Painting in the Dark (and Everything Else)

Mark Barry © Lites Out, watercolor, 2004

This past Sunday around 11 pm, due to a fierce storm, we lost our power and didn't get it back until Tuesday afternoon.

There is a lot to be grateful for when the electricity goes out, the best reason being that it's quiet. The phones were out, the computers out, the TV out also. Oops, we have to talk to each other: what was her name again? And reading in bed by flashlight, that brought back some memories. My daughter really enjoyed herself, a little Frontier Life lite.

The downside in our case was no hot water. Actually since our source of water is a well, we had no water at all, but I truly missed a hot shower; and those around me missed me not showering too.

Habits are not easily broken either. Whenever I went into a darkened room or closet, my first instinct was still to hit the light switch. Try to chase the chickens out of the flower bed with a spray from the garden hose: no dice.

This all comes around to painting, of course. How did so much art get made in the past with so little light? Even on a clear day, there may be five or six hours of good light to work by. In my case the days were overcast, and it was a struggle to see what I was putting down. I'm now going back and tweaking the glaze I painted on some pottery and tightening up some watercolors. Very little painting got done, but several canvases were stretched.

I'm sure that candles and oil lamps were a primary source of after-hours light for pre-electric artists, but still it's a very different way seeing the world. It's definitely a much simpler lifestyle.

Mark Barry (www.markbarryportfolio.com) is an artist working in Baltimore.

Art Returns to the Palais Liechtenstein

From the Christian Science Monitor, there is this article (A collection fit for a prince, April 30) by Charles Hawley, about the reopening of the Liechtenstein Palace Museum in Vienna (on March 28), which will house the Princely Collection of Baroque art that was taken from Austria in 1944 (after being sealed up in its building in 1938), to avoid looting by the Nazis, and put into storage in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, where it remained for seven decades. The collection, which includes works by Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt, will now be available again for public viewing (only a few works were allowed to leave storage since World War II to be shown in temporary exhibits). The renovation of Das Fürstenhaus von Liechtenstein (an excellent Web site with amazing text and images) and gardens cost €23 million ($28.3 million).

But the construction work did yield a surprise bonus. A number of beautiful ceiling frescoes (circa 1705–1708) by Johann Michael Rottmayr were rediscovered underneath a stucco and canvas covering that had been installed in 1819 to combat leakage. [Here are some images of the Rottmayr frescoes and others by Andrea Pozzo.] Once the renewal work on the frescoes is completed next year, the building will be almost as much of an attraction as the paintings it holds. The museum's highlight is the display of the "Decius Mus" cycle—a series of eight paintings by Rubens created between 1616 and 1617.

The Prince of Liechtenstein himself, Hans-Adam II, spoke at the press conference organized to reopen the museum, at which he acknowledged the many people who helped save so much of the collection.

Even after World War II, there were numerous difficulties to overcome. The Liechtenstein family lost more than 80 percent of its wealth during and immediately after the war and was forced to sell a number of paintings. Recently, the prince has begun a €15 million ($18.5 million) purchasing program to expand the collection and to buy back many of those paintings that were sold. Some paintings, however, are unlikely ever to return. "We will probably never be able to get back our Leonardo," says [director Dr. Johann] Kräftner, referring to a painting by da Vinci. "It is now in the National Gallery in Washington."

Because of the museum's private status, the prince was also unsure whether Vienna would be able to supply the 300,000 annual visitors the project needed to survive financially, and he had considered Paris or New York as a possible home. The site is not perfect—only about 170 of the nearly 1,600 art pieces in the collection can be displayed at once. Kräftner is hoping eventually to open a second museum to remedy the problem.

Well, Dr. Kräftner, we here in Washington are sorry about your Leonardo, but we have sure have enjoyed looking at it over the years. If you get serious about a location for a second museum, there would be at least one Baroque specialist who would be happy to see it built right here in Washington.

Opera for the People, in London

Some Reviews of the Savoy Opera: The Barber of Seville (by Tim Ashley, in The Guardian, April 16), 2 of 5 stars The Marriage of Figaro (by Andrew Clements, in The Guardian, April 19), 3 of 5 stars 'A Strictly Comic Line'—The Savoy Opera's Barber of Seville in London's West End (by Robert Maycock, in The Independent, April 20) The Marriage of Figaro: Bright, breezy and a bit racy (by Edward Seckerson, in The Independent, April 21), 3 of 5 stars Snorts and Guffaws (and Ticket Price Wars)—Raymond Gubbay's Savoy Opera Opens in London's West End (by Louise Jury, in The Independent, April 19) Barberism in the cut-throat world of opera: The Barber Of Seville (by Michael Church, in the Sunday Herald, April 18), 3 of 5 stars Barber of Seville cuts through class divide (by Stephen Moss, in The Guardian, April 8)

Here is an article (Cosi Fan Cheapo, May 3) by Mark Rice-Oxley in the Christian Science Monitor that, in spite of the truly awful title, I found fascinating (about a month behind the London press, I know). There is a new kid on the block in the London opera scene, a small company called The Savoy Opera that has been trying, since last month, to offer small-scale productions with unknown singers, "to bring opera to the masses by stripping out the pomp, the opulence, and the cost." It is the brainchild of producer Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen and impresario Raymond Gubbay, and they are offering tickets starting at the rock-bottom price of £10 ($18) and, not mentioned in the article, going up to £49.50, according to their Web site. As you can imagine, the official opera world is quaking in its boots, behind that derisive, sneering 'tude:

But critics argue that the Savoy is peddling mediocre fare, with young, unproven singers, spare sets, and an uneven orchestra. They say it will steal audiences—particularly tourists—away from worthier productions at ENO [English National Opera] and dupe people into believing they are seeing the real thing. "It's a good idea—the more opera the better," says John Allison, editor of Opera Magazine. "There is probably room for it in the market. But what's been put on so far is not up to the standard of the ENO," he adds. "The direction in the 'Barber of Seville' is underwhelming, the orchestral playing isn't that great, the casting is mixed."

That is the sound of fear. The Savoy's producer said that they must fill at least half of the seats in their theater—the Savoy Theatre, just off the Strand, home to, it must be noted, the historic productions of many of Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas by Richard D'Oyly Carte's company—to break even. Apparently hoping to quash the new company in a price war, the Royal Opera House has been offering "a limited number of seats for £10—a formidable discount on the £175 top price." Another sort of expert, Ian Kearns, "an occasional opera goer who is associate director of London's Institute for Public Policy Research think tank," says that affordable tickets may not bring in the the ravenous hordes, that "the majority of people shun opera not because of cost but because it has no 'cultural reach' into their lives":

"Research on why people don't attend things like opera, particularly people from lower income groups suggest it's not cost. It's lack of awareness, lack of interest," he says. "This is what you need to counter. People from outside London are simply not going to pay for a bus or train ticket and then line up for a ticket they are not sure they will get, and then have to leave before the final curtain to get home again anyway."

Please note that the Savoy Opera does not receive any of the state funding its competitors do, so it has to run a single production, Monday through Saturday night, with two matinees on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, for a total of eight performances per week. In response to this research about why people avoid opera, I refer you to my recent post (Elitism and the Arts, February 13) about how profits from the British lottery are being used to subsidize arts institutions primarily patronized by the wealthy.

Remaking the Closet

Well, well, well. In my recent review of Francis Veber's Le Placard (April 26), I wrote about the regrettable phenomenon of American remakes of Veber's movies. Veber himself, now living in Los Angeles, is trying to make an American version of Le dîner de cons. Now the entertainment press is reporting that an American remake of Le placard (The Closet, 2001) is in the works, with Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) directing a screenplay adapted by Paul Mayeda Berges and Lorne Michaels producing for Miramax. Veber himself is apparently not involved. This was first reported by Ian Mohr for the Hollywood Reporter, which has a subscription-only site so to hell with them (here is the story as it was picked up on May 3 by Reuters UK).

Kill Bill

Available at Amazon: Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003), directed by Quentin Tarantino

So now I've seen both volumes of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. It's a somewhat interesting story that was much helped by an orgy of balletic violence in Vol. 1, something that was definitely missed in Vol. 2 (although seeing Daryl Hannah and Uma Thurman kick the shit out of one another, with a conclusion you will not soon forget, is probably worth the price of admission). What made Vol. 1 so much fun to watch was the simplicity of its plot. Bill, seen only as David Carradine's beringed hand fondling a sword, killed a chapel full of people and left the Bride (Uma Thurman), one of the assassins for hire in Bill's gang, for dead. Somehow revived from a coma, she is understandably pissed off and goes on a vengeful rampage to murder all the people who did this to her, leading up to the action described in the film's title. I did not need to know much more than this to enjoy watching Vol. 1, which I did. Part of the problem with Vol. 2 is that we have to learn more about the history of the characters, which I didn't really need or want to know. I would have been content to watch the Bride do in her various nemeses in ever new and creative ways. Some of this character development is entertaining to watch, and at other parts I was checking my watch.

Let me say first that they are beautiful movies, at least partially because they feature Uma Thurman so prominently, and she is shot lovingly, even lustingly as some critics would have it, by Tarantino. There is something mythological or psychological going on with Tarantino in these films, but I don't know if I would carry it quite as far as Prof. Mark T. Conard (Kill Bill, Vol. 1: Violence as Therapy, or: How To Be a Dick, November 12, 2003, and Kill Bill, Vol. 2: Mommy Kills Daddy, April 26, 2004, at the excellent Metaphilm; thanks to Cinetrix at Pullquote for directing me to it). Whatever deep philosophical statement Tarantino may or may not be trying to make, it did not burden Vol. 1, which made it more enjoyable, at least for me, than Vol. 2.

What I want to know is where are the critics who were so upset by the over-the-top violence of Mel Gibson's The Passion (see Ionarts review on April 13) to complain about these movies, especially Vol. 1 with its bloody mass of Japanese bodies and severed limbs, that truly do fetishize violence and render it like a comic book? (One exception is Jeffrey Overstreet's Kill Bill review, with thanks to Thunderstruck for the link.) Indeed, if you want to see a character being used as a "punching bag" (as the character of Gibson's Jesus was described by one critic), you should check out Tarantino's movies. Uma Thurman is humiliated, punched, kicked, slashed, crushed, shot, and buried alive, and most of this punishment goes far beyond what the human body could realistically be expected to survive. Survive she does, of course, and even rises from the grave. We can hardly be surprised to hear that Tarantino admires Gibson's The Passion, as he stated in an interview with John Powers in LA Weekly (thanks again to Metaphilm for the link):

I loved it. I'll tell you why. I think it actually is one of the most brilliant visual storytelling movies I've seen since the talkies—as far as telling a story via pictures. So much so that when I was watching this movie, I turned to a friend and said, "This is such a Herculean leap of Mel Gibson's talent. I think divine intervention might be part of it."

I am secretly hoping that a language-sensitive French person (I think that's what's called a tautology) at the Festival in Cannes next week, who has seen the movie in v.o. (version originale), will bring up this minor point to Jury President Quentin Tarantino (see post on February 17, Tarantino at Cannes). Twice in Vol. 2 characters use the phrase "coup de grâce" but pronounce it without the final S sound ("coup de gra"): in French, that would give you the phrase "coup de gras" (S not pronounced), which I guess is the heart attack one would get from eating too much triple-cream St. André (a "blow of fat"). Perhaps Emmanuelle Beart, who is on the jury with Tarantino, will know how to say something about it.

Woodley Ensemble at the National Cathedral

I was at Washington National Cathedral on Saturday night for the last concert in the performing season of the Woodley Ensemble, one of the elite choral groups in the nation's capital. The singers were led by guest conductor Peter Philips of the Tallis Scholars, who has been appearing regularly with the group over the past several years, leaving director Frank Albinder to join the bass section for the evening. For this event, the audience was seated in the choir stalls of the cathedral's Great Choir and in seats between them, facing the choir, who stood in two semicircles directly in front of the normally hidden High Altar.

Available at Amazon: John Sheppard, "Cantate" Mass, The Sixteen with Harry Christophers (1997)

The program featured most importantly the complete "Cantate" Mass of John Sheppard (c. 1515–1559), which has been edited by Nicholas Sandon in the collection Early English Church Music (vol. 18) and recorded by the Sixteen with Harry Christophers (shown at left). Like most of Sheppard's work, this Mass setting was composed for the Sarum rite, which means that there is no polyphony for the Kyrie and that significant parts of the ordinary text for the Gloria and Credo are omitted, all sections that were chanted in the Sarum use. The Mass requires six vocal parts, which spread out the Woodley Ensemble's 22 singers listed in the program in a challenging way. In the copious program notes, contributed by different authors and making the program into a large pamphlet, Sally Dunkley writes that "it follows the well-established technique of drawing some material—notably the cantus firmus that appears from time to time in the tenor part, and the opening bars of each movement—from another work, presumably entitled 'Cantate' and apparently no longer extant."

The Gloria was the first piece on the program, and it was a glorious introduction, showing off that full-bodied sound that Sheppard did so well, dividing his vocal parts over three octaves, thickly voiced. I was also impressed by those examples of reduced textures, especially when Sheppard moved the piece into a smaller group of all lower voices, as in the "Domine fili" and "Suscipe" sections, where the sound became dark and rich. By the end of the first half of the concert, when the group performed the Credo from this Mass, some tuning problems had crept in, especially in the opening measures of sections when only one or two parts were beginning imitatively. In spite of these few minor problems, the Credo was a perfect conclusion to the first half, as Peter Phillips led the ensemble toward the faster final section ("Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.") and its vast sonorities. A few of those tuning inconsistencies were still noticeable in the Sanctus and Agnus Dei, which began the second half. The "Benedictus" section of the Sanctus is an exquisite piece of music that was performed admirably. Again, the contrast of high voices and low voices was featured in the Agnus Dei, as the first invocation was begun by the treble voices and the second by the lower voices. Sheppard's favored technique of dissonant cross-relations was heard prominently in the "Dona nobis pacem," that prayer for peace that we should be singing around the clock at this point in history.

There was a single piece by Sheppard's Franco-Flemish contemporary Thomas Crecquillon (c. 1505-1555) on the program, the 8-part motet Pater peccavi. (Although I looked for local Crecquillon expert Laura Youens, professor of musicology at George Washington University, I did not see her. She is editor of the composer's secular chansons for his collected works, published in Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, vol. 63.) The program notes (without a clearly indicated author at this point) describe the piece as a "motet in two sections, telling the story of the return of the Prodigal Son" (Luke 15: 17-18), with a homophonic section on the words "fac me sicut unum ex mercenariis tuis" that "appears in each of the two parts of the motet." What is not said in these notes is that this piece is a responsory, found in most manuscripts on Monday in the first week of Lent. (If you feel a burning desire to search through manuscripts of the Divine Office, you can do so at the Web site of Project CANTUS, a research project that began here in Washington at Catholic University, where I worked on it for several years as a graduate student, and is now at the University of Western Ontario.) When polyphonic motets were intended to replace Gregorian chants in the Mass or Divine Office, they generally reproduce their texts exactly. In this case, the respond ("Pater peccavi") is sung first, then the verse ("Quanti mercenarii") is sung, and then the last phrase of the respond ("Fac me sicut") is repeated, just as it is indicated in chant manuscripts. Whereas most of the tuning problems in the Sheppard Mass were in the soprano parts, here there was a problem in the tenor section, after a rough opening in the sopranos. A similar use of cross-relations was heard in both the Sheppard pieces and the Crecquillon.

The high point of the program, in my opinion, were two laments: the 6-part Musae Iovis ter maximi, a lament for the death of famous composer Josquin Desprez by Nicolas Gombert (c. 1495–1560), in the first half; and Lugebat David Absalon, depicting the mourning of David for his son Absalon, a piece attributed to Gombert, in the second half. (As Gombert was such an admirer of Josquin, I assume that the latter piece was inspired by Josquin's motet on a similar text Absalon fili mi.) I had never heard either of these pieces performed before, and the Woodley Ensemble turned in excellent renditions of both of them. The complete works of Gombert were edited by Joseph Schmidt-Görg, as vol. 6 of Corpus mensurabilis musicae.

On the basis of these two pieces, I think that more of his music in those twelve volumes deserves to be heard. Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars have made a good start. One of the Magnificat settings on the first of the recordings I just listed was the conclusion of this program, Magnificat 3, an alternatim setting of this most important canticle sung at the end of Vespers (see the text below). It is remarkable to consider the sheer number of musical settings of this single text, which was so familiar to Christian men and women for so long. Gombert composed polyphony for every other verse, starting with three voices and increasing the texture by one voice until he reached eight in the last verse. This piece was not as gorgeous as the two laments, but it was a nice way to end this beautiful concert of music perfectly suited to this remarkable setting.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo. Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae; ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes Quia fecit mihi magna qui potens est, et sanctum nomen ejus. Et misericordia ejus a progenie in progenies timentibus eum. Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui. Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles. Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes. Suscepit Israel puerum suum recordatus misericordiae suae. Sicut locutus est ad Patres nostros, Abraham et semini ejus in saecula. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto! Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

My soul magnifies the lord, and my spirit exults in God, my salvation. For he has regarded the humility of his handmaiden: and behold because of this all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty does great things for me, and his name is holy. And his mercy is on those who fear him, from one generation to the next. He has shown power with his arm and scattered the proud in the thought of his heart. He has deposed the powerful from their seat and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungering with good things and sent the rich away empty. He received Israel his son, having remembered his mercy, as it was spoken to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed forever. Glory to the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, and now, and ever in all ages. Amen.

Klinghoffer is Dead

Death of Klinghoffer (DVD)

Death of Klinghoffer (CD)

As part of Film Fest DC in Washington, I got to see Penny Woolcock's The Death of Klinghoffer, her film version of John Adams's 1991 opera of the same name about the 1984 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. On the Film Festival's Web site, Eddie Crockrell is quoted as saying that director "Penny Woolcock's decision to film the opera in the style of a political thriller on authentic Middle Eastern locations renders this one-of-a-kind film a remarkable and daring synthesis of heart-pounding docudrama filmmaking and risk-taking contemporary opera." The film was first shown in 2002 on Britain's Channel 4 but did not come to the U.S. until now.

This version, as good an adaptation of an opera for film as I have ever seen one, will not contribute much to either making The Death of Klinghoffer more popular or less controversial. In its combination of film, opera, its musical atmosphere, and its genre-bending character, the film is hugely interesting. No single element, however, seems to contain enough merit on its own to truly make this venture succeed.

In October 1984, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, which was carrying more than 400 passengers and crew, off the coast of Egypt. The hijackers demanded that Israel free 50 fellow Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) members imprisoned in Israel. The terrorists killed a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and threw his body overboard with his wheelchair. After a two-day drama, the hijackers surrendered in exchange for a pledge of safe passage. But when an Egyptian jet tried to fly the hijackers to freedom, U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercepted it and forced it to land in Sicily. The terrorists were then taken into custody by Italian authorities.

The opera does not delve into much of the before and after, whereas the film around it spans a narrative including flashbacks to the concentration camps in Germany and the founding of Israel. Attempts at being balanced seem a little heavy-handed in the earlier half of the film, where a pro-Palestinian attitude was evident. Some of the stories, depicted during the Greek chorus's work and solely in pictures, are made up, but they add depth to the characters and interest to the film. Reality is cast aside a little towards the end, especially with shots to 2002 that shows the whereabouts of three of the four terrorists.


The terrorists were, in real life, Majed Youssef al Molqi (24 years old at the time), Ahmad Marrouf al Assadi (23), Bassam al-Asker, and Ibrahim Abdetalif (21). The alleged mastermind was Abu Abbas (a.k.a. Muhammad Zaidan or Muhammad Abbas, then 37), founder of the PLF. "Molqi" (played and sung very well by tenor Tom Randle) was sentenced to 30 years, left the Rebibbia prison in Rome on February 16, 1996, on a twelve-day furlough, and fled to Spain, where he was recaptured and extradited back to Italy. Ahmad Marrouf al-Assadi—perhaps "Rambo" in the film and opera—disappeared in 1991 while on parole, serving a seven-year sentence. "Omar" (played by Emil Marwa, sung by mezzo soprano Susan Bickley) could be Ahmed Marrouf al Assadi, who renounced terrorism and turned state's evidence, or Bassam al-Asker, who disappeared after having been granted conditional parole in 1991. Whatever happened to—or whoever was—Ibrahim Abdetalif, I am not sure. The other film/opera terrorist is "Mamoud," played and sung by Kamel Boutros (image at left). Real-life Mahmud Issa Abbas (Abu Abbas's cousin), convicted for smuggling weapons to the ship, and Youssuf Saad, convicted for importing money to finance the hijacking, were convicted to six years prison each, but were released early "for Christmas." Unfortunately, it seems almost impossible to gather—except "Molqi," whose identity and story are easy to track—who the particular personae in the film/opera resemble in real life, because few sources actually agree on the names of three, much less all four hijackers involved.

Abu Abbas, of course, the hijacking's mastermind, was finally captured in Baghdad in 2003 and died there, in U.S. custody, on March 26, 2004. His story, as well as the entire affair's aftermath, is really a lot more interesting than the story of the hijacking itself. After U.S. outrage over the shooting of Leon Klinghoffer, President Reagan got involved. At first, ignoring U.S. protests, the Egyptian government rushed Abul Abbas and the Achille Lauro hijackers into an EgyptAir 737 charter plane bound for Tunis. Aboard Air Force One, Reagan authorized the carrier USS Saratoga, patrolling the Adriatic Sea, to put seven F-14 Tomcats into the air with orders to divert the Egyptian aircraft to a NATO base at Sigonella, Sicily. The appearance of the Tomcats unnerved the EgyptAir pilot, who compliantly altered course for Sicily.

Initially, the Italians were rather unwilling to cooperate and scrambled their warplanes to prevent a landing at Sigonella. Only after Reagan called then Prime Minister Craxi, did the government allow the plane to land. On the ground, Italian Carabinieri surrounded the plane, only to find themselves surrounded by U.S. soldiers who had orders to arrest the hijackers and Abu Abbas. The U.S. soldiers in turn found themselves surrounded by Italian soldiers. Arafat had threatened "uncontrollable" actions if the Italians were to turn over Abbas, and another call of Reagan’s did not yield further results. Early in the morning, when the Italians called in armored vehicles to support them against the Americans, the American commander withdrew his men. In the aftermath, the 737 pilot got decorated by Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, who also demanded an apology from Reagan, who in turn vowed never to give one. There were demonstrations in Cairo, Craxi's coalition government fell apart over the affair, and the U.N. General Assembly shelved a proposal to invite Yasser Arafat to speak at an event celebrating the UN's fortieth anniversary.

This has admittedly little to do with the film or the music... where best to start then? The libretto is often awkward and stilted, usually in the chorus parts. The action proceeds slowly but is much helped by Mme. Woodcock's flashbacks and picturesque storytelling. The singers, recorded live during the filming, are splendid, and their acting is superb, especially given the extreme demands. The captain, played and sung by Christopher Maltman, particularly impresses. Yvonne Howard's Marilyn Klinghoffer (a more mature woman than the 36-year-old "original" may have been in real life?), wife of the 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, played and sung by Sanford Sylvan (image at left), a pleasant mezzo, emerged as the hero of the opera. Her moral stature, dignity, and strength give the film its high points and lasting flavor.

But, as Arved Ashby from Gramophone Magazine asks, "[s]uch questions aside, is the opera any good?" He answers almost as I would: "The [film] does nothing to assure me of its musical worth. Even after repeated hearings, no one bar sticks in the memory. The harmonic vocabulary is the most pedestrian of just about any new music heard in the past 20 years." My words of choice would have been "turgid" and "wholly unsatisfying." There are, of course, critics who think of Klinghoffer as one of the best and/or most important operas of the 20th century. For this assessment, however, I cannot find a justification given the shortcomings of Klinghoffer and the multitude of wonderful 20th-century operas. Nixon in China, for that matter, Adams's opera before Klinghoffer is quite a bit better. Adams's oratorio/opera El Niño is most outstanding. And then there is always Richard Strauss, Leoš Janáček, Giacomo Puccini, Benjamin Britten, Philip Glass, et al.

Some of the dramatic scenes work well, thanks to the singers/actors. They are moving and involving, but they are lumped together with forgettable or flat passages, and the occasional minimalist offerings disturb more with their self-conscious appearance than they create a mindset like they do in Glass's work. Arved Ashby's closing paragraph sums it up nicely: "The prosaic extinguishing of Klinghoffer" was how critic Kyle Gann retitled the opera. Woolcock has turned it into a fairly gripping visual drama, and in a sense her success shows up the musical deficiencies: encountered as an opera rather than a film, Klinghoffer's interest goes no further than its topicality.

A treat only for the really interested, while general lovers of opera could probably better invest their time somewhere else.

Bringing Back Greek and Latin

There is a series of articles in Le Figaro Littéraire about one of my favorite subjects, ancient languages and why we should study the ancient world, including the following articles: Sébastien Lapaque, Quoi de neuf? L'Antiquité (What's new? Antiquity); an interview with Jacqueline de Romilly: «Le grec et le latin rendent heureux» (Greek and Latin lead to happiness); and Olivier Delcroix, Sfar festoie avec Platon (Sfar feasts with Plato). I am sad to learn that students in France are also less and less encouraged and even able to take Latin and Greek, although the situation is surely much worse here in the United States. One of the things I love about the school where I teach is that Latin is still required and there is the option of taking two years of Greek. Every once in a while, the school even sends off a graduate into a classics program, and that is very exciting. As noted in these articles, at the moment when interest in classics is at its nadir in the schools, it is all the rage in popular entertainment. Do we need any better proof that the myths and literature of antiquity are more relevant now than ever?