Summer Spectacle: The Noise of Time

I mentioned something that was not really an opera in my post on Opera in the Summer 2005, Simon McBurney's production of The Noise of Time with the Emerson String Quartet and the Théâtre de Complicité. It played in New York first in 2000 and again in 2001, in Los Angeles in 2002, in Paris this June, and at the Mossoviet Theater from July 9 to 12. It's a theatrical work, on the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, with his String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat as the soundtrack. Yves Bourgade wrote a tiny capsule preview (Les tourments de Chostakovitch, June 22) for Figaroscope, but I couldn't find any other print reviews. However, blogger Anina was there on June 23 and gave us some impressions:

this performance was amazing. it was a multimedia mix of live actors, chairs on a stage, big screen projection behind, radio announcements, and story telling. i enjoyed how they used the black stage together with coats lit up so as to appear to be flying around, but really it was an actor holding it up and making animations. i liked how they would interplay with sound, wind, and physical elements to tell a 4 sensory story of the life of chostakovitch. i found it really profound when they had him talking and telling the story of how stalin called him up and said, you will go to the usa and perform. chostakovitch said, but sir, how am i to respond when they ask me why over 100 places play my music overseas, and yet i am banned in my own country. stalin asked him, banned by who, by what? when in the usa, chostacovitch had to get up for a speech and he didnt know what to say. they handed him a piece of paper for him to read. in the end he went a bit mad and just kept shouting in to the microphone "i am a puppet on a string...a puppet on a string..."

Jeremy Eichler's review of the New York performance (The Noise of Time, October 2001) is still online from Andante:

Rather than providing clarity, empathy or even just a glimmer of the composer's complex humanity, McBurney gives us hazy theatrical collage and avant-garde bravura. The show, a revival of a Théâtre de Complicité production that premiered at Lincoln Center in March 2000, opens with a radio blaring historic sound bites: Bill Clinton on Monica, the BBC on outer space, scraps of lectures on Morse code and the aural cognition of music. Eventually, men in suits take over the stage, dancing frenetically with chairs to whirling passages from Shostakovich's symphonies. A cello is smashed and its shards convulse in spotlights. And so on.

This is not the depiction of an important life; this is its obfuscation. To give McBurney the benefit of the doubt, one might surmise that he was searching in these scenes for visual corollaries to the composer's music. A worthy intention, and the challenge yields some intriguing results, but it ultimately leaves one desperate for real content. Not surprisingly, The Noise of Time is at its best when integrating snippets of biography amongst the floating space boots and headless trench coats. Powerful excerpts from Shostakovich's letters are read; important episodes of his life, such as his 1949 trip to the United States, are referenced through anecdotes and projected images. At another point, the composer's harsh private indictments of human folly are interspersed with deafening choruses of official Soviet applause.

Well, you can't please everyone all of the time.

Summer Opera: J. C. Bach's Temistocle

Other Reviews: Mehdi Mahdavi, L’exaltante violence de Temistocle (Altamusica, June 24) Christophe Rousset entdeckt "Temistocle" (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, May 11) Manuel Brug, Bachs "Themistocle" in Leipzig (Die Welt, May 9) George Loomis, Bach Festival Leipzig Spotlights an Opera by Old Sebastian's Youngest Son, Johann Christian (International Herald Tribune, May 4)

J. S. Bach may never have written an opera (unless you count some of the secular cantatas, and that's a stretch), but J. C. Bach did. Near the end of his successful career, in 1772, the Elector of Mannheim commissioned one from "The London Bach," for his state-of-the-art theater that seated 5,000 people and had elaborate stage machines. The subject was Themistocles, the Athenian general whose life was told by Plutarch. As you might imagine, this is an opera that does not see that many performances, but this year Christophe Rousset and his Baroque performing group Les Talens Lyriques did it, in a staged production cosponsored by the Oper Leipzig and the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. There weren't many reviews, but Alain Cochard saw it (Temistocle de Jean-Chrétien Bach renaît!, June 23) for ConcertClassic (my translation):

We are ten years before the Idomeneo that Mozart also wrote for Anton Raff and Dorothea Wendling, who created the roles of Aspasia and Temistocle. [...] With the three unrelated ballet scenes added to its already vast three acts, Johann Christian Bach's new opera went on for longer than five hours. Christophe Rousset wisely opted not to perform the ballets in order to concentrate on the lyric drama, of a psychological richness and musical lavishness that was the subject of all the conversations between music-loving Toulousains during the intermissions. A discovery, to be sure, and of a major score that loses nothing in comparison to the young Mozart's opera seria and may even surpass them by a nose in the quality of the writing, the inventive harmony, and expression. Johann Christian composed with the pleasure one might imagine for Mannheim's large orchestra, which have engineered the revolution of the Sturm und Drang, in which his brother and principal teacher, C. P. E. Bach, had been one of the footsoldiers.

Cochard found the cast uneven, mostly strong except for tenor Rickard Söderberg ("too dry . . . hardly able to give the entire tortured dimension to the role") and a few other quibbles. The staging was "violently booed, and one indeed wonders why, since it was so inoffensive, without really being able to claim any real inspiration." France Musiques, of course, recorded one of the performances for a future broadcast (hello, NPR? PBS?). Hopefully, there will be a recording of this opera and the others by J. C. Bach on our store shelves soon.

21st Century Consort

Synesthesia was a pretty big topic in Blogville a few months ago, with mentions from Terry, Fred, Byzantium's Shores, and probably others. Actually, the discussion was more about associating emotions or abstract ideas with specific keys than about synesthesia, which is a clinical condition that involves the confusion of stimuli between different senses. Most famously, some composers—Messiaen and Scriabin, to name two—have had it and perceived colors visually along with sounds that they heard (and, I presume, vice versa).

So, color was on everyone's mind at Washington National Cathedral last night, and what a natural place to think about color. Synesthete Olivier Messiaen was profoundly influenced by a visit he made with his parents, when he was a teenager, to La Sainte-Chapelle in his native Paris. The late Gothic builders of the Sainte-Chapelle removed the supporting function of the wall to its maximum, leaving most of the elevation to be filled with stained glass windows. The effect, especially on a sunny morning or afternoon, can be hallucinatory. The windows shown here, in the nave wall by the tomb of President Woodrow Wilson in the National Cathedral, could probably have induced some strange chords in Messiaen's eyes/ears.

In his introduction, the cathedral's director of music, Michael McCarthy, reminded us that the 21st Century Consort has a history at the cathedral, where they have played before as part of the annual Summer Music Festival, which I plugged in my weekly column for DCist this week, because there's good music to hear and it's free. The group formerly known as the 20th Century Consort has dedicated itself for many years to the performance of contemporary music, in their concert series at their home institution, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. They were seated at the midpoint of the nave, with us facing them backward, that is, toward the narthex rather than the apse of the cathedral.

Just as Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) is, in many ways, the first real 20th-century opera, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, premiered in 1890, could be considered one of the foundation works of modern symphonic music. The consort performed it first, in a chamber arrangement made for the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances), founded by Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna as a place for modern music to be heard by an open-minded audience, from which the conservative reviewers of the time were excluded. If you know the piece, you would have appreciated the radiant, ambery tone of flutist Sara Stern on the famous chromatic opening theme that permeates the work. At one point, her oboe colleague, Wes Nichols, seated next to her, nodded appreciatively at her slinky performance. Conductor Christopher Kendall kept the entire performance at a very hushed level, so that even in the fifth row, I strained to hear at times (I don't know how much the impressively large crowd could have heard towards the rear).

The first half concluded with Anton Webern's 1925 chamber arrangement of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, op. 9, first performed in 1906. By comparison to the Debussy, this work seemed sadly unimaginative and somewhat gray. The density of Schoenberg's writing, of course, is muddled further by the cathedral's acoustic, which tends to swallow sound. The Adagio section has some lush, fluorescent sounds, in which Schoenberg flirts with major tonalities and then destroys them. The ascending motive in perfect 4ths (think of the main theme of Star Trek) seems so unlike Schoenberg, as we know him in later works.

We were told to allow a longer interval before the concert's second half, to allow darkness to descend over the cathedral. Erik Suter, who had performed the harmonium part in the Debussy on the small portative organ in the nave, went to the main organ in the choir for two pieces by Olivier Messiaen. Both were expertly played and well registered, so that we could hear the vermilion/cyan sounds behind us. The Transports de joie movement from L'Ascension was an ecstatic series of ejaculatory statements, and Le Banquet Céleste was a surreal evocation of the mystery of the Eucharist, which I thought was particularly funny considering the location. The final pedal note of the muted Le Banquet Céleste evoked a rumbling jet plane taking off in the distance.

The concert concluded with a premiere of a new work, Out of Darkness, by the group's managing director, Christopher Patton. It was intended to bring the concert into connection with the exhibit at the Hirshhorn right now, Visual Music (through September 11, when Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø will perform a concert of color music by Scriabin and Messiaen). According to the composer's notes, it "takes its structure in part from the Cathedral itself," especially Rowan LeCompte's western rose window, based on the words "Let there be light" from the book of Genesis. Combining music with light (designed by Daniel MacLean Wagner, who taught theater at the cathedral school, and Justin Thomas, a student there) and movement (percussionists who strode through the side aisles with various rattles and then ran into the central space at the end), the piece seemed at times to transport me back to the 1960s or 70s, and not in a good way. As you can see in the picture here, the lighting effects were pretty, but it seemed to me that the work offered little beyond cute gimmicks. Treble Charlotte Woolley gave a moving performance (mostly on the words "Lumen de lumine," or light from light, in the Nicene Creed), first from above us in the west gallery and then in the nave with the other musicians (she was amplified in both locations). Think John Rutter, and you will get the idea.

The free concerts in the cathedral's Summer Music Festival 2005 continue for the rest of July.

Operas on Archiv

We’ve all heard how the classical music recording industry is in dire straits and how no company invests in studio opera recordings anymore. Except Harmonia Mundi when they issue perfection in Mozart, courtesy of René Jacobs (Cosi, Nozze). And except EMI when they indulge Placido Domingo in a recording of Tristan und Isolde. And, well, except Deutsche Gramophon’s Archiv label that just issued two operas that should make any classical music lover’s heart leap. The two operas in question are works that have not been recorded often and never in full before, and both have outstanding casts. Perhaps classical music is more alive than often assumed, after all. Gluck’s Paride ed Elena and Handel’s Rodelinda, under the batons of Paul McCreesh and Alan Curtis, respectively, ought to be on anyone’s wish list for this year.

C.W. Gluck, Paride ed Elena, P. McCreesh

First to Paride: Gluck is the bridge between Baroque opera and Classical opera in such an influential way that it makes him one of the most important composers of opera, on the same level as Monteverdi and Wagner. Of the trio of Gluck’s ‘reform operas’ (Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, Paride ed Elena, all with libretti by Raniero de’ Calzabigi), only Orfeo got a solid foothold in the repertoire. Alceste less so – but at least it’s been recorded well – magnificently so a few years ago by John Eliot Gardiner (Philips).

And here comes Paul McCreesh with Paride ed Elena and unearths magnificence. Be it Gluck himself or just the genre of opera as such, but whereas ‘transition’ in orchestral music from the Baroque to the Classical style meant ‘mannerism’ or the ‘gallant style’ of the several Bach-juniors (much maligned in the past, now more appreciated again), the three mentioned Gluck operas have none of the stylistic uncertainty, structural aimlessness, or musical free-wheeling style of the J. C. Bach keyboard concertos or their like. These works, and Paride just as much as the others, know exactly what they want (namely to rein in the “ruinous excesses of opera seria, a form bedeviled by singers whose only interest was vocal display, and dramatic truth be damned…”) and have all the traits of stylistic maturity (if, admittedly, in a style you can’t quite put your finger on at first).

Gluck took opera to a new level by fusing word and music. Prima le parole – dopo la musica! (or vice versa) as we are told in Strauss’s Capriccio on the same topic. Gluck wanted the drama to be supported by the music and not have it be an excuse for music. The acrobatic vocal binges on which composers and their ego-driven singers had gone were put to an end. Thankfully. While there is legitimate difference of opinion on this (Debussy: “Long live Rameau, down with Gluck”), I’ll happily side with those who find that by emancipating the drama, Gluck actually strengthened the music rather than making it a mere vassal to the text. The libretto becomes the dramatic reason for the music, which is elevated by eliminating empty phrases and imbuing it with dramatic meaning. Everyone wins.

That the listeners win is in good part the doing of this recording. McCreesh states that Paride “might not work in a third-rate opera house with a fourth-rate cast, but if you have a wonderful cast, then I’m convinced that it’s more than worthwhile.” He certainly convinced me of it being “worthwhile,” and he never had to worry about a fourth-rate cast. Magdalena Kosžená, Susan Gritton, Carolyn Sampson, and Gillian Webster are Paride, Elena, Amore, and “A Trojan” as well as Pallade (Pallas Athene). They sound excellent from Webster’s “Non Stegnare” to Gritton and Kosžená’s “Sempre a te saró fedele.” The music is a constant joy; it was soothing and calming to the mind when I went to bed, and it was energizing and spirited when it accompanied morning espresso and FT the next day. Libretto in Italian, French, English, and German as well as good notes are included. Godi, trionfa! Elene é tua.

G. F. Handel, Rodelinda, A. Curtis

Rodelinda exists in a live, cut, English-language version with Janet Baker and Joan Sutherland – glorious as a vehicle for their voices but heard from the perspective of how Baroque opera is performed today, it simply won’t do. The inferior sound quality does not help. Nicholas Kraemer on Virgin (with countertenors instead of mezzos) is better in almost every regard, but Sophie Daneman is not in top form and the orchestral contribution somewhat listless. At $60 it's also rather pricey.

Alan Curtis goes back to Handel’s original version, one that is less marked by compromises to different casts as are consequent editions though he does pick two raisins from the later additions. “Vivo, tiranno” most notably – Bertarido’s aria in the penultimate scene – as well as Unulfo’s “Sono i colpi della sorte”, where a simplified, more sensitive version replaces an original that Alan Curtis describes as “‘buck up!’ vocal muscle-flexing.” (That original, if Curtis’s description intrigues more than it cautions, is included in the appendix of the recording.)

With Il Complesso Barocco under Curtis’s exacting leadership, the cast answers most every wish upon initial listening and does not let on to weaknesses that might disappoint down the road. Simone Kermes as Rodelinda, Regina de’ Longobardi is impeccably in tune, and precision and projection are outstanding. Though forceful, her voice stops short of being piercing, is never shrill but instead thick and round. The marketing coup for this recording would have been the inclusion of Renée Fleming as Rodelinda. At least in the United States, after her MET performance, this would have meant a few extra thousand copies sold to an audience that is less associated with Baroque opera. I only heard the broadcast, and Fleming’s voice with the warm fuzz around its edges may indeed be more comforting to a wider crowd of infrequent opera listeners… but I am not prepared to declare a qualitative difference between her and Ms. Kermes.

Marijana Mijanović, Steve Davislim, Sonia Prina, Marie-Nicole Lemieux (with lovely sounding Handel credentials on a disc with Italian cantatas by Handel), and Vito Prisante may not be household names (yet), but I found none a weakness, most a strength. A hearty welcome to this recording too, then.

If pressed to chose between the two, though, the Gluck would be my pick. The music is just a dash fresher and we might have rather more Handel operas on our shelves than Gluck, anyway.

Classical Week in Washington (7/11)

Classical Week in Washington is a weekly feature that appears on Mondays. If there are concerts that you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (praecentor at yahoo dot com). Plan your concert schedule for the entire month of July with our Classical Month in Washington (July), or your summer opera listening with Opera in the Summer 2005.

Tuesday, July 12, 7:30 pm
21st Century Consort (music by Debussy, Schoenberg, Messiaen, and local composer Christopher Patton, multimedia piece with lighting effects by Daniel MacLean Wagner)
Washington National Cathedral [FREE, no tickets required]
See the review by Charles T. Downey (Ionarts, July 13)

Wednesday, July 13, 7:30 pm; Friday, July 15, 7:30 pm; Sunday, July 17, 2:30 pm
Verdi, Rigoletto
Summer Opera Theatre Company
See the review by Joseph McLellan (Washington Post, July 12)

Thursday, July 14, 7 pm
Forlana Consort, Celebration of Flanders Day
Corcoran Gallery of Art

Thursday, July 14, 8 pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: A Midsummer Night's Classics, with Ilya Finkelshteyn, cello, and Mark Wigglesworth, conductor (Shostakovich Festival Overture)
Music Center at Strathmore (North Bethesda, Md.)
See the review by Jens F. Laurson (Ionarts, July 15)

Friday, July 15, 7:30 pm
Cathedral Men's Voices in Concert (directed by Michael McCarthy)
Tallis's Lamentations, Poulenc's Four Prayers of St. Francis of Assisi, and other works
Washington National Cathedral, Summer Music Festival [FREE, no reservation required]

Friday, July 15, and Saturday, July 16, 7:30 pm
National Symphony Orchestra at Carter Barron (Sarah Hatsuko Hicks and Emil de Cou, conductors)
Carter Barron Amphitheatre [FREE, no reservation, gates open at 7 pm]
See the review by Andrew Lindemann Malone (Washington Post, July 18)

Sunday, July 17, 3 pm
Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic [formerly Mount Vernon Orchestra] (Beethoven, Suttermeister, and three world premieres by local composer Armando Bayolo) [FREE]
The Lyceum (Alexandria, Va.)

Sunday, July 17, 7:30 pm
Washington area combined choirs, music of Thomas Tallis (including the famous motet in 40 parts, Spem in alium)
Washington National Cathedral, Summer Music Festival [FREE, no reservation required]

——» Go to last week's schedule, for the week of July 4.

Summer Opera: Tristan in St. Petersburg

This was not on my list of summer opera productions to watch (Opera in the Summer 2005, June 2), but it sounds interesting. The Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg is mounting a new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, which premiered on May 27. Valery Gergiev is conducting, of course, and the staging and costuming were designed by up-and-coming director Dmitry Chernyakov. George Loomis reviewed a more recent performance in an article (Helping restore Wagner to Russia: A forceful 'Tristan und Isolde', July 6) for the International Herald Tribune:

In the new production of "Tristan und Isolde" at the Maryinsky Theater's White Nights Festival, the action takes place entirely indoors. Rather than the deck of the ship transporting Isolde to her would-be husband, King Mark, Act I is set in a modern warship's officer's quarters, equipped with computer terminal and exercise machine. Instead of a garden with tall trees, the Act II curtain rises on an upscale hotel room as a maid vacuums. And in Act III, the garden of Tristan's castle defers to a large but shabby living room with faded wallpaper.

Until recently, the Maryinsky has tended to resist provocative, interpretive productions. But with his stagings of Stravinsky's "A Rake's Progress" for the Bolshoi and Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh" for the Maryinsky, Dmitri Chernyakov has emerged as Russia's young opera director of choice, and Valery Gergiev tapped him for this latest installment of the Maryinsky's yeoman effort to restore Wagner to Russia. If Chernyakov emerges with his image somewhat tarnished, it is more because of misguided details than a distortion of the essential drama, which indeed registers with considerable force. Possibly wary of introducing Russian audiences to an opera that has little action, Chernyakov invents characters representing Tristan's parents (wife welcomes husband home after a long day, so it appears, and removes his shoes). People are forever fiddling with the hotel television's remote. And Isolde and her maid, Brangäne, carry on like roommates; indeed, there are hints (in the rather masculine costumes by Chernyakov and Irina Tsvetkov, for instance) that their relationship goes further.

But there are striking moments too, as when the lovers step from their hotel room into a more cosmic arena, only to return to find the room populated by Mark and his entourage. Of the sets (designed by Chernyakov and Zinovy Margolin) only the first misfires, because it lacks space for Brangäne and Tristan to converse away from Isolde (they do so offstage); otherwise, the sets stand for constraints on the lovers. And the sheer simplicity of Isolde's Liebestod - she sits leaning against a wall with Tristan's body propped next to her - allows the music to work its magic without distractions.

For a little history on Wagner's operas in Russia, there was a preview article (Wagner love, May 27) by Galina Stolyarova for the St. Petersburg Times, translated into English. Here's an interesting snippet:

Vladimir Lenin, the first Soviet leader, admired the vision of art for the people that Wagner had promoted, but he also happened to like the sound of his music. Siegfried's funeral march was played at the memorial concert after Lenin's death in 1924.

Joseph Stalin, Lenin's successor, was a Wagnerian enemy, and his era changed all that reverence, making Wagner's name taboo. This was mainly because German dictator Adolf Hitler was known to have a craving for Wagner's music. The composer's works accompanied the German army during World War II. So, when the German army lost the Battle of Stalingrad, radio stations played the funeral march from Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods." Predictably, the composer's works were pitilessly expelled from the repertoire of Russian theaters under pressure from Stalin's ideological machine.

Now Gergiev appears poised to reverse that expulsion. Follow the links above for some pictures of the production.

Budget Picks, No. 2

L. van Beethoven, Violin Sonatas 5 and 9, Vengerov et al.

These two are Beethoven’s most popular violin sonatas (perhaps because they have nicknames, rather than the other way around), and they must be had. This particular recording has – apart from very present sound – Maxim Vengerov to offer. In 1992 still at the beginning of his career, he was already endowed with all the facilities that made a great career possible. You’ll have to look elsewhere for particular pianistic insight or more intellectual readings, but in terms of sheer violin exuberance this is a splendid recording to have. Raw and vibrant, Vengerov takes the listener around all the corners and edges with élan. The playing time could be more generous, but at the budget price that’s not sufficient reason to resist.

Apex 68573890792

Ionarts on the Road

We have a friend from France staying with us for a couple months. She is a cousin of my exchange brother, with whom I stayed on my first ever trip to Europe, when I was the tender age of 16. It has been a lot of fun to give her many of the same experiences I had in France, but in reverse. This includes teaching her American slang, making her say words or tongue twisters to make fun of her accent, trying to explain obscure or vulgar jokes, and of course introducing her to foreign foods. Since my summer as an exchange student involving sampling horse, snails, duck (as the guest, I was given the honor of selecting the unlucky animal who would be at the center of the Sunday dinner table), rabbit, pâté foie gras, 400 different kinds of stinky cheeses, and frog’s legs, I didn’t think we would be able to shock her in the latter category. However, a friend had the brilliant idea to prepare soft shell crabs, which he did for us one evening. Although we explained many times, in English and French, that the way to eat a soft shell is whole, which is precisely the point, she could not bring herself to eat it any other way than by trying to extract the meat as if from a regular crab. She probably has the constant suspicion, as I did in France, that her hosts are trying to pull some trick on her.

Well, for the past couple weeks, we brought her along on that typical form of American vacationing, the car trip. As we feared, she was not prepared for just how long you have to sit in a car hurtling at great speeds to cross even a fraction of the United States. This began, as I mentioned last week, with a week at a Midwestern lake cottage, in this case one or two steps above basic camping. Because my family is from Indiana, our friend had to learn to play euchre (it’s quite similar to a game her family taught me in France, called belote, so she got the hang of it quickly). We then went up to visit some dear friends in Rochester, New York, where she experienced a hometown Fourth of July celebration, complete with a parade, barbecue, and fireworks. (I know, I know, we should have been in Washington for the fireworks to end all fireworks, but it didn’t work out with the rest of the trip.) We then took her to see Something Outdoors on an Incredibly Grand Scale, which is the American equivalent of seeing an old historical building in Europe. Of course, what worked out with this trip was Niagara Falls, which in one of those ironic turns was a place I had never seen myself. (I can’t tell you how few French people of my acquaintance have been to see Mont Saint-Michel, for example, so this phenomenon is not limited to Americans.)

What has grown up around Niagara Falls is mostly an eyesore, but I could not have imagined just how wild the falls themselves remain. Water rushing over the precipice, and over such a precipice, is an incredible thing to see, no matter how the surroundings have changed in the last centuries. We took our friend on the Maid of the Mist boat trip, which takes you up to the edge of the crashing water, and that location is about the least affected by human intervention, at least to the uninformed eye, as any on the planet. The Native Americans of the region regarded the falls as a sacred site (see the post on my recent visit to the Cahokia holy city near St. Louis), where a god of thunder, Heno, lived behind the roaring rush of water, with the huge ascending plume of mist as his nimbus. If we had had any sense as a nation, we should not have allowed any development around this place, which is the sort of utterly unrealistic thing you would probably expect me to say. Most of the American side of the falls is technically a protected state park, but the spirit of commerce pervades everything but the center of the cataract itself. Our friend and her family live near Grenoble, at the foot of the Vercors mountain range, which juts out from the Alps, so imposing natural sites are nothing new to her. Even so, she was awestruck by Niagara, just as we were.