietrich, Thomas Charles Farrer, John Frederick Kensett, George Henry Smillie, and William Trost Richards. (The Web site for the exhibit has a lot of links for information on these lesser painters, as well as links to other works by them in the National Gallery's collection.) Most of the works are rugged landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes of floral arrangements and fruit, probably the sort of work that represented painters' bread and butter, and as such didn't really stand out as I walked through the exhibit. It is all beautiful but not remarkable.

For me, the highlights of the show included Eakins's splendid Portrait of Dr. William Thomson (1906), an oil study for the finished portrait now in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. The Web site describes this muted brown, sketchy painting as "one of the most empathetic portraits" of Eakins's career, and the sense of calm mastery of medical knowledge (the subject was a leading physician in the treatment of eye diseases, and he holds an ophthalmoscope in his hand) that radiates from this image really impressed me. Again, the Web site gives us the following information that rounds out my appreciation of the work:

By the time Eakins asked Thomson to sit for him in 1906, the two men were well acquainted: Eakins had been one of Thomson's patients for more than a decade, and the two had long shared a fascination with optics and the complexities of vision. Dr. Thomson was one of Eakins' few contemporaries who knew that the artist was losing his sight.

It is one of the largest works in the exhibit, so it is given pride of place in the second room.

Among the smaller sketches and watercolors, I was taken with Eastman Johnson's Seated Man (1863), a pair of pencil sketches on paper. The largest image shows a seated African-American man, described on the Web site as follows:

His boots, jacket, and high-buttoned shirt suggest a livery costume. It is possible that the youth (likely a freedman) was employed to assist with military horses, coaches, or wagons. Although drawn with great care, as if intended to serve as a preparatory sketch for a studio painting, no larger work incorporating this figure has been identified. Eastman Johnson was one of America's most acomplished genre painters. His willingness to produce images that touched on the most hotly debated issue of the day—the abolition of slavery—thrust Johnson to the forefront of those willing to address African American subjects on the eve of the Civil War.

The strangest painting, I thought, and also my favorite was John Frederick Peto's Take Your Choice (1885), shown here, a whimsical study of a box of old books:

While the battered volumes reflect human struggle, they also suggest the triumph of creativity. As John Wilmerding has written, "Peto's books stand as embodiments of culture as diverse as the shapes and colors of the volumes themselves. For him books were more than inert things lying around tables or shelves; they were unexpected but accessible incarnations of art."

In my opinion, the most beautiful book is a tattered book, a book that looks like it has been not only read but well thumbed, carried around in a pocket or under an arm, that has visibly lived with people and not just gathered dust on a shelf. Standing in the museum, I briefly gave thought to changing the name of this blog to "Take Your Choice" and using the painting as the head image. For the time being, however, those eyes will continue their vigilant observation at the top of this page. You can take a look, as I did, at the other works of art by John Frederick Peto in the gallery's collection. Even though I am a sucker for well-executed genre painting, Take Your Choice is the best of them.

American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection will be on view to the public until January 30, 2005. This exhibit was also reviewed by Paul Richard, John Wilmerding, Giving His Awe for American Art (Washington Post, May 9).

Manchester Baroque Conference (Part 5)

This is a continuation of Ionarts coverage of the Eleventh Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Manchester, England. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Other interesting research I heard about in Manchester include a paper (abstract) by Deborah Kauffman on a particular musical arrangement she calls violons en basse. That is the label applied by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in a letter to Grimm, to a technique found in French motets, ballets, and operas, in which the musical texture is reduced to treble instruments and a treble voice, with the violins playing a basse continue line in their own register. (Praetorius uses the humorously diminutive term bassette for the same concept.) This practice is related to the contrasting sound of the petit chœur and is used by composers, Prof. Kauffman believes, to signify youth, innocence, the pastoral, and peace. For this paper, she identified 33 examples of this sort of musical texture, from pieces dated 1701 to 1753, enough to place this technique in the "common musical language of topics that was so central to eighteenth-century rhetoric."

The most convincing pieces she presented as typical of this association included the opening of Couperin's motet Adolescentulus sum ego (1703); "Sur ces bords fortunés, sung by Diane in the prologue of Rameau's opera Hippolyte et Aricie (1733); and "Regnez, aimable paix," sung by L'Amour in the same prologue; "Monarche redouté," Orpheus's plea to Pluto for Eurydice's life (sung by soprano), in Cléreambault's Orphée (1710); and "Tout cède au charme" in the first act of Rameau's Naïs (1749), in which Neptune, in disguise, attempts to woo a young nymph. In the question period following this paper, Jean-Paul Montagnier added that numerous examples can be found in the work of Charles-Hubert Gervais, and Lionel Sawkins said the same is true of the motets of Michel-Richard de Lalande, where there are about 30 or 40 such examples, by his estimation. Catherine Gordon-Seifert suggested that the rhetorical significance of the technique was more general, perhaps presenting a musical sound that was distinctly feminine.

Cellist and musicologist John Lutterman gave a paper on the Bach Suites for Solo Cello as Artifacts of Improvisational Practices (abstract), which dealt more generally with the question of the concept of a finished written work (a modern concept) and notated music as a basis for improvisation and spontaneous recomposition (a much more Baroque concept). In this way of looking at especially Baroque music for solo instruments, the written score may be simply a road map to show a performer how to improvise. The solo cello suites will always be fascinating (see the Ionarts double review of Mischa Maisky's recent performance in Washington), but it was not really clear how Lutterman thinks these ideas should be applied to performances of them, although it is an interesting concept.

The most exciting of the many Bach sessions was a round table led by Christoph Wolff, who teaches at Harvard and is the director of the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig. The Bach-Archiv (founded and supported by the East Germans before reunification) and the Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut in Göttingen (supported by the West Germans), working in tandem, have nearly completed the absolutely indispensable critical edition of the works of J. S. Bach, the Neue Bach-Ausgabe (NBA), and they now plan to extend their editing work to other members of the Bach family. The work on the NBA has thoroughly revolutionized our understanding of the works of J. S. Bach, and I have no doubt that the new editions will do the same. The other major research projects undertaken by the Bach-Archiv include a thorough combing of primary documents housed in small archives around Germany. This type of work—examining one by one every possible financial or personal document for any information about Bach—is something that individual scholars could never undertake, but a research institution like the Bach-Archiv can and is doing. According to Prof. Wolff's report, they have already found a number of significant documents in this way, previously unknown, and more will almost certainly come to light. Yoshitake Kobayashi and Kirsten Beisswenger presented their work on a catalogue of copyists' hands in sources used to compile the NBA, painstaking paleographical work that will also be published by the Bach-Archiv.

Other sessions I found interesting included Élisabeth Gallat-Morin's paper (abstract) on the presence and performance of French Baroque music in New France (Canada); the discussion session on starting an association of scholars interested in examining J. S. Bach's music in its theological and liturgical contexts (abstract); and Peter Holman's paper (abstract) on Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo Bocchi's career in Edinburgh and Dublin. There were many more that I could not attend.

Go to Part 6.

Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!

It's that time of year, when people travel around the world to spend hours upon hours in a darkened theater. Yes, it's the Bayreuth Festival, that annual orgiastic resurrection of Wagner's operas. Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is living out my dream (see post from August 12, 2003): he has posted photographs of his visit to Bayreuth on The Rest Is Noise. We look forward to more Bayreuth blogging, and to Alex's review of the Christoph Schlingensief production of Parsifal in the magazine next week (for now, Alex will say only that the production is "probably fated to be known as the 'dead rabbit Parsifal' "). The news reports on the Parsifal premiere are mixed:

German crowd jeers Wagner opera, July 26, BBC News:

A staging of Wagner's opera Parsifal by controversial German director Christoph Schlingensief was loudly booed at the opening of the Bayreuth Festival.

Wagner Festival Starts Without Scandal, July 26, Deutsche Welle:

The 2004 Wagner Festival opened with a controversial production of "Parsifal" on Sunday. But despite some booing, many in the audience agreed that the director's work was an interesting and courageous interpretation.

Opéra: une mise en scène contestée de "Parsifal" ouvre le festival de Bayreuth, July 26, TV5 (Agence France-Presse):

The 93rd Bayreuth Festival opened Sunday night with a new production of Wagner's Parsifal, whose director, the German Christoph Schlingensief, was booed by a majority of the audience, but without that reception turning into a scandal, as the German press had predicted. . . . Pierre Boulez, given a standing ovation by the entire audience, has come back to the hidden orchestra pit of Bayreuth, after a 24-year absence.

"Parsifal" applaudi (Parsifal applauded, with a nice picture), July 26, Le Nouvel Observateur:

The controversy that had been predicted was largely absent. . . . The Parsifal production, described as a mixture of national mythology and images borrowed from African cultures, inspired applause and none of the expected booing.

Werner Theurich, Schlingensiefs "Parsifal": Bilderflut, Bilderwut ("A flood of images, a rage of images," with lots of great photos in the article), July 26, Der Spiegel:

Never before was a premiere at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival awaited with greater tension than Christoph Schlingensief's Parsifal. But the "provocation pro" disappointed the sensation-greedy: instead of scandalous ideas, the director presented well-matched Pop aesthetics.

Bayreuther Festspiele ohne Skandal eröffnet (Bayreuth Festival offers up no scandal), July 25, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

The theatrical troublemaker, who has created his first opera production, received some violent booing at Sunday evening's premiere in the Festspielhaus, but this was easily outweighed in the end by applause. While opinions about the production diverged, agreement prevailed over the achievement of Pierre Boulez: the French conductor presided over a great musical moment at the Richard Wagner Festival.

As we knew he would, A. C. Douglas at sounds & fury had already pronounced the failure of the Schlingensief production, because and he later noted that the tenor singing Parsifal criticized it. The new controversy, apparently, is that Schlingensief has accused tenor Endrik Wottrich of racism, saying that he doesn't like the production because of its imagery of Africans (Ist der Tenor ein Rassist? [Is the tenor a racist?], July 26). (In response to this post, he expressed his hope that an accident would prevent Boulez from conducting the opera at Bayreuth. "Doesn't ACD realize that Boulez 'saved Parsifal'," he asked impishly: see Tom Service, How I rescued Parsifal, July 23, in The Guardian.) If you can't make it to Bayreuth but you want to hear the operas, ACD has a list of live streaming radio feeds for some of the performances at the top of his blog, although I haven't been able to make them work properly. Yet.

Manchester: Baroque Music Conference (Part 4)

This is a continuation of Ionarts coverage of the Eleventh Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Manchester, England. Here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I was finally able to meet Jean-Paul Montagnier, whose book on Charles-Hubert Gervais (Charles-Hubert Gervais: Un musicien au service du Régent et de Louis XV, 1671–1744, shown here) I reviewed for Music & Letters in 2003. He gave a paper on the extension of the cadential 6/4 chord in the French grand motet, relating it to theoretical examples from Rameau and other theorists. In his examples, the 6/4 chord is extended in thirds to a very dissonant chord that resolves to the dominant chord. Rather than being tempted to "correct" such a structure, he demonstrated that composers were encouraged to use this type of harmony by misreading theoretical treatises of the time. After his paper, we spoke about his book on Gervais and a part of my review with which he disagreed (on the question of what happened to the concept of the proper liturgical texts in the Chapelle Royale in France).

Catherine Gordon-Seifert gave a paper about erotic symbols in French Baroque airs (abstract). Using examples from treatises on love and morality from the 17th century (like Albert Flamen's Devises et emblèmes d'Amour moralisez, 1653, Otto Van Veen's Amorum emblemata figuris, 1608, and the famous "Carte de Tendre" from Madeleine de Scudéry's novel Clélie, 1654), she showed how phrases from 17th-century airs de cour—best represented in the works of Michel Lambert—were part of the salon culture of the précieuses, with their evocation of attraction and seduction.

John Powell gave a paper on Lully's ballet Psyché (1670), the critical edition of which he has prepared for the Lully complete works (from Georg Olms Verlag in Hildesheim). This ballet was the last collaboration between Lully and Molière, and it was produced originally for the lavish salle des machines in the now-destroyed Palais des Tuileries (see post on February 16). The list of collaborators also included playwrights Philippe Quinault (who became Lully's librettist) and Pierre Corneille, leading Voltaire to write in the 18th century of this work that only Racine was missing from the list of great dramatic authors of the period. What John traced was the way that the work was transformed, after its initial Parisian performances, when it was taken on the road and performed in unusual venues in Chantilly (where, in a famous story, a chef named Vatel threw himself on his sword after messing up the king's dinner) and in the king's newly acquired fortresses at Doncheri and Dunkerque, in lands that were taken from the Netherlands. When the troupe returned to Paris, a reduced version was performed in Molière's theater in the Palais-Royal. Lully and Quinault later made an operatic version of the same story in 1678. I also reviewed John's excellent book (Music and Theatre in France, 1600–1680), for Music & Letters in 2001. John has an excellent Web site on Music and Theater in 17th-Century France.

Go to Part 5.

Ionarts in Manchester: Charpentier's Four Seasons

This is a continuation of Ionarts coverage of the Eleventh Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Manchester, England. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

We were treated to two concerts as part of the Baroque Conference, which took place in the octagonal Brown Shipley Concert Hall on the campus of the Royal Northern College of Music. Ludwika Nitschowa's Giacomettiesque bronze sculpture, shown at right, in the lobby of this building was given in 1973 by the Fryderyk Chopin Society in Warsaw. It commemorates a concert that Chopin gave in Manchester, to an audience of 1,200 people, on August 28, 1848, on his way to several engagements in Scotland. Thanks to the RNCM and other groups like the Manchester Chamber Concerts Society and the Manchester Opera House, there is still plenty of good music to hear in Manchester.

The first concert we heard, on Thursday night (July 15), featured sopranos Claire Tomlin and Nicola Mills, with Robert Rawson on bass viol. Peter Holman (professor of musicology at the University of Leeds since 2000 and consultant in period performance at the RNCM since 2002) put the concert together and played the chamber organ. Peter is well known as the founder and director of The Parley of Instruments, a group I heard in the opera theater of the Château of Versailles last fall (see review on October 14, 2003), and as the author and editor of numerous articles and editions. This program of music was selected to honor the tricentennial year of Baroque composers Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1645–1704) and Heinrich Biber (1644–1704), who both died 300 years ago this year.

The main work on the program was Charpentier's Quatuor Anni Tempestates (H. 335 to 338, from 1685), or The Four Seasons (on the recording shown below, by a different group). These works for two sopranos set texts selected, apparently by the composer, from the Song of Songs, and they were performed in order, in alternation with other pieces of music. The first of these motets, Ver (Spring), begins with the words "Surge propera amica mea," and its first part appears to be in a responsorial form (with a "verse" followed by the return of "Surge propera amica mea"). However, its liturgical function, if it had any, is confused by the addition of a second part, "Et cito pulchra es." The texts selected for spring include references to winter being past, flowers and other plants appearing on the earth, and birdsong. This was followed by an actual motet, Sicut spina rosam genuit (H. 309), a text proper to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (September 8). This piece was truly responsorial in form, with a verse in triple meter followed by the return of the respond.

The next piece was Æstas (Summer, "Nolite me considerare") is a dialogue, reflecting the narrative structure of the source text. In reference to summer, the female voice says, "Do not look upon me for I am dark, because the sun has looked on me" (Nolite me considerare quod fusca sim quia decoloravit me sol, Song of Songs 1:5). This is answered by the male voice, "You are black but comely" (Nigra es sed formosa), which is a modified version of the Biblical text. The final section, to the words "Quia moriar amore" (for I die of love), is set to languishing music that seems to indicate the secular function of these four pieces. The fourth selection was Biber's Salve Regina (1663), with Claire Tomlin singing the missing soprano part, reconstructed by Peter Holman. As this piece was composed when Biber was only 19, as Peter put it before they performed it, "some of it's fairly crude."

Available at Amazon: Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Quatuor Anni Tempestates and three motets, Strasbourg Parlement of Musique

The third season, Autumnus ("Osculetur me osculo oris sui" [Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth]), has text that is not particularly autumnal, since there is no mention of that time of year in the Song of Songs. A few references to harvesting, wine, and feasting are what Charpentier brings together, and the final section ("comedite amici et bibite et inebriate" [eat, friends, and drink and get drunk]) is set with virtuosically tipsy melismas that were quite thrilling. A short piece by Gottfried Finger, the Sonata no. 4 in D minor, for bass viol and continuo, came next. The two sopranos returned for the last season, Hyems (Winter), which is the longest of the four pieces, in several sections. Other than the opening text, "Surge aquilo et veni auster" (Awake, north wind, and come, south wind), there is nothing that is particularly wintry here either, so most of the text focuses on the search of the female voice for her lover. One section, "Quæsivi eum et non inveni" (I sought him but found him not), is absolutely charming. The final piece was Charpentier's early setting of the Marian antiphon Regina cæli lætare (H. 32), with text-painted melismas scurrying upwards on the word "resurrexit" (he has risen).

After this concert, I went out to dinner with a group of friends from New Zealand and Peter Holman, at an Indian restaurant in a part of Manchester famous for its curry places. I learned there that Claire Tomlin is a singer who works with Peter regularly in the Parley of Instruments, among other groups. Although Nicola Mills is a soprano based in Manchester, who has never performed with Peter or Claire before, their two voices were perfectly matched for this program of two-soprano pieces. This type of work, in which two treble voices are like soaring twins, was so important in the Baroque period, as the vocal equivalent of the trio sonata. (The best Italian examples were composed by Claudio Monteverdi, such as my favorite, his Salve Regina for two sopranos—published in the Selva morale e spirituale, 1640—which two soprano friends performed at my wedding. It was recorded memorably on this 1991 recording by Emma Kirkby and Christopher Hogwood, Venice Preserved.) Peter Holman said that he wants to put together a program of two-soprano works for these two women, which would be something I would like to hear. Their work on this concert, especially in the Charpentier Four Seasons, was excellent. Bass violist Robert Rawson (who presented a paper on Biber at the Baroque Conference) seemed most comfortable accompanying the vocal pieces, and his only solo appearance was not sparkling, although the Finger piece is not particulary memorable.

Go to Part 4.

Ionarts in Manchester: Baroque Conference (Part 2)

This is a continuation of Ionarts coverage of the Eleventh Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music in Manchester, England. Here is Part 1.

Available at Amazon: Bruce Gustafson and David Fuller, A Catalogue of French Harpsichord Music, 1699–1780 (1990)

I heard many interesting papers while attending the Baroque Conference, so I thought I would pass along some notes on some of them that might be of interest. Bruce Gustafson, known for his catalogue of French Baroque keyboard music (with David Fuller, shown here) is undertaking an exciting new edition of the music of Chambonnières. He read a paper presenting some findings from that work (abstract). Why do we need such an edition, when Thurston Dart published a still available edition in 1969? Because Bruce and others have discovered a number of new musical sources, and this edition is going to take a new approach by publishing, side by side, different versions of many works, representing changes in embellishment especially. The intention is to allow performers to see the range of choices preserved in Baroque sources.

In the same session, David Fuller spoke about his work on editing the organ music, especially the fugues, of Louis Couperin (abstract). Study of these works has been hampered by the fact that the principal manuscript source for them, the so-called Oldham manuscript, has been in private hands for some time. This unusual source includes thirty of Louis Couperin's fugues, with year and sometimes even date of composition noted: Fuller hypothesizes that it was copied, perhaps after the composer's death, from a pile of untidy manuscripts in the composer's papers. He announced that L'Oiseau-Lyre has obtained the rights to publish a facsimile of this manuscript, planned for next year (a transcription was published by the manuscript's owner last year). In the meantime, the publisher has offered to send photocopies of the manuscript to interested scholars. These fugues, composed precisely during the years when the fugue was being transformed into a free-standing genre, will enhance our understanding of the fugal genre when they are better known.

A brilliant researcher from the Centre de Musique Baroque, Gérard Géay, gave a talk, mostly impromptu from the keyboard, on his ideas about how the minor mode developed from its ancestral modal harmony in the 17th century (abstract). The CMBV's work encompasses a broad range of French and Italian music in the Baroque period, and that experience of Baroque music and theory gives its researchers an unusual perspective on music history. One of the reasons that Gérard said he undertook this study was to understand polyphonic modality, before harmonic language became truly tonal, so that in its editions the CMBV might have the understanding not to "correct mistakes" that are not mistakes. Essentially, all music historians are trained in tonal harmony by studying Bach chorales and classical music, but music before 1700 worked under rather different assumptions. To put Gérard's thesis in technical language, which is the only way to discuss it, the deuterus mode, when extended in polyphony so that the question of ambitus became largely academic, was problematic. As a result, its cadences were often modified to end on chords based on A instead of on E, which essentially gives us the flavor of the modern minor tonality.

Go to Part 3.

One Year of Ionarts

Amazingly enough, today also happens to be the first anniversary of the appearance of this blog, on July 23, 2003, with a post that is far from being the most interesting one I have ever written. (Note to anyone who is thinking of starting a weblog: make your first post something you will be proud of in a year.) This site has gone from those humble beginnings to a collaborative project I never imagined, thanks to all the contributors, now numbering four and sure to increase.

The arts blog is a juggernaut phenomenon, part of this developing medium, blogging, whose prominence continues to increase. One of our number, the ever-present Terry Teachout at About Last Night, has even been nominated to serve on the National Council on the Arts. We wish Terry the best of luck on getting confirmed: Tyler Green and I have your back covered here in Washington. When Terry is elected President of the United States, I will be happy to be nominated as Librarian of Congress or another cultural position. Perhaps he will send me as Cultural Attaché to the American Embassy in Paris. I can dream, can't I? When Terry gets to the White House, I hope he will get cracking on the Ionarts Proposal (March 28).

What good news came our way on our birthday? We thank Alex Ross, at The Rest Is Noise, for mentioning some recent posts by Jens and me. Alex is at work on a top secret summer project and leaves for Bayreuth today: we wish him safe travels and look forward to reading his notes from Wagner Central. We have also just learned of the Internet resurrection of A. C. Douglas, who is blogging again at sounds & fury. No matter what his new title may lead you to think, the last thing ACD will do is "signify nothing." Welcome back! Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation writes about Petrarch climbing Mont-Ventoux (actually from July 21). As Mark surely knows, Ventoux is also a peak sacred to cycling (see my review of Les Triplettes de Belleville). As you will recall, this is a 700th anniversary year for Petrarch (see post on June 1).

The bad news? As I discover every year, the worst drawback of traveling is the damage it does to your garden. I live in the city, so I am responsible for a tiny patch of land, but it has really gone to hell in the space of a few weeks. I'll be pulling weeds between rain storms today. If you are new to Ionarts, or if you are a regular reader, maybe you would like to take a walk down memory lane in the Ionarts Archives: take off your shoes and stay a while. Thanks to everyone for reading!

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What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?

From Manchester, by way of Philadelphia and Chicago (long story), I am back home in Washington. The temperature is about 20° warmer than what I experienced in England and France, but there is just as much rain so far. There are still a few Europe posts that will appear here for the next couple days, after which we will return to our regularly scheduled programming. On the return trip, my suitcase was weighed down with a stack of purchases from that temple to the religion of bibliomania, Gibert Joseph (26, bd Saint-Michel, on the edge between the 5th and 6th arrondissements). Now that I have just finished Ulysses and feel completely submerged in language, it's on to some French reading.

In the meantime, to note in the world of museums:

In an article (Un jeu de constructions pour conter l'aube de l'humanité [A game of construction to tell the story of humanity's dawn], July 21) for Le Monde, Emmanuel de Roux describes a new museum in the Dordogne region of France, the Musée national de préhistoire (Web site still under construction at the time of writing), in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil. It was planned in the 1970s and has finally opened to the public, as of July 20. The location, in the Vézère River valley, is an area dense with paleolithic historical sites. Also see Emmanuel de Roux, Les Eyzies, capitale de la préhistoire depuis plus d'un siècle (in Le Monde, July 22).

I just discovered the Centre national de la cinématographie in France.

Souren Melikian was in Washington not too long ago, and he has published a review (The Arab imprint on Spanish history, July 17) in the International Herald Tribune on an exhibit (Caliphs and Kings: The Art and Influence of Islamic Spain) at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (until October 17). That exhibit should round out a full day of museum going for me, now that I'm home, if I combine it with Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum (at the National Gallery of Art until February 6).

The Legacy of Carlos Kleiber on Disc

Available at Amazon: L. van Beethoven, Symphonies No. 5 and 7, VPO

Hybrid SACD L. van Beethoven, Symphonies No. 5 and 7, VPO

Carlos Kleiber was notoriously difficult to lure to the recording studio. Whenever he did record, however, something magical was sure to come out. His Beethoven 5th (and 7th) Symphony are unanimously hailed as the versions to measure all others against. They continue to stand the test of time, and re-released as a SACD, this Deutsche Grammophone Originals disc ought to be the cornerstone of every music-lover's library. It will continue to outshine, outsell, outlive all other rivals. Forget 'historically informed', forget discussions about tempo... under Kleiber this work is everything you can imagine it to be, and all along it will always sound 'just right'. Never forced, never wilful, there is not a hint of 'interpretation' - just music at its most frightening, at its most beautiful, lyrical... Enjoy!

J. Brahms, Symphony No.4, VPO

His Brahms 2nd was a staple of his painfully narrow repertoire. Unfortunately, he did not record it for DG. Instead, we have a splendid Brahms 4th from him. "Swaggering gait" is attested to in the stupendous Scherzo, and the playing from the Vienna forces (the recording is from 1981 and sounds great, still!) is impeccable. Not the most lyrical of accounts, but one of the most important - in brass armour and unstoppable forward momentum. It is Carlos Kleiber on record, at mid-price, so we are not asking for a coupling... petty questions reserved for lesser gods of the recording industry. I am still a sucker for my Brahms symphonies with the late Günter Wand (RCA, Brahms Symphonies 1-4), but I would not want to be without this one, either.

Tristan und Isolde took a special place in his musical life, and it should, in ours, as well. Alas, his DG recording from Dresden with Margaret Price as Isolde, Brigitte Fassbaender as Brangäne, René Kollo as Tristan, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Kurwenal, and Kurt Moll as King Marke is not without fault. The interpretation is lithe and gorgeous, and the balance and the remastered sound are superb, though some describe it as a bit metallic.

R. Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Staatskapelle Dresden

Margaret Price is not the dramatic soprano usually tackling Isolde, but her voice is beautiful and works well for most of the opera's length. Gramophone's Alan Blythe thought that Brigitte Fassbaender would have made a better coupling with a different Isolde, but I am taken by her Brangäne entirely. Kollo and Dieskau are not the backbone of this recording, while Kurt Moll is his usual flawless, moving, exceptional self as Marke. With Furtwängler, Barenboim, Böhm, the endless Bernstein, perhaps even the new Thielemann (see Dip Your Ears, No. 7), this is not the natural first choice.

R. Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, 1974 Bayreuth

There is, however, a recording of the most sublime Tristan moment in Kleiber's life, his 1974 Bayreuth performance. Helge Brilioth as Tristan is no Wolfgang Windgassen, and he seems to be concerned about economy at times, but it pays off in Act II, I am told. Catarina Ligendza is strange in a good way: naive, childlike, and at the same time threatening. Donald McIntyre was past his prime, but Yvonne Minton made for one of the finest performances of a Brangäne. For Kurt Moll the usual statement applies. The Melodram recording (less expensive than one might expect because this Tristan fits on three CDs) captures the sound of Bayreuth well enough, and magic happens as Kleiber conducts with fire, unearthing little nuances that others throw away, always in the interest of the piece at large. For the Kleiber-Tristan experience, this is the recording to get... though I would still want to own a studio Tristan besides it.

C. M. von Weber, Der Freischütz, Staatskapelle Dresden

Sticking with opera, Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, often considered to be the first true German opera, with Kleiber—recorded in 1973 with excellent sound—has few rivals (Rafael Kubelik on Decca being the only serious available one) and has garnered much praise. Gramophone's John Warrack feels that some of the tempi are not as he would want them but underscores how interesting and full of insight this recording is. (His colleague Alan Blyth, however, does not care for the whole thing much.) The cast is fairly impeccable with Gundula Janowitz as Agathe, Peter Schreier as Max, Bernd Weikl as Ottokar, Theo Adam as Caspar, etc., and the result is delectable to my ears. For anyone with a hankering for German Romantic opera, this is an ought-to-have.

G. Verdi, La Traviata , Bayerisches Staatsorchester

Opera yet again, this time Verdi's La Traviata, one of Kleiber's staples. Available in three different versions (apart from the regular issue also as Centenary Collection, and SACD!) it is famous for Ileanas Cotrubas—a light, fragile, and wholly believable Violetta, not a showstopper but a woman, now sick, albeit with amazing vocal control. Quibbles about tempi among critics occur, but this is such a well-judged performance that, due to a few cuts, none of which are disconcerting to me, conveniently fits on two CDs. Placido Domingo as Alfredo and Sherill Milnes as Germont don't hurt either... and for anyone wanting a dramatic and moving Traviata rather than purest vocal fireworks, this would be the set to go to.

J. Strauss, Jr., Die Fledermaus, Bayerisches Staatsorchester

Die Fledermaus (The Bat), the light and fun operetta by Johann Strauss, Jr., was another favorite of Carlos Kleiber's - and it 'hears' on this recording, perhaps the finest Fledermaus on disc. What saddens me, who is used to seeing the operetta in full, with all the dialog, is that the latter is cut. A particular shame since the direction was with the incomparable August Everding. Everyone else, it seems, takes objection to Ivan Rebroff singing the role of Prince Orlofsky in falsetto, a 'trouser-role' for mezzo soprano. Amidst Julia Varady (Rosalinde), Lucia Popp (Adele), Hermann Prey (Eisenstein), René Kollo (Alfred), Bernd Weikl (Doctor Falke), et al., this doesn't quite concern me as much, though—especially since I am not convinced by a real mezzo as Prince Orlofsky either. A minor annoyance can be that changing discs takes place more or less mid-Act II finale. Alas, anyone with a disc changer and no desire to hear funny German (oxymoron?) dialogue has no excuse but to own this version.

F. Schubert, Symphonies No. 3 and 8 ("Unfinished"), VPO

Schubert, alas, including the 3rd Symphony he conducted so often. But neither the 3rd nor the 8th, the "Unfinished," convince 100%. "Hard driven" is a term rightly ascribed to the unduly fast tempi that Kleiber employs, especially in the 8th. The musicianship is still extant, and amply so... the Vienna Philharmonic plays superbly, and the sonics are good. The spirit of Schubert, however, might have been AWOL. Perhaps this isn't so bad, if for no other reason than that Kleiber probably has something to say, even if we don't find it fitting our expectations. Still, Solti (also with the VPO) on Decca or Günter Wand on RCA are likely to get more playtime at home.

In Memoriam Carlos Kleiber

Carlos Kleiber, 1930–2004

On July 13, in a little Slovenian village named Konjsica, died one of the most exciting, one of the greatest conductors that classical music ever knew. To lump Carlos Kleiber together by saying "one of the..." is already doing him injustice, too unique was this son of the conducting great Erich Kleiber. To describe his repertoire as narrow would be euphemistic: he conducted the same works over and over, to the point of obsession. Brahms's 2nd, Beethoven's 5th, Schubert's 3rd, Tristan, Die Fledermaus, La Traviata, and Der Rosenkavalier. Not because he had to (from the 70s on he didn't hold fixed positions as conductor of an orchestra or opera house), but because he wanted to.

Herbert von Karajan, who thought Carlos Kleiber to be a genius, said once—not entirely without malice—that it is sad that such an artist doesn't really like music. This was a comment on the notorious difficulties that were involved in getting Kleiber to conduct at all. Allegedly, responding to Karajan asking him why he did not conduct more, Kleiber said that he conducted only when his freezer had become all empty. Kleiber's genius had him recognized as the most exciting conductor of his time, especially after Bernstein was dead. He was offered almost anything (unlimited rehearsals, any amount of money) to conduct—and seldom did.

Kleiber was difficult, gratuitously so, it seemed, and he was almost autistic in his shyness (Wolfgang Sawallisch reports having almost to push timid Carlos unto the podium, wherefrom on, however, everything being just fine), and he undoubtedly was influenced by his Über-Father, Erich, who did everything to discourage his son from a conducting career. Like many a musical genius (and some who think they are), Carlos Kleiber seemed driven to "non-functionality," as Joachim Kaiser from the Süddeutsche Zeitung puts it. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and, to a lesser degree, Glenn Gould come to mind.

Claudio Abbado thought Kleiber the best Tristan conductor, even before Bayreuth, in 1974, got to see, hear, breathe the magic that Kleiber unfolded on the 'Green Hill'. Tristan und Isolde transfigured Kleiber, Wolfgang Sander from the Frankfurter Allgemeine(n) Zeitung reports of Kleiber being described as suddenly growing during an Elektra or Tristan performance, his limbs seemingly extending; Kleiber transfigured. And the Wagner opera he so loved brought him to the brink of collapse on several reported occasions.

If Bernstein knew how to begin a work, Kleiber knew how to end one. Which, with his unsurpassed sense of musical architecture, was one of the reasons why critics were so effusive in finding neologisms of praise for him (or leaving their column blank, declaring a Brahms E-minor symphony so "complete" that they were at a loss for words). The end of a work, the beginning of memory, and the point from which a successful journey can be judged... Now we are with Carlos Kleiber himself at that point. He died and was buried on his mother's estate in Konjsica, age 74. Blessed are those with memories of live performances, but even those who rely on the handful of outstanding recordings available can look back and see that this, for all the incongruencies, was one of the most successful journeys any musician had ever undertaken.

Dip Your Ears, No. 7

Available from Amazon: R. Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (live), Christian Thielemann

Another Tristan from Universal Classics, this time the May 2003 (live) account from the Vienna State Opera that was rightly hailed for the debut of Deborah Voigt as the first American Isolde in Vienna. The cast is, for modern times, quite outstanding: Petra Lang is a most splendid Brangäne, Thomas Moser not a strong but convincing Tristan, Robert Holl a very fine Marke. But more than anything else, this is about Thielemann and his relationship with the Vienna forces that respond with their best playing to this conductor, who has had few equals in the late German Romantic repertoire. Munich must be salivating to have him take on their Philharmonic, continuing the tradition that had its sumptuous glory honed by the late Celibidache before James Levine (now in Boston) took over. Thielemann has Wagner glow and bristle that it is a joy. The recording, live as it is, is marred by some uneven balances—the choir especially is set rather far back compared to all studio recordings and other live accounts—and the stage noises, contributing at times, can be distracting at other times. The fine Tristan this is, it does not replace among modern recordings my cherished Barenboim version with Waltraud Meier, Siegfried Jerusalem, Marijana Lipovsek, etc., and as far as live versions go, Karl Böhm's recording (also on three CDs) with Birgit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen holds out. Furtwängler's, too, is still a Tristan to listen to, despite its age, especially in its new cheap EMI edition. To explore either Thielemann's or Voigt's artistry, this is a great set to have, and if you have only this Tristan in your collection, you aren't off badly at all, either.

Ionarts in Manchester: Baroque Music Conference

The reason that I came to Manchester was to take part in a round table presentation on the Ballet de la délivrance de Renault, performed for the first and only time in January 1617 in the royal residence of the Louvre. Although our session was the first one on the first day of the biennial Baroque Music Conference, held this time here in Manchester, we received a surprisingly good number of listeners. This work is a ballet de cour, a court ballet that featured roles danced by the King of France, Louis XIII, and thirteen of his court noblemen, as well as a host of professional dancers and musicians. I am presently in the final stages of completing an edition of the music for this ballet, to be published by the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles. In addition, I have joined with a team of scholars from New Zealand, France, and the United States to publish a book of essays, on a range of topics concerning this ballet. Four of us came to Manchester this summer to present some of our findings and discuss a number of issues relating to our work.

Georgie Durosoir first presented a paper on the epics of Tasso and Ariosto, and particularly how a story from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata was adapted for our ballet. Georgie has already published an excellent book on the air du cour (L'air de cour en France, 1571–1655, shown here), or French court song, of which there are eight examples in our ballet, and her new book on the court ballet in 17th-century France (Les ballets de la cour de France au XVIIe siècle) will appear this year. I gave a short paper on the noble participants in the ballet, many of whom had not been previously identified. Peter Walls spoke about the numerous problems involved in editing the musical sources for the ballet, particularly the music for dancing. Greer Garden presented her theories on the two versions of the ballet, for there are two sources presenting the content of the work that vary from one another significantly. Greer also read a contribution from Kate van Orden, who is interested in the role of ballet as an artistic sublimation of violence in 17th-century French society. Kate's new book, of which I have read a chapter, will appear soon.

In addition to our final work on publishing these two books, the team is involved in trying to find a place and group to perform the ballet. Hopefully, I will be able to tell you more about that soon.

Go to Part 2.

Ionarts in Manchester: The Editor Has Rights

Available from Amazon: Michel-Richard de Lalande, Te deum, Venite exultemus, Panis angelicus, and La Grande Pièce Royale (Ex Cathedra Chamber Choir and Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Skidmore)

This is an issue that perhaps only the musicological world cares about (also covered by John Wall at newolde.com), but there was a thread of messages on the e-mail list of the American Musicological Society last week about, of all things, a legal settlement. Baroque music historian Lionel Sawkins has won a settlement against Hyperion Records (here is the court document from July 1), which released a recording of music by Michel-Richard de Lalande (Music for the Sun-King, shown at right), from October 2001. Lionel is the leading scholar on Lalande's music and naturally was involved in planning a festival of Lalande's music at Versailles (hosted by the Centre de Musique Baroque in 2001), and he claims that he had discussed making a recording with Jeffrey Skidmore as far back as 1999. The group was going to use new editions of these four works, which Lionel is preparing for the complete works edition of Lalande's music. Lionel sent advance versions of the scores to Jeffrey Skidmore in August 2001.

So far, the story is little different from that of any other recording involving early music, which usually involves musicologists rescuing works from historical oblivion. However, what then happened was that Lionel tried to get Hyperion to sign an agreement crediting him as the editor of the scores and agreeing to pay him royalties. The company refused to sign it, in spite of the attempt by Mr. Skidmore to mediate the dispute, but went ahead and made the recording. In its defense, Hyperion maintains a long-held policy that it does not pay copyright royalties "in respect of musical works which are deemed to be out of copyright by virtue of their age." Lionel Sawkins, they claim, is not the composer of the music.

The nature of the lawsuit required the judge to get into some detail regarding the business of what musicologists do. With the help of an advising expert, the judge who wrote the lengthy judgment goes into a sometimes measure-by-measure analysis of the recording and what they must have taken from Lionel's edition, which required some reconstruction of certain parts. For three of the four pieces, the judge sided with Lionel and believes that Hyperion has infringed on his copyright as an editor. There has not been a judgment yet to determine the damages to be awarded, but reports vary between at least £500,000 and over £1 million.

Lionel showed up at the Baroque conference here in Manchester and was given a half-hour yesterday at 2:00 (here is the abstract), to talk about the settlement and what he thinks it means. He may have expected a conference of musicologists to be ecstatic at the thought of a record company being forced to pay editors for original editions, but there was a lot of trepidation expressed in the discussion time about what this will mean for the future of early music recording. At a time when the audience for this sort of recording is already declining, what effect will such a large settlement have? I don't have any answer, but I can see both sides of the issue. The best possible outcome would have been for Hyperion to sign the royalty agreement (which would have meant paying Lionel a couple thousand pounds by most estimates) or just not to make the recording. As that is not what happened, we have an ugly situation, but I imagine that the issue of what edition early music performers are using is going to be much more important for record companies from now on.

Newspaper articles on this story:

Terry Grimley, Hyperion Records Loses Legal Battle with Musicologist Over Copyright for 300-Year-Old Works, Birmingham Post, July 13

Leo Benedictus, Copyright ruling was 'wrong', The Guardian, July 8

Martin Cullingford, Copyright royalties are due on editions of 18th century music, rules judge, Gramophone, July 8

Dalya Alberge and Lewis Smith, Record firms face multimillion-pound bill as music experts settle an old score, The Times (London), July 6

Jan Colley, Music Expert Wins CD Copyright Court Battle, The Scotsman, July 1

Ionarts in Manchester: Holy Cow!

So I arrived in Manchester for the Baroque conference (lots more about that later this week) on Wednesday, although I've still been publishing Paris posts. I haven't exactly seen a lot of this city, but I have noticed that, while Washington has its damnable pandas, Manchester has a similar manifestation of what Marja-Leena Rathje has so aptly called Public Art Fauna (as noted by Marja-Leena, Anna Conti wonders Is It Art?), called the Manchester Cow Parade. Apparently, it has already befouled other cities around the world. There are cows on some of the buildings of the campus of the Royal Northern College of Music, where the conference is taking place, and a cow smoking a cigarette, displayed on a revolving dais, over the entrance to the place where I am blogging right now.

A colleague walked over to the Manchester Museum this morning, which I may do tomorrow before heading to Wales for a couple days and then the trip back to the United States. I had quite an adventure on the never predictable trains of British Rail, getting from the airport to the conference site. However, if I can just remember to look to the right first before crossing the street (not to the left, which won't help you here, obviously), I will not end my days crushed under a British vehicle.

Dip Your Ears, No. 6

Available from Amazon: L. van Beethoven, Piano Concerto no. 4 and Symphony no. 2 (chamber versions), Robert Levin

Another disc of standard Beethoven repertoire? Geez, what could be so special about the nth recording of the 2nd Symphony and the 4th Piano Concerto? Well, for starters, the fact that these are the Beethoven-transcribed versions for piano trio and piano sextet! An acquaintance said, some time ago, that if the 2nd Symphony had never been written, this piano trio version of it would be a regular guest in concert halls around the world, hailed as one of the finest trios ever written, together with the Archduke and the Ghost. Beethoven himself had a hand in finishing that transcription, and the Piano Concerto was transcribed entirely by him.

The playing is impeccable with Robert Levin, a period performance specialist, on a Hammerflügel and the first chairs of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique backing him up. (Robert Levin was also the soloist for the highly acclaimed Gardiner/ORR survey of Beethoven's complete piano concertos.) This is joyous chamber music that sounds eerily familiar, and it adds both to the smaller, more intimate genre as well as to one's understanding and appreciation of the larger works that stood model for them. These are not the makeshift transcriptions that were common in times when larger works could hardly be heard by a wider public, and they sure deserve a listen.

Ionarts in Paris: More Thoughts on Fahrenheit 9/11

As mentioned yesterday, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in Paris, at the legendary Max Linder Panorama (24, bd Poissonière). Given the film's reputation as a full-out attack on the Bush family and the latest war in Iraq, I was worried that Michael Moore had traded in his accustomed irreverent tone for a more serious documentary approach. While there are parts of the movie that are far from funny, I at least was relieved to discover that the Moore voice, which narrates the film, and sense of humor are very much present in his latest work. In fact, I think that Michael Moore may be, in a sense other than the truly literary one, the inheritor of Voltaire and Diderot, who also were remarkably gifted at using over-the-top satire, which can be in the right hands the most powerful political weapon.

I am less concerned than Michelle (see her post from June 26) about the truth of the story Moore is peddling. There are some who think that the film is a starkly realistic portrayal of the Bush administration and its exploits. Indeed, in response to critics of the truthfulness of his movie, Michael Moore has made available online his fact-checking notes for the film. There are others who will spin the film as a biased piece of propaganda (a word, I agree with David Nishimura who wrote so wisely on this at Cronaca, that has little meaning when used by politicians). Big news anchors and news organizations in general are harping on the fact that the movie is not journalism, as if it should be or ever meant to be. This is probably mostly just resentment of the fact that Moore rubs their noses in the error-ridden coverage of the 2000 election, showing big news anchors like Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, and Dan Rather admitting the mistake about calling Florida. We also see them, in embedded battle gear gushing about being brought along to play war with the big boys in the desert. Excuse me, but whose coverage is biased?

The "truth" of Moore's film is probably somewhere in between those two opposing views. Anyone who decides to vote in November's election solely on the basis of believing or not believing Moore's film is a fool. It's a movie, and by itself it provides no reason either to run out and become a Democratic activist (the Democrats are heavily criticized by Moore, and rightly so, for their pathetic opposition to the certification of the 2000 election and to the Patriot Act, as well as for actually voting for the Iraq war) or to delay the November election (I read somewhat confusing reports about this while I was in France).

What the film does provide is a list of points that I, at least, needed to remember. The first part of the film brings back to mind how tenuous President Bush's mandate was in the 2000 election. Not that the election was stolen, because one of many possible legitimate processes played out to decide it. This sequence, near the film's opening, is one of the most damning in the film, in my opinion. As I watched the film, I didn't remember this scene happening at all (although there is the coverage on the screen, from C-SPAN), but whether it was not fully reported by the media or whether I had tuned out of the news coverage from post-election fatigue by that point, I can't say. With Vice-President Gore presiding as President of the Senate over a joint session of both legislative houses, representatives from Florida and other states try to voice objections to the certification of the election for George Bush. All they need is to submit the objection in writing and to have the signature of at least one senator, but not one of them can find just a single senator to help them. Any Democrat who really thinks that the election was "stolen" should complain, not to President Bush, but to any Democratic senator, only of one of whom would have had to do nothing but sign his or her name to the numerous objections to the election's certification, brought by mostly African-American congressional representatives.

Elected officials from both sides and most of the electorate, myself included, approach the question of war and its impact in a dishonest way, because the United States now has armed forces comprised solely of volunteers. If military service were mandatory for all young men and women, it would mean that the people who went to fight wars for the United States would represent a much larger percentage of the electorate. This would make our support or opposition to war a much more honest affair. There will be times when we need to wage war, but we would not make such a terrible decision believing that, well, the soldiers signed up for this so I guess it's alright. In one humorous scene, Michael Moore hands out armed forces literature to members of Congress, encouraging them to have their children volunteer to fight in the war that they have all voted to support. Later, in the most tragic sequence in the movie, Moore follows the life of Lila Lipscomb, who encourages young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in Moore's ravaged home town of Flint, Michigan, to join the armed forces. She comes from a military family and is proud that her children have served as well. Then she gets the worst news possible, that her own son has been killed in Iraq. As she reads his last letter, in which he wonders why the hell he is even in Iraq, it's absolutely heartbreaking. This is a patriotic woman, who stands for everything that is good about Americans. When she comes to Washington, she goes to the White House, and a callous woman, who thinks that Moore is staging something, tells her, "Well, you're not the only one. You should blame Al-Qaeda." Whatever you do, please, do not say that combination of words to a mother who has lost her child.

The other area where we have not really been honest is in understanding the impact of the war on Iraqis. The Department of Defense, by embedding reporters as they did, seduced the American media into a very compliant stance. We have not been allowed to see much footage of Iraqi civilians wounded and killed or of Americans, soldiers or civilians, who have been casualties. I thank Michael Moore for remedying that with this film. I needed to see some footage of children playing in Baghdad and of mothers losing children in American "precision bombing" so that the war cannot, in my mind, seem to take place solely on one of those computerized maps you see on the American news networks. War is terrible, and we should always remember that, so that we do not resort to war except when there is no other choice. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq was sold to the American public on the basis of false information.

One thing that Michael Moore does not skewer in the film, which he certainly could have, is how the Bush administration, because of the war in Iraq, has squandered the incredible amount of international good will toward the United States. I imagined a sequence showing first, in the days after September 11, 2001, the band of the Garde Républicaine at the Elysée Palace in Paris, playing the Star-Spangled Banner and Jacques Chirac saying, "Nous sommes tous américains." The scene could be reproduced in some form in most international capitals. The world was on our side. We have not even reached the third anniversary of that horrible day, and we are in a situation that is directly in contrast. Not only has President Bush completely alienated most of the world's population, but by using the September 11 attacks as a justification for the Iraq war (dishonestly, as it turns out), he has turned the events of that day from something deserving sympathy and shared horror to something used callously only to give legitimacy to actions disguised as defensive. See the movie, because it's good, but don't vote based on what you see.

Film in Paris

One thing is certain: you will never lack for cultural things to do in Paris. I have not even mentioned the cinema here since my arrival, but I’m several days behind in writing about all the things I’ve seen, so the Paris posts will continue for some time. Right now, the city of Paris is hosting the second year of its film festival, Paris Cinéma, which began on June 30 and will conclude on July 13, just before I leave. I picked up the program while seeing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Max Linder Panorama (24, boulevard Poissonière, in the 9th). More about that another time. The festival’s program bears a short introduction from Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris (as I wrote yesterday, each arrondissement has a mayor, but over them is one official, the Maire de Paris).

This new festival is described as a balade estivale (summer walk), featuring 400 films in 30 cinemas (including the Max Linder, a true Paris cinematic institution), all around Paris, which anyone can see for the price of 4€, under half the cost of a normal full-price ticket these days, and only 3€ for children under 12. Costa-Gavras is the president of the festival, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo helped to officiate at the opening ceremony. Le cinéma d’aujourd’hui focuses on films of our own time, including a series of films from recent international festivals. The Forum des Images, based here in Paris, held its own festival, Les Rencontres internationales de cinéma à Paris from July 2 to 11, and there is a series on experimental films from the Collectif Jeune Cinéma and PointLignePlan.

Le cinéma de toujours presents great films of the past, including a series at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés (off the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the 6th) on Jean-Paul Belmondo, le Magnifique, he of the ultrawide cigarettes in the classic À bout de souffle (1959), directed by Jean-Luc Godard on a screenplay by François Truffaut. Other series feature American director Oliver Stone, Argentine director Fernando Solanas, Korean director Chung Chang-wha, French actress Karin Viard, French director Claude Sautet, Chinese films (part of the Année de la Chine, mentioned in a previous post), musical comedies from Hollywood to Bollywood, European documentaries (including series on French director Agnès Varda and Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski), rock and cinema, films on Paris from the Cinémathèque Française, and a series of "unforgettable French films shown with English subtitles." I hope that the target audience for that last one, English-speaking tourists who descend on Paris in the summer, took advantage of it. The program is presented first in French, and then partially in English, but I didn't actually get a copy until after being in Paris several days and going out of my way to obtain it. Next year, they should hand these things directly to tourists as they get off planes at the airports. What really made the festival a success last summer were the projections en plein air, in which films are shown on huge outdoor screens in the Parvis de l’Hôtel de Ville (the Paris town hall, in the 4th) and in the Senate Gardens (by the Jardin du Luxembourg, in the 6th). There are also some hosted walks on themes taken from cinematic greats shot in Paris.

If that has left your head spinning, it will only get worse when you hear that the Cinémathèque Française is also showing two special program of films this summer, in addition to its participation in Paris Cinéma: Révisons nos classiques (Let’s re-examine our classics, at the Palais de Chaillot) and Vive les vacances! (Long live vacation!, at the Grands Boulevards), both from June 30 to September 5. The first series takes up the long-held mission of the Cinémathèque Française, from the time of Langlois, to keep the classics of cinematic history alive by showing them, and its importance to young directors living in Paris for many years, like Truffaut and many others, makes all of their efforts worthwhile. In 1998, a fire endangered the home of the Cinémathèque Française, in the Palais de Chaillot (7, avenue Albert-de-Mun, in the 16th), although the other base of operations, in the 10th (42, boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle), not far from the Max Linder and that other great Paris cinema, Le Grand Rex (1, boulevard Poissonière), was not affected. According to the introduction to their program, by general director Serge Toubiana, the Cinémathèque Française will move its employees and its precious library to a new building in Bercy in the coming months. Their new home, built by (who else?) Frank Gehry, will open to the public in September 2005.

Both programs are filled with great movies, some of which I have seen, but a shocking number I have not seen or even heard of before. This must have been a difficult process to select a program of classics, and I will be getting as many of these films into my Netflix queue as I can. The second program, on the theme of vacation, is more light-hearted (National Lampoon’s Vacation and Les Bronzés font du ski appear alongside Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse and Jean Renoir’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe). If you think your vacation was ruined this year, consider that Jaws, Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Dead Calm are all, technically, vacation movies and, yes, they are on the program. So, just when I think I have gone too far in filling up every waking hour here with things to see and hear, I always realize that I would need many more hours to see everything I want to, let alone everything that I could.

Photography at the Jeu de Paume (Part 2 of 2)

This is the conclusion of a review of the exhibits at the new photography museum in the Jeu de Paume, by the Place de la Concorde, in Paris. Here is Part 1.

The other exhibit, on the museum's upper floor, is called Éblouissement, and it brings together photographs and a few works in other media that prominently feature the role of light. As you enter the exhibit space at the top of the staircase, you are subjected to the flashing of Guillaume Paris's Numenous (2002), a disc with hundreds of light bulbs flashing in patterns. It is visually annoying, enough to give you a headache, and it emits an uncomfortable amount of heat. Some of the recent photographs that I thought memorable were Michel François's Néon brisé (2002), showing a neon bulb somehow shattered into tiny shards only it its middle section; Graham Gussin’s Know Nothing, Self-Portrait as X—The Man with X-Ray Eyes (2003, from the Lisson Gallery in London), which could have fit nicely with the self-portrait exhibit at the Luxembourg (see review on July 8), because it shows the photographer with oversized jet black contact lenses in his eyes, producing a creepy effect; and Jane and Louise Wilson's South Corridor, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas (1999), a beautiful, greenish tinted study of a tunnel curving gracefully into the distance, which makes the reflections of the ceiling lamps on all sides curve with the structure. Most of the other recent work, including photographs, video, installations, was so forgettable that I didn't even take a single note.

What I did enjoy in this exhibit was the remarkable selection of photographs by early 20th-century masters. There are five photographs by R. Moreau and E. Druet, from the collection of sculptor August Rodin and now in the Musée Rodin, that are various shots of the American dancer Loïe Fuller in her famous veiled costumes (see post on June 7). One is signed by Fuller "A le [sic] maître Rodin," with the advice "Regardez de loin" (look at from a distance). Five other photographs, by Gabriel Loppé and Harry C. Ellis and now in the Musée d’Orsay, show Fuller in her veils dancing through a park. Three photographs by Brassaï titled Le phénomène de l'extase (The phenomenon of orgasm) show a woman reclined on a bed in a deathlike pose. These frame Man Ray's remarkable Femme (Woman, 1931), from the Bibliothèque nationale, made through a process Ray identified as "solarization." André Kertész's Paris, l'été un soir d'orage (Paris, in summer on a stormy night, 1925, from the Centre Pompidou) shows a lightning strike frozen behind the Tour Eiffel.

Most beautiful to me were the series of eight photographs by Man Ray of places in Paris and an interesting exposure of Fireworks (1934) that captured the explosion in an abstract and unusual way. As I looked at one of the Man Ray photographs, Place de la Concorde, Paris (1926, from the Bibliothèque nationale), showing the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde illuminated in the distance behind a darkened statue, I realized that it had been taken from a vantage point just outside the museum. Indeed, if you walk from the entrance of the Jeu de Paume and walk toward the Seine, you will find the statue of Hermes, with a crown and caduceus, on a winged horse in the foreground of the photograph and see the obelisk obscured behind it. As it turns out, there is now in that part of the park an installation of sculptures by Louise Bourgeois (Welcoming Arms, 1996), with disembodied arms in bronze attached to a handful of rock pedestals. There is one pedestal that holds up only a tiny bronze baby’s hand, which struck me as quite strange and lovely. As the wind whipped up and menacing clouds hurtled above the Paris skyline, I hurried off to the Palais Garnier (see post on July 11).

Both shows will remain open to the public at the Jeu de Paume until September 12.

Dip Your Ears, No. 5

J. Haydn, Piano Sonatas (vol. 7), Jenö Jandó

Trusty Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest composers of all time, yet too humble and tame even 200 years after his death (1809). His symphonies get plenty of play, his string quartets, too, are hailed, but for a man who hasn't had a weak spot in his entire œuvre (well, some of those operas are not outright brilliant, one could argue), it should be surprising that his piano sonatas are not better known. Fifty-five piano sonatas flowed from his pen, most of them every bit as good and engaging as W. A. Mozart's, perhaps less "pretty"... but ultimately overshadowed by Beethoven's output. Piano sonatas nos. 29, 33, 34, and 35 get a wonderful outing here from Jenö Jandó on Naxos. Volume 7 in his survey of Haydn's entire piano sonata output, this is a particularly well-played disc, rivalling other wonderful recordings by Emanuel Ax, Leif Ove Andsnes, or Sviatoslav Richter, without overlapping with them in the selection of sonatas.

His touch—for example, in the Andante of no. 29 in E-flat major, Hob. XVI:45 (delightfully confusing)—is fleet without being precious, and the playing is admirably straightforward, without pomp where there belongs none. A tad more emotional wallowing might be desired by some, but I don't find it lacking in depth or enjoyment. On occasion methinks I can hear Mr. Jandó hum along ever so slightly, but it can't compare to the out-of-kilter Gould humming in his highly interesting if overly idiosyncratic five last Haydn sonatas. At the Naxos price it is a wonderful, if not essential, addition to one's library.

Ionarts in Paris: Photography at the Jeu de Paume (Part 1 of 2)

Cultural reorganization happens constantly in France. When I was living here, there were big plans to incorporate the marvelous collections of the little Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal into the Bibliothèque nationale, so that the building could become a library for diplomatic resources. There was serious opposition, but it looked like the government was hell-bent on its plan. Well, years later, the B.n. does officially control the Arsenal library, but nothing else has happened to it, which is a relief, since it is one of the most beautiful and historic places to do research, and I would never go there again if its collections were interesting only to political scientists. Other organizations are not as fortunate. Waiting in line for the Bibliothèque publique d'information at the Centre Pompidou to open, some people were handing out petitions to sign, to express disapproval of the latest plans the government has for changes to the management of the Archives nationales de France, which is already a legendarily difficult place to conduct research. Who knows what will happen with that.

One thing that has definitely happened is the changes the government forced on the Centre national de la photographie, in effect, merging it with the Musée du Jeu de Paume (see some pictures here). The museum will be divided between two sites at 1, place de la Concorde, in the 8th, and the Hôtel de Sully, at 62, rue Saint-Antoine, in the 4th. Jeu de Paume is the name for the old French form of tennis, played with the open palm (paume) instead of a racquet. For that reason, the Jeu de Paume building is not particularly large, a narrow rectangular building at the end of the Tuileries gardens (see my post on February 16). It opened in its new function, as a museum of photography, on June 24, and I went to see it on the afternoon of July 8. As an exhibit space, it is not spectacular in any sense: it has two floors of exhibit space and two auditoria in the sous-sol for showing video and film.

The exhibit on the rez-de-chaussée is a retrospective of the American fashion photographer Guy Bourdin (1928–1991), reworked slightly from its first appearance, in 2003, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, with lots of works lent by the photographer's foundation. (You can see some of the images in the exhibit in this gallery, at their Web site. There are lots more images by Bourdin here.) Bourdin got interested in serious photography at age 22, through a meeting with Man Ray in Paris. The show has a few large frames of his earlier work, tucked away in the back room: a series of black and white landscape photographs from the 1950s, and some abstract polaroids shot in the 1970s. However, where he really had an impact is the major thrust of the show, the photographs he made of models for publicity campaigns, mostly for Vogue, for the next 40 years. The photograph used for the program (made for Vogue's May 1977 issue) is typical of his style for this kind of work: tall, thin models treated roughly, in high heels and not much else and a superabundance of make-up. The sadistic quality of these photographs, which sexualize their subjects in humorous and sometimes brutal ways, have at this moment an eerie rapport with the photographs of prisoner abuse in Iraqi prisons. The most shocking, I found, shows three photographs inside a toilet, all showing parts of a woman's face with liquid spewing from her mouth. Would the connotation of watersports really help sell women's fashion magazines?

Underwear and other garments that accentuate the long, bare legs of his models appealed to him. Sometimes, this is the only female part needed in a photo, as in one example from 1978, showing only a model's buttocks and long legs, in heels naturally, on the back of a couch. The pose suggests unconsciousness or even death. Other disturbing connotations from these photographs include pedophilia (a shot of five little girls, grotesquely made up, sharing a bed, under a sign that reads "Occupancy by more than 2 persons is dangerous and unlawful. Commissioner, Department of Buildings, City of New York," made for Vogue France in 1977) and fellatio (a black model's face leaned back juxtaposed with a soaring, phallic, bright red lipstick, for Vogue in 1972, and two models feeding each other curved hot dogs from a plate of sauerkraut, for Vogue France in 1981). The only photograph really featuring male models, made for Vogue Hommes, in 1977, is equally sexualized, showing a nude man in the distance, facing a sink, and another in the foreground, fully dressed, immobile in front of a television (on the screen, a clock frozen at 3 o'clock) and surrounded by Schlitz beer cans.

There is a series of photographs that feature models juxtaposed with photographs of themselves, including one made for Charles Jourdan in 1978, in which a female hand holds up a photograph of a woman walking down a street, which obscures the full view of a woman walking down a street. The sense that the models are crushed or dehumanized by their work and the photographer's art is the conceit of some of the best photographs. A photograph from 1979 shows a model's body crushed by a fallen painting, and a photograph made for the Calendrier Vogue in 1985 features a cluster of posed mannequins in a store window, with two models, their skin made to look as plastic as possible, striding by outside. I don't generally read magazines like Vogue anyway, and after seeing these photographs, I am reminded of why I don't.

Go to Part 2.

Capriccio at the Garnier (Part 2 of 2)

This is the conclusion of a review of Richard Strauss's final opera, Capriccio, performed by the Opéra de Paris at the Palais Garnier, on July 8. Here is Part 1.

If you are familiar with Capriccio you will understand what I mean when I say that it's not a conventional opera. It's an opera about creating an opera and about what opera is and why it is the consummate performing art. That may sound like an impossibly cute idea, but it is truly absorbing in practice. Also, it worked in this production, because Carsen extended the theme of play within a play to its fullest extent. The curtain rose about ten minutes before the scheduled curtain time, and a small chorus, costumed as stage hands, began arranging chairs on the bare stage—complete with stray lighting pieces scattered around, set flats standing up in the wings, and a background set piece made to look like a rough stone back stage wall—as if for a rehearsal. Six principal string players (two violins, two violas, and two cellos) had left their places in the orchestra pit and now took their seats on the stage for the overture. (All six players, including some women, were costumed as male string players.) The Countess (Renée Fleming) entered, brought to our attention by a spotlight, and took a seat out in the house—in the good seats in the orchestra section, of course, as a countess should—while the audience applauded. When she gave a sign to the players on the stage, they played the piece designed by Strauss as a piece of chamber music, meant to be part of the Countess's birthday celebration ("erklingt aus dem Salon links das Andante eines Streich-Sextetts"). This is the basis for the plot: the Countess is meeting at her house outside Paris with the group of artists who will plan and execute her birthday celebration.

The scene is specified by Strauss as taking place around 1775, the time of Gluck's operatic reforms, in Paris. Carsen has moved the action up to the year 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and the traveling artists are escorted to the house under the watchful eyes of Gestapo agents. As noted in Renaud Machart's excellent review (Parole et musique en lutte dans "Capriccio", à Garnier [Word and music in conflict in Capriccio at the Garnier], June 18) in Le Monde, the opera was premiered

on October 28, 1942, at the Munich State Opera, the year of the implementation of the "final solution." In the room were the Nazi authorities who had forbidden Strauss, since 1935, to work again with Stefan Zweig, a pacifist and a Jew, with whom he had just created Die Schweigsame Frau (The silent woman, op. 80, premiered June 24, 1935, at the Dresden State Opera).

In that context, the opera really does present a dream of a better time, an era when the "war" was only between supporters of Gluck and supporters of Piccinni, and it brings into relief how governments can shackle the arts for their own purposes.

Strauss's music may be an acquired taste, according to some, but I don't remember a time when I knew it and didn't like it. Following in the footsteps of Wagner, Strauss goes about as far as you can go with chromatic distortion of traditional tonality before things get ugly. (By "ugly" I don't mean not worth listening to, I just mean before it becomes something that is clearly not traditional tonality. Certain scientific theories were recently passed around Blogistan, starting from the most worthy Arts & Letters Daily, trying to explain why atonal music is challenging to the ear, and I think it's hogwash for the most part. Terry Teachout thinks that this justifies his dislike of music from later atonal composers. For example, he speculates "that atonality contradicts the natural law of music" or "that the human brain is hard-wired to comprehend and appreciate tonal music." Of course, Terry is free to like and dislike whatever music he wants, but does this mean that music before 1600—which is not tonal either and in the Middle Ages could be quite dissonant, after all—"contradicts the natural law of music?"

Available from Amazon: Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time

Furthermore, what does this say about the world outside Europe, that the only style of music that obeys the laws of music was practiced in Europe between 1600 and 1900? I believe that a summary reading of Nicolas Slonimsky's brilliant Lexicon of Musical Invective makes it clear that people have always had adverse reactions to new sounds—over the years, people have complained about the incomprehensibility of Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, only to turn around later and accept and even worship them. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused an infamous riot at its premiere in 1913, because people thought it was incomprehensible and ugly. By 1940, it was heard in, of all things, Walt Disney's Fantasia, and Stravinsky's manuscript was sold at auction, many years later, at the highest price paid for a composer's score up to that time.)

When the stage sextet finished the introductory piece, they continued to play, with mutes on, for the first small scene of the opera, featuring the famous argument between the poet and the composer about which is the greater art, poetry or music. (This opposition—summed up with the phrase prima le parole, dopo la musica [first the words, then the music], and vice versa—has been at the center of all famous operatic debates of music history: is the text or the music more important in creating an opera? This is the subtext of Capriccio, for which it is always cited in studies of opera history.) The orchestra in the pit then took over, as the sextet removed their costumes and returned to their places. By placing the Countess in the audience at the start of the opera, the production identifies her with us, and indeed she is the listener who has to choose between the poet and the composer, both of whom are in love with her, at the opera's conclusion. The director also invites a dancer, a famous actress (Von Otter) with whom the countess's brother is in love, and two hilarious send-ups of Italian bel canto singers to offer other types of performance to the Countess. Ultimately, when she cannot decide among all these possibilities (which are humorously demonstrated on a rolling model of, you guessed it, the stage of the Garnier), she makes the terrifying decision to ask the director to combine them all. They will produce an opera for her birthday celebration. The rehearsal concludes, and the chorus of servants cleaned up the mess, in a funny scene that was excellent.

This is where the production became quite ingenious. The curtain fell as the orchestra played a transitional passage of music. When it rose again, we saw another curtain exactly like it, and a row of stage lights just like the one in the Garnier. That curtain began to rise when the real curtain had ascended about halfway, revealing the Countess on a set that bore some remarkable similarities to the Garnier auditorium. In effect, this was the reverse of what we saw at the start of the opera: we saw her in her home, which looks like where we were seated, and she looked out at us over the stage lights. The servants tell the Countess that all the guests have left, to go back to Paris, and that she will be eating alone. Monsieur Taupe, the prompter, also appears in a funny scene and is told by the Countess's butler that everyone else has left.

In the dramatic closing scene, the Countess stepped over that second row of stage lights to join us in our world again, as she agonizes over how to choose between the poet and the composer. Ultimately, she cannot choose and lets the servant take both the poet’s words and the composer’s score away. As she acknowledges, there is no easy way to end this story. Speaking to her reflection in a mirror, as directed by Strauss, she asks the "other Madeleine" to help her: "Kannst du mir helfen den Schluss zu finden für ihre Oper? Gibt es einen, der nicht trivial ist?" (Can you help me find an ending for this opera? Is there one that is not trivial?). The chorus stripped away all the set pieces, leaving the enormous space of the full Garnier stage totally bare (really, this time, no illusions). To the closing measures of music, the Countess, now so much smaller in that vast space, which the audience is never allowed to see, was helped toward a door far away, at the back of the stage. As the first concluding pizzicato chord was plucked, all of the stage lights went out simultaneously, prompting some in the audience to start yelling and applauding, which was met by a “Shh!” of consternation from those who knew there were a few more chords to be heard. The singers and conductor (Ulf Schirmer, replacing Günter Neuhold in July, who in turn was substituting for renowned Strauss conductor Christian Thieleman, who had had to cancel) took numerous curtain calls on that empty stage, to cries of bravo and the rhythmic clapping you often hear from European audiences.

Adieu, Hugues Gall.

Telemachia

One element that almost all books about Paris have in common is the love of walking around this city (la balade) and especially walking around without any real purpose or destination (la flânerie). François Villon, Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ernest Hemingway, Louis Aragon, Henry Miller (see Paris Reading Project list in the right column) have all written about it, to name only a few. Joyce, too, evidently enjoyed walking around without a purpose (apparently how he ran into Hemingway one day, as described in A Moveable Feast), and most of Ulysses is about wandering characters (through a city, of course, a pale imitation of the wider meandering of Odysseus). On every visit here, during the times I have nothing to do but wander, I have learned something new about Paris. I am staying right now in the 9th arrondissement, by pure chance across from the apartment building where the composer Georges Bizet was born (26, rue de la Tour d’Auvergne).

Yesterday, I walked down to the Boulevard Haussmann in search of a WiFi hotspot, and wandered up and down the Boulevard des Italiens and into the little Rue des Italiens, looking for a dive called Le Trou dans le Mur (The hole in the wall) described by Hemingway in A Moveable Feast. As I suspected, it doesn't exist anymore. I went to the Bibliothèque nationale, the old buildings on the Rue de Richelieu, to renew my carte de lecteur so I can get some research done, and I saw the photographs from August 1944 at the Bourse, in front of the Agence France-Press building (see post on June 14). That was not all that interesting, as there are only three columns with a few photographs. I did learn that the major exhibit of those photographs (Août 1944: Paris insurgé, Paris libéré) can be seen at the Mémorial Leclerc/Musée Jean Moulin, by the Gare de Montparnasse, until April 5, 2005. There are other columns, too, all around Paris.

Wandering in the 5th, I happened upon the Polly Maggoo, where I found a great WiFi signal. (It's in a new location, for anyone who knew that bar in its last incarnation, further from the river on the Rue Saint-Jacques. WiFi signals are notoriously unreliable, and many of the McDo WiFi hotspots do not work. The McDo by the Métro stop at Cadet in the 9th has always worked, as has the one in the 5th on Boulevard St-Germain, but neither of the ones on the Boulevard Haussmann have worked for me. Even the one at the Polly Maggoo did not work the last time I tried it.) They are doing some renovation work on the Église Saint-Sévérin on that street. The 5th and the 6th are neighborhoods that still maintain in part the character of medieval Paris, the way the city was before it was modernized and opened up with broad avenues by Baron Haussmann.

I then wandered toward the Seine from the Polly Maggoo, over the Petit-Pont, where I had a stunning view of the façade of Notre-Dame, gleaming white from its ongoing cleaning, in the evening sunlight. This was particularly welcome since, as usual, the weather has been what forecasters here call un ciel variable, meaning that it rains like hell on and off throughout the day, in alternation with fine weather (quelques éclaircissements, the meteorologists say). From the island, I wandered aimlessly by the Châtelet and through Les Halles. I am not too worried about the plans to build something new there, since I find it highly unlikely that they could construct anything uglier than the shopping center there now.

One place I just love, not far from Les Halles, where I wandered on Sunday, is the Centre Pompidou. This quirky building, designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rodgers, has the remarkable quality, not common to all modernist architecture, of still looking daring and beautiful, at least to me. I came to see the art exhibits, but I found myself wandering into the Public Library here, on one of the upper floors, where there are stacks of books and other resources, computers, work tables, and all sorts of wonderful stuff, all for free. The Centre doesn't have its own WiFi yet (only a matter of time, I'm sure), but I am getting a weak signal from another location, by which I am able to post this. It may be coming from somewhere in the 3rd arrondissement, where the mayor (each district of Paris has its own local mayor) has pledged to put in place a free WiFi available throughout the entire arrondissement, beginning with his own Mairie (town hall), where there is one set up.

I have been working the past couple days at the Richelieu site of the Bibliothèque nationale. Going back and forth, I have just been walking along every possible trajectory, which is not only good exercise but a form of tourism. I happened to wander right by the Drouot auction house (mentioned in my post on July 6), and I discovered that as you stand on the Rue Drouot next to that building and look up the street to the north, there is a stunning view of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre, seemingly perched on top of an apartment building in the distance.

Ionarts in Paris: Capriccio at the Garnier (Part 1 of 2)

This French professor friend of mine (see yesterday's post) also taught courses on the literary sources of opera, and opera is one of his life’s passions, perhaps even greater than Diderot and Enlightenment literature, which was his academic specialization. So in his retirement he takes great delight in recounting to me all of the operas and other performances he sees during his time in Paris, which makes me green with jealousy. This year, what he praised the most was a production, by Canadian Robert Carsen, of Richard Strauss's Capriccio (the composer's last opera, with librettist Clemens Krauss), which had its last performance on July 8 at the Palais Garnier. (This is just the latest successful production since Hugues Gall took over the direction of the Opéra de Paris, nine years ago. You can read Bertrand Dermoncourt's glowing report on the the Hugues Gall era, L'art des comptes, in L'Express on April 5, 2004. It will also be his last, since he is leaving the post this month, as reported by Alan Riding for the New York Times in June.) According to my friend, the allure of this Capriccio is due to a combination of inventive staging and what he called une distribution d'enfer, or "a helluva casting." I can now say that I agree with him, because I managed to claw and tear my way in to hear that last performance.

It can be difficult to get good tickets to operas in Paris, unless you subscribe well in advance. However, at the Garnier and at the newer Opéra de Paris Bastille, you can wait in line for unsold tickets starting 45 minutes before curtain. They also sell, just before curtain, a number of the least desirable seats, that is, with limited visibility. I was in that line, which was very long, considering that this was the last performance of a critically acclaimed production. The stars aligned and a woman who had an extra ticket walked up to my part of the line, right next to me, and asked quietly, "Qui a besoin d’une seule place?" (Who needs a single ticket?). Probably because of the extra time it takes for a question in French to be processed and an appropriate response to be formulated in a foreigner’s brain, I was not the first to respond.

I thought I may have missed my chance, but I was able to buy a seat. The woman at the ticket window had warned me that the seat was sans visibilité (without sightline), so I was prepared to find myself sitting outside on the Rue Auber somewhere, but it turned out that I was in the second tier of loges, in the second row of a box, house left, and since I was very close to the stage, I could see only about 40% of it if I didn't lean forward at all. I may not have seen everything, but I heard every blessed note, and it was heavenly. Now, keep in mind that this experience set me back the prize sum of 7€, which is less than it would cost me here or in Washington to see an epic piece of cinematic garbage like this.

The Garnier is one of the most glorious places to see an opera. Built only in the 19th century, it's not all that old by French standards, and it is one outlandish, fluffy piece of academic architecture. What I love about the Garnier, though, is that that very sense of exaggeration makes evident how wonderful what you go there to hear is. (The Metropolitan Opera has this quality—in a pedestrian and, sorry to say, American way, while the Kennedy Center is about as boring and soulless a building as was ever designed by humankind.) The auditorium in the Garnier is grand and decorated in a decadent 19th-century neoclassical style, with crystal chandeliers, gilded putti, and imaginative columns of which even Bernini (who built this, for heaven’s sake) could be proud. I spent some time before and after the opera looking at the amazing Marc Chagall painting in the dome, which I really love. It shows the mythological, musical apotheosis of the city of Paris, represented by recognizable 19th-century monuments like the Tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe, the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, and the Église de la Madeleine, accomplished by the brightly colored angels of music, many of them carrying orchestral instruments, who ascend to its central point.

Oh yeah, there was music, too. Heading up the kickass cast was Renée Fleming as Die Gräfin (the Countess), who was stellar. This role is so perfect for her, and she brought an incredible poise and elegance to the character. Franz Hawlata, as the theater director, La Roche, brought to the stage one of the most powerful and rich bass voices of our time, not to mention great comic sense. Swedish soprano Anne-Sofie von Otter had the role of the actress Clairon. Von Otter has a remarkable vocal instrument, both clear and strong, not necessarily qualities that always go together in opera singers. This is probably why she sings Bach so well. Also singing admirably were tenor Rainer Trost as Flamand, the composer, and Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as Olivier, the poet. It really was a superlative cast.

Go to Part 2.

Taking the Veil: Annette Messager

Yesterday, after having lunch with a friend, who was formerly an undergraduate French professor of mine, at the mythic and delightful Café de Flore (172, boulevard Saint-Germain), I wandered past the Odéon and down the Rue de l’École de Médecine to find the Couvent des Cordeliers. The buildings connected to what is now the Académie nationale de Médecine are horribly ugly modern things that occupy most of the site of this old Franciscan convent, founded in the 13th century. The Couvent, like most monastic institutions, was taken over by the revolutionaries at the end of the 18th century, and it became the meeting place of the Club des Cordeliers, an insurgent group including many future Jacobins. The poet Jean Paul Marat, who published a famous free newspaper called L'Ami du Peuple (The friend of the people, also the title of this biography by Alfred Bougeart) and lived just down the street (at 30, rue des Cordeliers), was a prominent member. The only vestige of the monastery that remains is a part of the garden, where Marat was buried after he was assassinated (his body was then removed to either the church or cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, in the 5th, but I don't think the exact location is known), and a building that served as the refectory. It’s a remarkable monument, although only a disembodied part of the whole. (It also next to a remarkable 18th-century building, with a broad windowed dome, the Amphithéâtre de Joubert formerly belonging to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie [Royal Academy of Surgery] and now used by the Sorbonne's École de Langues [School of Languages].)

Normally, the Couvent is closed to the public, since it is part of a school campus, but it occasionally hosts art exhibits. Right now, it is the location of one of the Les Intrus shows from the Musée de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, whose normal home in the Palais de Tokyo is closed for renovation. I mentioned this installation, Sous vent (translated by the artist as “wind back”) by Annette Messager, in a post on June 14. The refectory is a single long room with a high, raftered ceiling, divided into two sections by a row of wooden pillars. The room has been left mostly unlit, except for natural light that comes through the rows of clear-glass windows on both sides. As you enter on the left side of the space, the right half of the room is covered with an enormous swath of semitransparent black silk. In an automated sequence lasting about 17 minutes, fans at the near end, hidden under the cloth, blow waves of air under the cloth at different speeds. As this “wind” lifts the cloth and makes it ripple and then billow, a score of sculptures also hidden under the cloth are illuminated, timed more or less with the advance and disappearance of the wind, from beneath by neon lights.

The sculptures return to many of the themes used by Messager in her previous work, as I learned in an informative presentation on the artist given that day by a curator. (Unfortunately, both Messager and this presenter believe that Michel Nostradamus was also buried in the Couvent, which is not true. He was actually buried—with his body standing vertically inside a wall—in another church, sometimes known by the same name, but in Salon-de-Provence, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.) Messager is one of the foremost femmes artistes in France, and as a feminist her work often focuses on women and children, whom she regards as the two classes of people who are the most oppressed in society. Since one’s view of the sculptural pieces (some images here) is largely obscured by the black cloth, it is hard to say much about them. Some forms are partially visible: a headless, child-sized figure on hands and knees; a large hand; a red bathtub (recalling the painting by David, The Death of Marat, made in the Couvent where the poet’s body lay in state after his assassination, with one gangrenous arm amputated; apparently, the arm that hangs out of the tub in David's painting was based on a study of an arm taken from another corpse); rubber masks of politicians, purchased in a novelty store (the faces of Chirac, Raffarin, and even President Bush are there); body parts and skeletons (a reference to the cemetery that used to be here); and a mass of tiny nude dolls wrapped in twine. A book of Messager’s photographs of the installation can be viewed at the entrance, and it shows details of some of the pieces, which include the collectible toys and stuffed animals that Messager likes to reassemble in monstrous combinations. (See also this review of the installation, by Lucile Encrevé, for Paris-Art.)

It was the movement of the cloth, which Messager calls a voile (a veil, a reference to both the monastic habit and the issue of girls wearing Islamic veils in French public schools, an issue that has been heavily debated over the past year), that struck me as particularly beautiful. As the fans blow softly, it creates a wave-like undulation under the cloth, creating the impression that one is looking at objects submerged beneath the movement of a black ocean. The cloth is firmly attached to the walls but not to the edges that face the viewer, which allows a sort of ebb and tide effect as the wind moves. As the movement of the fans increases, the air picks up the cloth and it balloons up into a large shape, especially at the far end of the installation where the width of the veil is larger. At that end, a set of automated pulleys raise and lower noose-like weights onto the end of the veil, which hold the air in for the final part of the sequence, creating a large whale-like shape. These gibets, according to the presenter, may be a reference to the Terror, since the Convent was also a Jacobin site.

Annette Messager gave a long interview (Un journal, ça sert à tout, July 6) with Antoine de Baecque and Elisabeth Lebovici in Libération, a newspaper with which she has had a long relationship, as well as her answers to Internet questions (Chat: «Si je sens que je me casse la gueule, ça sera une bonne leçon pour moi», July 6). Her installation, Sous vent, will be at the Couvent des Cordeliers (15, rue de l’École de Médecine) until October 3.

Dip Your Ears, No. 4

J. S. Bach, Six Suites for Violoncello, Pieter Wispelwey

Bach again—in solo works, this time—the equally famous Six Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello, played by Pieter Wispelwey on a Baroque cello and a violoncello piccolo. Like his colleague on Channel Classics, Rachel Podger (see post on July 7), Mr. Wispelwey (who is Dutch) has a knack for historical performance practices but is considered a "generalist specialist" with a wide-ranging repertoire from Baroque to contemporary music. Just as Nathan Milstein's DG recording looms over the solo violin sonatas and partitas, the patrician accounts of Pierre Fournier (Archiv—DG Originals) soar above and beyond the competition. Fournier has modest tempi (unlike the unfortunately bland and rushed Rostropovich [EMI]) and compared to the exciting if decidedly un-Baroque and idiosyncratic second Mischa Maisky recording (DG)—see the Ionarts double review of Maisky's recent concert in Washington, from June 10—Fournier is a veritable Baroque specialist. With tension aplenty, Fournier is always profound, persuasive, musical like few others and completely excels in the dance movements, especially the "French" ones. But, of course, Pieter Wispelwey is the true Baroque specialist, and as such, it is stunning how much energy he musters. More exciting than all but a few competitors, he doesn't have to sacrifice structure, tone, or rhythm to achieve it. Though far from hasty, he can be fleet on occasion, and Bach is meaningful for every second of the two hours and twenty minutes of music. With first-rate sound from the Channel Classics engineers, this makes a natural first choice for period performances and will be a standard bearer. The Fournier, with its surprisingly good sound, however, must also be had, and as the "anti-Fournier," the lovingly crazy Maisky deserves two ears.

Self-Portraits at the Luxembourg (Part 2 of 2)

This is the conclusion of a review of Moi! Autoportraits du XXe siècle (Me! Self-portraits of the 20th century) at the Musée du Luxembourg, in Paris. Here is Part 1. Images for all of the works in the exhibit can seen in this Aperçu des Œuvres, including those I haven't bothered to give specific links here.

I spent a lot of time admiring a tiny self-portrait by Frida Kahlo (1938, shown at right), now in a private collection, so I relished the chance to see it. (This is a Frida Kahlo anniversary here, which has gone mostly unnoticed: see my post on June 15.) The artist is shown in her typical less than flattering rendition, but with red twine wrapped tightly around her shoulders and elongated neck like a net. The image was painted on a piece of metal, like a Mexican folk santo, and then framed with curving rows of symmetrically placed small shells. A broad selection of smaller sketched self-portraits dominates one wall in the fifth room, including excellent examples by Salvador Dalí (1968), in which he shows himself with a fluffy collar that may be a reference to Velazquez, Picasso (1955), and Severini (1940–1950). Larger works in this room that caught my attention include self-portraits by Degas (1900) as an old man, Léger (1953–1954), Buffet (1948) at the easel, Chuck Close (1977), Masson (1944–1945), Mondrian (1918), de Chirico (1938), Bacon (1980) with his face blurred, Picasso (1906), Vuillard (1906), and Hockney (1974), self-importantly seated across a table from Picasso. The funny and self-referential self-portrait by Norman Rockwell (1960) appears as the main image for the exhibit on all its printed materials.

The last room in the exhibit is the largest, and it has some of the most important works in it, including self-portraits by Warhol (with a skull, 1978), Basquiat (1986), Herbert Bayer (a photograph of the artist as mannequin, with a section of arm missing and a disturbed look of realization on his face, 1932), and Henry Moore (a sketch of his own hands, c. 1974). There are also a number of paired self-portraits in this room, including Käthe Kollwitz (1893 and 1934), Man Ray (1916–1970 and 1972), André Dérain (1895–1899 and 1953), Malevitch (one shows him en artiste in Renaissance costume, 1933), Ensor (1922–1923 and, humorously, Mon portrait en 1960, from 1888, showing him as a crumpled skeleton), Matisse (1901–1903 and 1945, the latter of which is a minimalized face with spectacles), and Giacometti (a plaster Tête from 1927 and a sketch from 1964). Some of the self-portraits I particularly enjoyed were Cindy Sherman (Untitled #91, from 1981, showing the artist lying on a bed as a teen movie star) and Sandro Chia (Le jeune homme courageux, from 1982, an expressionistic and colorful depiction of the artist recalling the pose of the famous sculpture of the haughty Hellenistic ruler, holding a flag instead of a spear).

Strangely, for an exhibit focusing on the 20th century, the vast majority of self-portraits shown are by men. Except for the Frida Kahlo noted above and one or two others, the few works by women are hanging in the last room, where this is a selection of works on the theme of female nude self-portraiture. The most striking, honest, and least pretentious of these images is that by Alice Neel (1980, now owned by the National Portrait Gallery back home in Washington, D.C.), showing the artist in her later years, with white hair and a sagging, heavy-set profile, seated in a chair with her paintbrush. This is ironically juxtaposed with Egon Schiele’s Eros (1911), which depicts the artist masturbating an outrageously proportioned erection.

Although the idea behind this exhibit seemed to offer a unique perspective on the 20th century, the exhibit left me somewhat unsatisfied. Since reopening as an art museum, the Luxembourg has been criticized for its choice of glamorous shows, and Moi! has garnered a reputation, at least, as something of a blockbuster, although the crowds to see it were not nearly as dense as when I saw the Botticelli exhibit here last fall (see my post on October 8), when there was a line extending into the garden just to enter the museum. The ticket price (9€), although still not as inflated as the rumored cost of seeing the renovated MoMA (see Tyler Green’s post on this at Modern Art Notes), seemed awfully steep to me and the friend who went with me, who was bitter over not being allowed free entry with his press pass. There are many works by major artists, all of which I have listed here, but most of them are not, I felt, particularly notable. As a result, the minor works that fill out the broad selection of self-portraits (the exhibit requires a fair amount of time to take in) seemed at times like compensatory padding. I would have to spend some time with the book that inspired the show to see what might have been included that could not be, for whatever reason. The list of notable omissions might include Monet, Cézanne, Pollock, Modigliani, and many others, but perhaps they did not paint self-portraits.

You can view this exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg, in Paris, until July 25.

Dip Your Ears, No. 3

D. Scarlatti, Sonatas, Ivo Pogorelich

When Ivo Pogorelich is described as a "unique" pianist, it isn't always in the laudatory sense of that word. But he's always got something to say, and I, for one, rather like his Chopin Préludes op.28 and his Liszt Sonata in B minor. What a surprise, then, to hear him in these Domenico Scarlatti Sonatas, recorded over a decade ago, in which Pogorelich is one of the least indulgent players in the slow sonatas. Scarlatti's 555 (!) keyboard sonatas, written for the harpsichord and clavicembalo, work marvelously on the modern grand piano (although it took me some time to get used to it) and sound eerily modern at times. One of Vladimir Horowitz's best recordings is one with Scarlatti sonatas, and Mikhail Pletnev's two-disc recording of Scarlatti sonatas was just re-issued at budget price. Pogorelich's one-hour recording seems to overlap more with Pletnev's than it actually does, and he is every bit as good as his compatriot. Unlike Pletnev, he doesn't exaggerate every contrast in the sonatas, and he has funny ideas about the meaning of allegro in Sonata K 8, but all in all, his playing is more like Pletnev's than it is different. I find both superb and am tempted to give a slight edge to Pletnev over Pogorelich. It is a great Scarlatti CD to have, but at twice the price with half the music of the Pletnev re-issue (Virgin Classics), it can't be a first choice.

Ionarts in Paris: Self-Portraits at the Luxembourg (Part 1 of 2)

Having done some research on WiFi hotspots in Paris before coming here, I arrived all ready to blog from several cafés I had selected. Well, at many of those places you have to ask for a card to get you onto the network, which is good only for 20 minutes. Ironically, there are good, free, and non-time-limited WiFi connections in most McDonald's restaurants, which in Paris can be found about every 100 meters or so. Because of my sympathy for the ideals of José Bové, I would normally not set foot in a "McDo," as they say in French, but there I was with my laptop having a milkshake. Now I have found a bar, the Polly Maggoo on the Rue du Petit-Pont in the 5th, with an unlimited WiFi, so here I am. After coming here in the early afternoon, when I was the only person in a quiet bar, I discovered that the place becomes insanely noisy with people and loud music in the evening. (By the way, if you are in France and want to know if there is a WiFi signal in your bar, it is prounounced "wee-fee" in French!)

On my first afternoon in Paris, I avoided falling asleep and succumbing to jet lag by going to see the exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg, Moi! Autoportraits du XXe siècle (Me! Self-portraits from the 20th century), which I first mentioned in a previous post (The Game of I, April 5). This show was inspired by Pascal Bonafoux's book, L'Autoportrait au XXe siècle: Moi je, par soi-même (ed. Diane de Selliers, Gallimard), and it’s a subject that sounds good theoretically on paper: a survey of the 20th century through a selection of some 150 artist self-portraits (with images for all of them in this Aperçu des Œuvres, which is very much to my liking: all museums should take note) in varying styles. The idea is not original, as you can see in the first image in the first room, a reproduction of an engraving showing an 18th-century view of the self-portrait room in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence (not there anymore, I believe).

This first small room features self-portraits by Léon Bonnat (1905), Franz von Stuck (1906), Lucio Fontana (Io sono Fontana, 1966), and Thierry Vidé (1998). Safet Zec’s Autoportrait volé (Stolen self-portrait, 2000) shows a mirror hanging on the wall reflecting only an empty room. Two of the self-portraits in this room feature only text: Marcel Duchamp’s large signature (1964) and Ben [Vautier]’s Regardez moi cela suffit (Look at me that’s enough, 2001), with those words written in black on a white background. The most interesting work in this first room is the first of a handful of self-portraits by Pablo Picasso, perhaps one of the most self-absorbed artists of the century, L’Ombre (The shadow, 1953, now owned by the Musée National Picasso), which is shown here. This work shows the artist from the back as an almost shapeless black silhouette, hovering over a canvas in progress that merges eerily with the figure of his nude model behind it, lying on a bed. This was one of the best paintings in the show, I thought, and it has some sort of weird rapport that I can't quite explain with Matisse's Studio, Quay Saint-Michel, from 1916. Picasso did this painting the year before Matisse died.

The second room collects self-portraits dealing with the theme of masks, including works by Popovic (1947), Felix Nussbaum (1928), Adami (1983), Jean-Charles Blais (Reviens [Come back], 1982, which shows the artist thinking of a beloved woman), Friedrich Hundertwasser (the creepy, Klimtesqe Tears of an Artist, 1976), Yang Shaobin (2000), and Wols (Autoportrait nerveux, 1947). Jean Michel Alberola’s series of four photographs (2000–2003) show the artist’s face in each panel covered with a sign bearing a letter, which spell out from top to bottom R-I-E-N (nothing). Jan Vercruysse’s photographed self-portrait (1984) shows the artist holding a recently removed mask. Albert Marquet (1904) depicted himself winking. The names in this list may not be all that familiar, which illustrates how the curators of the exhibit, apparently limited by the availability of major self-portraits, have padded the show with lesser-known artists, sometimes interesting and sometimes not. Also worth noting in this room are works by Klee (Autoportrait d’un expressioniste, 1919), Claes Oldenburg (a sort of engineer’s sketch, with ice pack, Symbolic Self-Portrait with "Equals", 1971), and Francis Picabia (1923).

Magritte’s L’heureux donateur (The happy donor, 1966) and Botero’s Nature morte au journal, which shows the artist only as a picture on the newspaper under the still life, appear in the third room. You may not know this, as I did not before seeing this exhibit, that in J. Montgomery Flagg’s iconic poster I Want You, Uncle Sam pointing his finger is none other than the artist himself. Other works here include self-portraits by Alberola (1992), Eric Boulatov (1968), Jacek Malczewski (with the artist as the prophet Ezechiel, with Jesus clasping his head, 1919), Zoran Music (1989), Ron Kitaj (1986), and Tony Cragg. The latter’s self-portrait consists of a bicycle leaned against the wall and the artist’s outline pasted in pieces of beach toys and other common debris.

Go to Part 2.

Dip Your Ears, No. 2

J.S. Bach, Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin, Rachel Podger

Rachel Podger's Complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001-1006, are another true delight. "Authentic baroque" again, with Mme. Podger who is a professor of Baroque violin in London and Bremen. Now issued conveniently as a two-disc set (for the price of one) by Channel Classics, this is a truly outstanding effort, and showered with critical acclaim as it was (like Saul, as mentioned in my post on July 5), it isn't difficult to recommend this recording of some of Bach's finest works. Rachel Podger is convincing, stellar even, and always interesting in her tackling of these seminal works, which continue to cast their shadow over any composer writing for solo violin. With brio and technical prowess, she gets the most out of the rhythm, the jagged corners, the arresting double stops, and all the other elements that make these six works so great. In her energy and tension, she rivals my favorite account of these works, Nathan Milstein's 1975 recording for DG... and Milstein was by no means playing on a Baroque violin or going for authenticity in style. Thick and positively grating at times, Rachel Podger (or rather, her tone!) is energetic in a way one would not assume to find in a "historically informed" performance, and the lack of a creamy vibrato and a strong rubato does not affect the enjoyability one bit. For modern and period recordings, this goes straight to the top of my list and meets all-time favorites Nathan Milstein, Arthur Grumiaux, the mellifluous Shlomo Mintz, the sweetly melodic Itzhak Perlman, and even the willful Jascha Heifetz.

Presidential Tribute to George Sand

One of the many cultural anniversaries being celebrated this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of French novelist George Sand (see my post on February 6). As part of this Année George Sand, there was a national celebration in Paris on Sand's birthday, July 3. As recounted in an article (Chirac rend hommage à "un être exceptionnel" [Chirac gives homage to "an exceptional being"], July 3) in Le Nouvel Observateur, it was none other than the President of France, Jacques Chirac, who gave the primary address. Jacques Chirac saluted an extraordinary being who

incarnates the French spirit in all of its grandeur, [because she] did not cease to aspire to these values of liberty, equality, and fraternity that are the foundation of our country. George Sand's great battles for equality, for brotherhood, for the rights of women, still have today, more than ever, a formidable resonance. She touches us by her life, worthy of the greatest novels and which caused scandal. It is quite difficult for us today to understand the surprise and even hostility that were unleashed by her desire to live by her writing, her drive for equality, for women and for all, this flame that was revolutionary at heart, that made her seek universal suffrage, in this setting of the 19th century when all was in flux, but at the cost of great struggle!

The Minister of Culture (we need one: read the Ionarts Proposal), speaking at an event on the same day at Sand's home in Nohant, recognized "her fantastic energy and strength for work, unequaled without doubt in her age, except perhaps by Balzac." She had an influence on many writers, including Dostoevsky, Henry James, and Marcel Proust. I love the fact that the French celebrate events of cultural importance and that the President himself is involved. In 2017, will the President of the United States honor the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau (b. July 12, 1817) in a similar way? Or Walt Whitman (b. May 31, 1819) or Herman Melville (b. August 1, 1819) in 2019? How about Edgar Allan Poe (b. January 19, 1809) in 2009? It sure as hell didn't happen for Ralph Waldo Emerson (b. May 25, 1803) in 2003 (Peter Y. Chou celebrated), and I waited faithfully, in vain, for poor Nathaniel Hawthorne (b. July 4, 1804) this year.

That's Good Reading: Fully Credited Links

Souren Melikian, Art: Something glitters outside the spotlight (July 3, International Herald Tribune):

Drouot is a house of surprises, where extraordinary discoveries continue to surface. Barely advertised, most are ignored by the media. Last month, a series of important drawings and paintings turned up out of the blue, never seen in public before or recorded in any form. Most astonishing of all was a sketchbook by Camille Pissarro, a founding father of Impressionism. It was included in a sale June 18, "Important 19th and 20th Century Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures," organized by Piasa, a leading Paris auctioneering group. In typical Drouot style, not a word was said about the circumstances in which the sketchbook was found.

Florence Colombani, Marlon Brando, dernier tango [Marlon Brando, last tango] (July 4, Le Monde). This article has links to a group of several pieces on Brando from the French perspective.

Philippe Dagen, Les grâces de l'art brut, une énigme née dans les marges [The graces of outsider art, an enigma born on the margin] (July 2, Le Monde), a review of an exhibit (ABCD, une collection d'art brut) at the Pavillon des arts in Paris until September 26. If I don't go to this exhibit this week in Paris, Mark will scold me.

Valérie Duponchelle, Gilbert & George, cocktail pur british (July 2, Le Figaro) reviews the Gilbert & George show (20 London E1 Pictures, until July 24) at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (7, rue Debelleyme, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris). This show was also reviewed, in English, by Michael Bracewell (Gilbert & George—true pioneers of East End art, May 31) for The Telegraph.

Dip Your Ears, No. 1

Short comments on recently acquired discs.

G. F. Handel, Saul, Paul McCreesh J. S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion, Paul McCreesh

Saul is a magnificent work. Indeed, it is one of Handel's best works, even if less well known than the more static Messiah or his incidental orchestral or organ music. In this new recording, to top it off, the best case is made for a work already so exciting . Paul McCreesh and his authentic instrument troupe, the Gabrieli Consort & Players—just back from a stunning Bach St. Matthew Passion—get into it with their typical freshness and joviality that will have you get the jitterbug. The orchestral forces are quite big, for Handel at any rate, and diverse. Organ, timpani (plenty!), carillon* (yay!), harp, and lots of other things. In fact, it's already as big as if Otto Klemperer himself had re-orchestrated it. The complete thing, on three discs, lasting over two and a half fun hours, has the superb singing of countertenor Andreas Scholl (David), as well as Neal Davies (Saul), Susan Gritton (Merab), et al., and comes with the usual informative booklet and libretto in French, English, and German. A vocal baroque delight par excellence and not to be missed.

* CARILLON:

From medieval Latin quadrillionem, which refers to four stationary bells commonly used in France to indicate the time. Three high-pitched bells chimed the quarter-hours, while a fourth and deeper-toned one tolled the hour.

A set of cast bronze bells arranged in chromatic order and so tuned as to be capable of concordant harmony. They are normally played from a clavier of wooden keys and pedals but may also be played from an ivory keyboard with electric action.

Coo-Coo at the Corcoran

Last week, Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes was writing about the latest plan from the Corcoran Gallery of Art to build its outrageous and ultimately unnecessary Frank Gehry addition. The museum has reportedly asked the District of Columbia for $40 million and has a plan to find that money in a budget that is so strapped for cash that the already deplorable public school system is suffering further cuts. Inexplicably, Mayor Anthony Williams supports the plan. As you know, I am all for government sponsorship of the arts (see the Ionarts Proposal), but this is something that the District of Columbia should not even consider paying for unless its fiscal house were in order. In fact, the citizens of the District of Columbia would probably be much better off if 85% of college-bound graduates of the public schools here did not require an average of two years of remedial education before they can take undergraduate courses (seriously, as reported by the University of the District of Columbia) than if we paid Frank Gehry to build an addition to the Corcoran. Keeping some shred of arts education in the D.C. public schools might also be a better way to spend $40 million.

I repeat my suggestion (posted back on March 26) that the Corcoran is missing a real opportunity to find the perfect corporate sponsor for this project. I still think that a certain company's logo would fit so perfectly with Gehry's plan (as imagined here).

Beethoven, Anyone?

Thanks to Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber, I learned that BBC Radio has put Artur Pizarro's rendition of the complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle online. (The Portuguese pianist played the whole cycle in just eight concerts, in 2003, at St John's, Smith Square, London, when these recordings were made.) The format is for Real Player only, which annoys some people, and indeed I was unable to make the sound files work on a recent visit. Assuming I can can actually get it to work, it's a good thing, and I wish more sites like it existed. Anyone want to do this for the complete Bach cantata cycle?

Bud, the Brando I Knew

In Hollywood, urban legends flourish about as strong and fast as bad publicity. In fact, sometimes they become so strong or widely believed that they actually become bad publicity. Such is the case where Richard Gere even has to address anything involving a gerbil. But the "legend" aspect often can take the form of fortifying a movie star or icon's reputation into the realm of myth. Such is the case with Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier. When Hoffman arrived on the set of Marathon Man exhausted from sleep deprivation in order to play a scene honestly, Olivier leveled him with his eyes and decried, "Why don’t you try acting."

Whether that story is true or not, I don't know: I have never heard Dustin Hoffman confirm or deny it, and quite frankly, I don't want to. The point of these stories is to create some myth and mystery in an industry so permeated with observance and video invasion that we can believe there still is a "private Hollywood" and a layer of truth and secrets so deep they are only told in stories. It's no coincidence that old Hollywood has many more icons with mythologizing anecdotes than now. One has to wonder if Mae West or Lana Turner would have done half the things that are talked about had they thought someone was recording them with a digital phone only to download it to the Internet minutes later.

While I am sure Courtney Love could give Mae a run for her money and Colin Farrell is jousting his way towards some of Errol Flynn's markers, it seems with the advent of modern cinema and video we are losing a bit of our myth-making Hollywood. Perhaps the personalities were grander, the times more desperate, or quite simply, perhaps "things were better in the old days." Or, maybe, those old stars and directors had the benefit of an oral tradition that gained the momentum of years and the propulsion of the desire of the teller and listener to believe in giants and their great feats of audacity.

Today, mythological Hollywood has lost its greatest legend.

Marlon Brando has died.

To be honest, even seeing those words typed on my computer screen seem like an awkward and unlikely truth. Marlon Brando was iconic not just to me but to my parents and my parents' parents. One of the few surviving household names from the fifties who could still drop names like Dean and Marilyn without a wisp of reverence or awe. Marlon was the guy that when De Niro entered a room he wondered if he had a right to be there.

While I am sure that the Internet, television, and radio will be overstimulated by recounting Marlon's many film credits, Academy Award antics, and the regretful incident involving his son shooting Dag Drollet, it all seems a bit redundant. Marlon's life read as a constant news scroll of public consumption. His weight gain, his island, his friendship with Michael Jackson, and every role he even bothered to breathe on gathered a newsworthy fever. Ironic for a man who coveted his privacy so fiercely.

Yet, in the realm of cinema mythology no one will ever come close to Marlon for sheer volume of inside stories. A simple dinner with Marlon could produce an anecdote that would trail on for an hour. You never knew what was true but you simply couldn't rule out any absurdity because the man simply was capable of anything. In his own memoir Songs My Mother Taught Me the actor was attempting to be discreet and yet even at a pared-down volume the tales that would emerge would seem unfathomable.

I'm sure in days and years from his passing, stories will continually emerge to feed the mythos of Marlon. As Jack Nicholson once said (who worked with him on Missouri Breaks) it almost seems a competition to come up with the best Brando story. An activity that will only grow to the point where I'm sure he'll be spotted in Kalamazoo years from now buying a box of cookies in a supermarket.

My interest in Marlon first began when I was doing a production of The Sound of Music in a small regional theater in northern Michigan. I made the regrettable decision to bleach my hair in order to play the role of Rolf, the young Nazi sympathizer. With my hair dried to the point of hay, I was miserable and embarrassed arriving on set the next day. There were laughs and jabs, and I sulked quietly in my chair. When the note session came about from the director, a sixty-year-old theater veteran, he looked at me and commented. "You know who you look like to me? A young Marlon Brando." I rolled my eyes and scoffed the way you perfect when you are seventeen and get compared to some old dried-up movie star.

To me, when you said Marlon Brando all I could think of was that old, fat guy from old movies. To be honest, had he compared me to Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart the reaction would have been the same. I was young and dumb, and anything old was just uncool.

As I entered the university the next year to start my (as I would learn later) superfluous theater degree, I saw that they were doing A Streetcar Named Desire. It sounded like something I didn't want to do. "A Streetcar Named Desire? What is that? Like, Herbie the Lovebug?" But all I could hear was that it was the role Marlon played in the movie and on Broadway. As is typical in the entertainment world, the role of Stanley was precast, given to a graduate student in his final year who was promised the role a year in advance. I went to the audition anyway and thought maybe I could get cast as Mitch. If only I could have seen myself then... eighteen, going on 12, in a tank top and thinking I could play the predatory Stanley or even the world-weary Mitch. The latter role went to another graduate student who had spent his years in New York acting on a soap opera. I didn't even bag the role of the the kid whom Blanche kisses in some misattempt to recapture her youth. No. I was to play Pablo, the Hispanic friend at the poker party. Odd in its own right, yet, perhaps more fitting to the memory of Brando.

In those college years Marlon went from being "another old movie star" to "The Movie Star." His framed portrait was placed on the mantle of The Blue House, the common gathering ground for actors and musicians looking for something other than the weekly frat parties our school was known for. While Stanislavsky and "The Method" (a term Marlon much resented Strasberg for using) were prevalent acting tools and certainly Brando was their most influential messenger, to us he represented something else. He represented going against the system, technique, and the familiar. With all the pressure of studios, stardom, and worship, he refused to allow himself to become enslaved by the proper. You never knew what was going to tumble out of Brando's mouth, as I'm sure his directors didn't, but it was always interesting if perhaps not understood.

The iconography of Marlon to us was simply his ambivalence with all that we were told to care about. He was the King of the Grand and the Weird, and we were his fervent followers. One can see his influence on his younger admirers and their choices. I don't believe it's by coincidence that Sean Penn and Johnny Depp were both regular visitors at the Brando abode. Soon enough, in our crowd, there were variations on Brando, diverting versions of imitation pulled from various films. It was always conversational gold to land a pitch perfect Marlon seamlessly in a dialogue. One of my greatest memories of this period was showing up to a Halloween party with the gang and being silently and reverently guided to the backyard of the house where there was simply a fire burning. Our moderator and I were seated side by side late at night by the fire as a figure emerged from the darkness. Our colleage friend emerged dressed in a ragged black shirt, with his head shorn clean and a ladle in his hand. Cast in the flickering shadow of firelight he proceeded to re-enact Kurtz's speech from Apocolypse Now to the letter while drizzling water over his shorn pate. (We, of course, were right on cue with our lines from Mr. Sheen.) Needless to say, the bar had been raised.

Available at Amazon: Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Brando (1999 reprint) Patricia Bosworth, Marlon Brando (Penguin Lives, 2001) Carlo Fiore, Bud, the Brando I Knew (1974)

Since arriving in Hollywood I have always had Marlon tucked under my arm in one form or another. The notion of acting in film to me was a very epic presumption and until I could reconcile the "why me" factor I didn't think I could hold my head very high for the camera. Therefore, I went to the source of that intimidation. Who else, besides Marlon Brando, could be more daunting to a young actor and what he hopes to accomplish? I figured that, if I could make "The Wild One" a real person, then I had a jumping-off point. Suffice it to say, there were endless amounts of research on my subject. Fortunately, I was coming upon this journey at the right time. Marlon was releasing his autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me (now out of print), and I dove right in. I would dedicate a certain amount of time per day to get through it while I sat down at my coffee shop with a highlighter for all the passages that I could relate to. By the end of the book I had yellowed half the pages in a frenzied enthusiasm so that going back for reference was pointless. While the epic sprawl of Brando's life is legendary, he started out as a sad, lonely kid from Nebraska. Reading about the boy desperately wanting more of his mother's love and his father's acknowledgement is a script that any person can relate to. Yet, even back then there are tales of exploits from his school days at Shattuck Military School, of his driving a motorcycle through the halls, hiding the school bell, and lighting things on fire.

Soon research became obsession as I collected as many tomes as I could. I struggled through Peter Manso's exhaustive biography, his ex-wife Anna Kashfi's telling Brando for Breakfast (out of print), and Carlo Fiore's sad Bud, The Brando I Knew, among many others. My favorite was a short book titled Conversations with Brando by Lawrence Grobel. For once it was the cagey Brando talking with Grobel in his own words. Brando begins, as Grobel recounts, attempting nondisclosure and to "discuss the Indians again" but cannot restrain himself from going off on tangents about, well, everything. It has, since its publication, become one of the young actor's handbooks in Hollywood.

In the years since and during my research (there are no shortage of out-of-print findings and new biographies), I have made it my hobby to collect stories on Brando. If I am in a conversation, or even hear one nearby, that starts with "You know, Marlon Brando once..." or any derivation of such, I am all ears. I have met photographers, actors, and simple dinner guests of his whom I harangued with questions once they let slip they have met him. The one element that remains a constant through them all is the observation of what a nice man he was. While that contradicts many of the stories and accounts in his books, it does say that there was a great beauty and sensitivity in the man that perhaps was misguided over his long life and career. It's also a common denominator of many to add the postscript, "You do know he's crazy, don't you?" Yes, I always have.

I would be remiss in my hero-worship not to mention Marlon's darker aspects. Indeed, what mythos would there be without the cruelty and disdain he had for so much and many? It's what enabled him to cut so directly against the grain of expectation and make the choices to defy convention, regardless of who was on the other end of it. This streak was certainly not exclusive to his work but rather bled profusely through his personal life. Suffice it to say that his biographer, Manso, declared him a "louse of a man" and his own daughter, before her suicide, indicted him with the title of "the devil." As I said, nothing can be ruled out of the realm of possibility.

I have never sought out Marlon Brando publicly. I have also never used my research for any type of performance piece. Both have tempted me over the years, and yet, in all the exploration, the one thing that emerged was that the only thing Brando would want was for you to leave him alone.

Last night we drank to Marlon. Three friends gathered around a table in some Hollywood lounge pontificating about Stella Adler, Elia Kazan, the Actors Studio, and what Brando meant to us, the art, and even the universe. Three castoffs from his shadow creating a private funeral and just laughing at the absurdity of it all. Like him, love him or hate him, you just have to have an opinion about him. The very length of this post should demonstrate the effort of even attempting to encapsulate an aspect of Marlon's life. He was a humanitarian, upstart, oddity, inventor, father, husband, friend, and mentor to many... but I think it's his endless curiosity and desire that led him in so many directions.

To Hollywood... the death of an icon. The end of one of the greatest sources of mythos and mystery, never to be seen again. He was a living anecdote for uncharted ability and a disdain for the conventions that sought to restrain him. A God and a Monster.

To me, the loss of an ideal. The emblem of what could or should be accomplished in your art. Or maybe, more importantly, the loss of a friend, with whom I had spent so many hours, trying to empathize with and understand. A life that couldn't be measured by any one person but rather the many who will come forth in the years ahead with their own stories of absurdity and awe.

I know I'll have mine ready.

Thank you, Marlon. With love and respect,

Todd Babcock

French Art in Oblivion

How well do foreigners know French contemporary art? Not well at all, apparently, according to an interview with artist Gérard Garouste (Gérard Garouste: «Que les mécènes aient du courage!», July 3) in Le Figaro:

"French contemporary art is no longer a presence on the international scene." This pessimistic assessment relates both the discomfort and anger of a great artist who is aware that it is time to express himself. Gérard Garouste rarely speaks out. He has always preferred work and reflection, but he is not separated from the world. He observes and he asks questions. He follows the work of young artists. He searches. He likes to share. There is no bitterness in his statement, simply the certainty that it is his moral duty to speak the truth about a situation that the cultural powers that be, state-sponsored experts or dealers, prefer to ignore.

The problem? An académisme, encouraged by the French government, that keeps avant-garde movements from flourishing. Does this sound familiar to anyone? You'll have to read the rest on your own (it's in French). I'm on vacation.

Pompidou Center Extension

An article (Le Centre Pompidou baptise son petit frère, July 2) by Françoise Dargent in Le Figaro announces the plans for building an extension to the Centre Pompidou in the city of Metz.

As decided in January 2003 by Jean-Jacques Aillagon, then Minister of Culture, the creation of a provincial extension of the Pompidou Center in Metz, in Lorraine, is taking shape today for the public with the presentation of the six candidates that had been selected after an architectural competition. The Pompidou Center is exhibiting the proposals in Paris, including the stunning and innovative winner, signed by Jean de Gastines, Philip Gumuchdjian and Shigeru Ban. The construction, set to begin at the beginning of next year, should be concluded in 2007, coinciding with the arrival of the planned TGV East line in the Metz station and with the 30th anniversary of the Pompidou Center, in its Renzo Piano/Richard Rodgers edition.

I will leave the rest for you to read yourself (it's in French), but hurry, since articles disappear from Le Figaro's Web site very quickly. You can see a picture there, too. You can see some information on the exhibit on the Beaubourg's Web site.