Ecclectic Foursome at the Terrace Theater

You're not allowed to compare them to the Kronos Quartet; you're supposed to think of them as a band, not a string quartet; you don't know whether they have started playing already or are still tuning; and the number one word used to describe them is eclectic. On first sight, they look no less the part of a string quartet than, say, the Brodsky Quartet on a casual Friday (though they sit down for their performance)... were it not for the second violinist, who looks as though straight from a Twisted Sister video. The sound is amplified, and they are self-consciously dismissive of all things that they associate with "classical music" (their quotation marks, presumably) - which gets old before it even started... because from classical music they came and back to classical music they will eventually be drawn - even if they've made a career out of being its teenage rebels.

This is Ethel. I say all that (and it sounds less kind than I feel about the group and their music), because their audience is - and will likely always be - a classical music audience. Everyone needs a point of reference in musical taste and exploration - the idea of sui generis music is an illusion - and Ethel's point of reference is avant-garde classical music.

Avant-garde in their case is a matter of style, moreso than the music itself, because for all its electronic enhancements, prerecorded tracks, and turning the instrument bodies into percussion instruments, the musical vernacular is easily digested by anyone with even a half-open mind. Turned on or off as you may be by their artificial reverb gone wild, the underlying tunes are as beautiful (soothing sometimes, rousing frequently, moving always) as a surprisingly good film score.

Ethel, Ethel String Quartet Cantaloupe

Their audience is a colorful mix. One distinct part is made up of left-wing self-perceived intellectuals in their early to late twenties who feel good about hearing such music, disdain the bourgeois ways of a crusty society or the shallow and glitzy ways of their materialistic contemporaries. They can ruminate about Derrida and Bertolucci as though they knew what they were talking about. And they have all declared years ago that Bukowski's poetry was no longer part of the counterculture. They like "awareness building" and have thought about joining PETA. All have threatened (twice, now!) to move out of the country if George W. Bush wins the election - but curiously, they are still here.

The other group in attendence is substantially older and feels equally good about going to a performance so irreverent as the Ethel's, because it lends them the air of still being somewhat with the times. Perhaps to impress their hipper, better half or young spouse or teenage kid. Whatever the reason: God bless their hearts. It's a deuced bit better than becoming a sulking musical conservative, sneering at anything after middle-period Beethoven. Half of them or more don't really like the music - but usually say that it was "interesting" or "nice" or perhaps that they "didn't quite understand all of it."

If I weren't too young for it, I'd probably belong in their group. Finally, there are a few people who actually wanted a subscription to the WPAS Hayes Piano Series - but that popular program was sold out so they got one to On the Edge, not exactly knowing what they got themselves into (at the Kennedy Center on January 18).

The performed music, meanwhile, was energetic, full of driving rhythms, tuneful for the most part and throughly enjoyable in a carnal way... that is to say, unreflected, left alone from analysis or intellectual tinkering. The less was said about the music, the more I found the pieces to work for me. A Scott Johnson piece, The meaning of things, of which Ethel presented four excerpts, was one of the musically most appealing and successful works. Played alongside spoken words and aligned with its pitch and rhythm, it was intriguing, with surprises around every corner as well as an inherent logic. It breathed with life and sounded good. That the text was unholy 1980s nonsense - intellectually pretentious with dangerously naive environmental visions and that 'know-all' tone of someone explaining to you the solutions to all our ills as he unfolds information before you that is supposed to be new to our ears, startling but revealing. While it is true that "time is running out on the Universe" (in the several-billions-of-years sort of way), the universe - I have this on good authority - does decidedly not think that we (humans, presumably) are the problem for it. That is mostly because the 'Universe' does not care, or think, period. Nor do humans and their antics matter to anyone consciously but us. Anthropomorphizing 'Earth' is one of my pet peeves and the well-meaning 80s version seems quaint and antiquated. The whole thing felt like a sequel to Angels in America gone Greenpeace, gone Danielle Steele. (The Angels in America similarity had actually occurred to me from the first piece, Todd Reynold's Uh... it all happened so fast onward.)

John Zorn's Cat O'Nine Tails delighted the audience with its wacky, over-the-top humor (including premature ovations and hollers), but I found it terribly contrived, campy, unsubtle, and affected. Ironically it was, in its own way, the most bourgeois and conservative work of the program with its safe, neutered, suburban, middle-class rebelliousness. Like a raunchy Robin Williams standup performance where he talks for hours on end about cunnilingus. Sticky stuff - but it's coming from Mrs. Doubtfire and Peter Pan, so it's OK to laugh, even for the in-laws.

Ethel is sound designer Joe Elf(?), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello), Todd Reynolds (violin), and Mary Rowell (violin). See Gail Wein's review for the Washington Post.

Music Blogs a Hit in France

Think music blogs are an English-language phenomenon? A recent article by Odile de Plas (Avec les blogs, les mélomanes tissent leur toile [With blogs, music lovers weave their Web], January 13) for Le Monde gives some background on French music blogs, described as "thousands of personal sites, mixing text and sound, surging up on the Internet: a new way to discover music, listen to it, and share it is shaking up the existing commercial networks." Here is a translation of some excerpts:

Welcome to what are called "musical blogs." The term is barbarous. It means minisites hosted for free on the Web. Having appeared in 2003 in the United States, where there are thousands of them, music blogs emerged in France since the end of 2004. Five music blogs are supposedly created every day in France, 150 each month, from the most rudimentary to the most elaborate, according to Chryde, one of the genre's pioneers. No doubt, at the same time, many of them are disappearing. Specialists think of these Internet information pages as the modern-day version of 1980s fanzines, with sound, interactivity, and a world-wide audience at best. The fanzine was a rag of a few pages, often photocopied, that covered alternative music news and was most often sold at concerts.

Chryde founded his music blog, La Blogothèque, in September 2004, with a few friends, music lovers like himself, "ex-readers of Inrocks, nearing 30, major consumers of the Internet and who no longer found what they wanted in today's magazines. We wanted to speak about music outside the classic schema of interview and criticism." La Blogothèque, like most of the most popular music blogs, boasts an MP3 [sic], a blog that allows you to select pieces of music, listen to them, and download them. A box of hypertext links allows visitors to tell stories "inspired" by the music they hear. All sorts of music are found on these blogs. Not much classical, true, bas lots of forgotten treasures of popular music from the last 50 years.

Other blogs mentioned in the article are Fruits of Chaos and Into the Groove, both of which, oddly enough, are written in English. La Blogothèque has an interesting article on an exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, Sons et Lumières, which just ended on January 3. Mâte-moi ça!

Opera Lafayette

The people sitting next to me at the concert of Les Violons du Roy Friday night (see my review) were speaking French to one another. Eavesdropping on French conversations, although terribly rude, is one of my favorite activities. At intermission, the man struck up a conversation by asking about why I was taking notes in my moleskine, and we chatted about Baroque music. It turns out that his wife, Marie-Hélène Forget, is Executive Director of Opera Lafayette, the group here in Washington dedicated to opera of the 17th and 18th centuries, which is right up my alley, as you can imagine. For their tenth anniversary season (the group was founded as The Violins of Lafayette in 1995), they will be presenting Jean-Baptiste Lully's pastorale heroïque Acis et Galatée on February 20, so mark your calendars. (They last presented this work in 2000, with Handel's Acis and Galatea.) The cast will include tenor Howard Crook, bass-baritone Bernard Deletré, and soprano Gaële LeRoi. Catherine Turocy's New York Baroque Dance Company will provide the ballet, and The Violins of Lafayette, under Ryan Brown, will play the music.

Also on the program this year is the very exciting American premiere of the last opera by Antonio Sacchini (1730–1786), the tragedy Oedipe à Colone (premiered at Versailles in 1786), based on the second play of the Oedipus trilogy by Sophocles. (I have done some work on Sacchini's Armida, from 1772.) The cast will feature tenor Robert Getchell, bass-baritone François Loup, and soprano Nathalie Paulin. Both of these staged productions will take place at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park. It means a trip to the suburbs, but I'll be there.

Violons du Roy at the Terrace Theater

Snow in Washington—real snow like what fell yesterday (you can see the results)—always makes me a little nostalgic for the Michigan of my boyhood. As an expatriate from the Great Lakes State (and someone born in mid-winter, which I like to think has something to do with it), I am one of those crazies who actually enjoy snowy winters. Why do I live in a normally snow-deprived place like Washington, D.C., you ask? Well, what I do not miss is the lesser cultural calendar of my home state. In places like East Lansing, Ann Arbor, and Detroit, you can hear good music, but nothing like the gluttonous feast we enjoy here. As I wrote here on Thursday, I would be attending one and sometimes two excellent musical events every day this weekend, if I had my way. Now, family commitments come first, so I am not going to be able to follow my insane cultural dream schedule, but I could! (This reminds me of what a friend in Paris said when I called her on a Sunday morning. No, she was not actually asleep, "Mais j'aurais pu!" [But I could have been!]. That was what offended her about my call.)

When I ran into fellow Ionarts music critic Jens Laurson at the Kennedy Center last night, he was waiting to see the Kirov Opera's performance of Boris Godunov (see his thoughts on the performance). Would I see that, or the Glass 7th Symphony with the National Symphony (see Jens's review)? Not even I really knew until I got there and bought a ticket. I went back and forth but ultimately decided that, as a Baroque specialist, I should follow my original plan and go up to the Terrace Theater to hear Les Violons du Roy with soprano Karina Gauvin. The fact that Jens's response was "Who?" indicates that my choice was the most obscure, something that also gives me some perverse satisfaction.

You might think, given their Bourbon-inspired name (not the spirit, which is an inspiration of its own wonderful kind, but the royal family of France), that Les Violons du Roy is a French group. In fact, Bernard Labadie founded the group in Québec City in 1984, along with La Chapelle de Québec the following year. They came to Washington to perform an all-Bach and Handel program, with the assistance of soprano Karina Gauvin. (Labadie and Gauvin recently collaborated on Handel's Messiah, combining La Chapelle de Québec with a chamber-sized selection of players from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at Disney Hall last month. See the very positive review from LA Weekly.)

Although I had been able to get a fairly good single seat at the last minute, the Terrace Theater was nearly full that evening and buzzing with languages other than English. The orchestra is small, with eight violins (strangely, all women) balanced by three violas, two cellos, and one bass (strangely, all men). The wind group was represented only by two oboes and one bassoon (strangely again, all women), and a theorbo and harpsichord (both men) provide continuo realization. Many of the players seem young, which is not any sort of judgment on their talent or experience. However, it did get me to thinking about how this sort of specialized ensemble offers opportunities to younger players, perhaps on their way to more traditional sorts of jobs. Will there be a time when the concept of an "early music" playing style is not unusual, when most instrumentalists will have spent at least some time playing this kind of repertoire? Perhaps we are already there?

Les Violons du Roy play on modern instruments, which gives them a lot of sonic power in spite of their smaller size (that one bass player alone can really reinforce the bass side of the texture). What really makes their performances stand out is the tempi chosen by Labadie, often extraordinarily fast, their accuracy and unity of sound, and the sense that musical gesture has been clearly thought out and strictly implemented. I heard only two instances of slightly off intonation the entire evening, and only one passage that did not seem quite rhythmically unified. It was a whisker short of technically perfect, and that accuracy does not come at the cost of passionate playing. The program opened with a suite of instrumental music from Handel's Alcina (1735), one of those operas that should be performed a lot more than it is. The French-style ouverture set the tone for the evening, with crisp dotted rhythms in the slow section and remarkable control in the fast section. The dance movements all made me want to dance, the lilting Musette, a very fast Menuet, a Gavotte with nice contrast of short notes and legato playing, and another Gavotte with a bouncy solo for bassoonist Nadina Mackie Jackson. This was only the first piece of the night in which Ms. Jackson, with her short spiky hair (in places tinted red), bipped and bopped her way through a Baroque love of rhythm. She was the talk of many at intermission.

There was also charming ballet music, for Songes agréables (Pleasant dreams) and Songes funestes (Bad dreams), who frighten their pleasant counterparts. Then there is a combat between the two groups. A sinfonia and a final entrée for dancing conclude the suite. It's incredible that Handel took a German education at the organ, added the best of what Italian opera and French Baroque orchestral and ballet music had to offer, and produced a series of great operas for English audiences. It's even more incredible that it is only now being rescued from oblivion, first through recordings and now, gradually, in opera houses (even the Met).

For her contribution, Karina Gauvin jumped on the Handel bandwagon with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (reviewed by Alex Ross) and Renée Fleming (reviewed by Jens Laurson), both of whose Handel aria recordings were on many of the 2004 year's best lists. However, her first two selections struck me as pedestrian. "Oh! Had I Jubal's Lyre" from Joshua and "Where'er You Walk" from Semele are two of those English-language arias that get performed a lot, so you have to do something new with them. Labadie and Gauvin's solution for both was to choose a breakneck tempo, especially for the former. This showcased Ms. Gauvin's deft handling of the melismas, as well as the nice addition of ornamentation, especially in the latter.

Ms. Gauvin moved on to more original choices, with "Piangarò la sorte mia" from Julius Caesar and "Lusinghe più care" from Alessandro. These pieces revealed her highest range to be better suited to graceful, softer situations. Occasionally, one missed some raw power up there, at least that night. However, the ornamentation was brilliant and daringly original, which is how this music is meant to be sung. The best discovery of the program was J. S. Bach's Sinfonia from the cantata Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbaths (BWV 42), for the First Sunday after Easter. The program notes compare it to the Brandenburg Concerti, and that is how it came across in performance. For this piece, the favoriti group of both oboes and the bassoon were seated closer to the front. This performance totally convinced me of the possibility of presenting such pieces from the vocal works outside of their original context. All the better, since the second half began with a groundbreaking rendition of something that gets a lot more play, Bach's first Orchestral Suite in C major (BWV 1066). This is how you can take something you think you know and make it fresh.

Ms. Gauvin's best moments came in her last selections and encore. We returned to Handel's Alcina, with two arias. At the end of the B section of "Ah! mio cor!" Ms. Gauvin accomplished the da capo return with a breathtaking mini-cadenza. With panting and breathlessness (an artifice belied by perfect breath support when she actually sang), she brought an excellent sense of Alcina's outrage at being betrayed. She sang "Tornarmi a vagheggiar" in a rapid 3, with the most beautiful sustained high singing of the night. The sense of drama that Ms. Gauvin brought to these arias was continued in a truly emotional encore performance of "Lascia ch'io pianga" (from Rinaldo), again with exquisite ornamentation. Mine were not the only moist eyes in the auditorium.

This program of music will receive only one other performance this winter, at Cal Tech's Beckman Auditorium in Pasadena, California, next Sunday, January 30, at 3:30 pm.

UPDATE:
See also the review (Les Violons du Roy, January 24) by senior music critic Joseph McLellan for the Washington Post.

Борис Годунов

M.Musorgsky, Boris Godunov (1869 & Rimsky Korsakov editions), V.Gergiev, Kirov, Soloists Philips M.Musorgsky, Boris Godunov (1872 'R.K.' Edition), V.Gergiev, Kirov, Soloists Decca

Valery Gergiev is a common guest in Washington (and a friend of Alberto Villar's, whose fortunes seems to have improved enough to have sponsored his visit) and brought the Kirov Opera and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre to the Opera House at the Kennedy Center. Apart from Cinderella and a rather odd "Kirov Spectacular" hodgepodge of a program, he brought Modest Musorgsky's (usually misspelled with two s's) greatest work, Boris Godunov. The opera is based on Pushkin's drama and was staged in its rarely seen "original" version, that is, the unedited 1869 version in which women have just barely more import than in Billy Budd. A good synopsis and explanation of the differences of the two versions can be found at the Stanford University Opera Web site.

The opera (Tim Page thought so, too) was a stunning success. From the oboe's opening statement to the fainting, soft, and spaced-out drum beats at the very end of it, Gergiev had his delightfully wild, coherent, and even scrawny (in a very appropriate way) sounding forces under complete control. He reigned them in when they were about to get too excited, and he pushed them on if they ever needed any - though I doubt that was ever necessary last night. The occasional breath of Wagner (in particular Der Fliegende Holländer) often clashed immediately with the particular Russian sounds of the score - chromatically dense and perhaps difficult to digest at first hearing.

Boris, the opera, came in seven scenes, without intermission and mercifully shorter than the usual fare with its superimposed love story. It was the first time that I got to see the work live, and it was also the first time that I was thoroughly convinced by it. The Kirov's traveling set—all light and foldable—was exquisite, and not just taking the restrictions into account. Boris, the Tsar, stunned upon entry with a great costume: a coat of woven iron wire, somewhere between jewel-encrusted beehive, birdcage, and iron maiden. In the background hovered an onion-shaped dome, reminiscent of the tsar's crown. (It also looked like it might have housed "I Dream of" Jeannie.)

Tsar Boris, sung by Vladimir Vaneyev, had a powerful and clear organ, dramatically captivating. Meanwhile, the Kirov's gong- and bell-people in the pit had more work cut out for them than an average Nieblung. Cling, dang, dong it went to scene three, where Pimen the monk was endowed with the voice of brilliant bass Mikhail Kit. Dimitri, the Pretender (a.k.a. novice Grigory) was Oleg Balashov, whose tenor voice came from the the back of the chest (chin firmly down - adding to the slightly restrained quality often heard in Russian tenors), was remarkable, too.

To be sure, there was no weak spot in this production. Gennady Bezzubenkov as Varlaam, the drunken monk, Vladimir Veneyev's Boris, Mikhail Kit, as mentioned, and the treble Mihkail Gavrilov, playing and singing the role of Tsarevitch Fedor deserve special reckognition for their outstanding contribution, both vocally and dramatically. I have never before been able to stand (much less like) children on stage - here I did. There were no stage hawks in the choir, no embarrassingly stiff "opera acting". While Tsar Boris got subtly madder and madder, the Tsarevitch acted so naturally that it was difficult to believe he was acting at all. Shy and accepting, slightly uncomfortable but confident, mildly bored, quiet, singing as though he was in his own bedroom, he delivered a most remarkable performance. (In his running around he shortly imitated an airplane... the only historical inaccuracy I could detect. Or, perhaps, it was a bird he imitated.) Alexey Steblianko's Shuisky was fine, too, but outdone amid his even more impressive colleagues.

The costumes and the lighting contributed magnificently to the complete success with stunning effects. The hallucination scene included 18 of those hollow onion domes cum bubbled crowns... martian-like in how they crept up on the Tsar and with their pest-boils neon-lit from the inside. The metallic spider that unfolded in the sublime death scene of Boris (which ends this version of the opera), too, was poignant, not gimmicky. If anything, I could have done without the first scene, which I thought pointless... but that was quickly gotten over with.

If you haven't fallen victim to the Washington hysteria about the couple inches of innocent snow (why does the whole city shut down at the mere sight of a flake), you ought to treat yourself. Tickets are available at www.kennedycenter.com.

World Premiere with Messrs. Ackert & Forough

Sunday, the 16th of January, regulars at the National Gallery of Art's Sunday concerts saw the head of the music department, Stephen Ackert, in a role they had likely not seen before: behind the Steinway on stage. Together with violinist Cyrus Forough, he presented a program of Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764), a contemporary piece (in fact: a World Premiere!) by Alan Fletcher, Saint-Saëns, and J. S. Bach. A program that is my heart's delight: I always am all for "music with a pulse" – works by living composers – and my abiding love for Bach as well as any obscure or even just slightly off-the-beaten-path composer isn't a secret, either. Even a little ear candy like the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso can count on my kind disposition in such surroundings.

J-M.Leclair, Sonatas, J.Holloway, J.terLinden, L.U.Mortensen ECM

The opening "Tambourin" sonata for keyboard instrument and violin from 1723 is a little baroque sparkler in four movements, showing the violinist off like few other pieces of its time. Mr. Forough's playing needed a little warming up in a West Garden Court that was (mercifully) not overheated.

Stephen Ackert, who should know the acoustics of the space (and its difficulties) better than anyone, delivered a performance that was tailored to his surroundings. Easy on the pedal and with all things legato, you could hear virtually every note, finely separated. If any fault could be found at all with his playing, it was that either as a result of his acoustic-adjusted approach or a dash too much modesty, he operated more in the background than my ears are used to from modern performances, where violinist and pianist are more equal partners than soloist and accompanist, regardless of repertoire. (Not that Bach or Leclair used the keyboard part just for a "realisation" of the violin part, either.) Another very minor quibble might be that I had recollected (perhaps erroneously) a program to announce Mr. Ackert at the piano and harpsichord. I would have been very keen on hearing him on the latter, the instrument he studied (along with the organ – under none less than Helmut Walcha, among others) and in general a woefully underrepresented music-making machine that (in small enough doses) can delight like few others.

After the Bach sonata, BWV 1015, played every bit as amiably as the Leclair, came the world premiere of Alan Fletcher's Study (Woman Holding a Balance) (2004). One does not get to hear world premieres all too often, much less of music that is actually pleasing to the ear without having to jump through any intellectual hoops. Some of the hesitancy and ambiguity of the work I can ascribe to the ethereal nature of its violin part, but for all my enthusiasm, I have to say that it sounded rather under-rehearsed on Mr. Forough's part. Lyrical, wafting along comfortably, with a floating motion and harmonies generous to the ear (the more cynical critic might say, "harmless") and not too technically challenging to either player is how it seemed (despite the slight deficiencies). Before you knew it, it was over and the composer was on stage, taking a quick bow between his two interpreters.

The program notes (.PDF file) explain more about this NGA-commissioned composition based on Vermeer's painting of the same name. If Saint-Saëns's Introduction and Rondo (played better by Mr. Forough than any other piece that night – sure-fingered, with good, clean intonation and panache) – at the end of the program is a flashy and outwardly fancy showpiece, Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin—most famously, the second sonata in D minor presented here—are the exact opposite. It is an inward-turned showpiece: it shows the player how good he (or she) is, more so than the listener. It is musical cleansing of the soul, spiritual respite, and recharges the performer, even as it demands a lot from him.

For the listener, acquaintance with the music certainly helps in appreciating it, though the Chaconne that ends the sonata in monumental fashion should reel most everybody in, granted they can take the sound of 14 minutes and 39 seconds (as in Mr. Forough's case that night) of solo violin sound. His interpretation was in the edgy, muscular category, as opposed to the mellifluous, melody-enhancing group around Shlomo Mintz and Itzhak Perlman, but far from extremes. It was brisk, but not rushed. It accentuated the corners and rhythmic pulse of the work, but not at the expense of forward movement. It was certainly not "historically informed," and it wasn't all-out romantic idiosyncrasy, either. A happy (?) medium, mostly well played. Hollering and applauding wildly, the audience then extracted a Fauré Berceuse from Messrs. Forough and Ackert as an encore.

Long as the line is to get to these free concerts, some upcoming events need special mention:

• On January 23rd, pianist Gülsin Onay will perform works of Liszt, Elgar, and - most tantalizing - the most excellent Turkish composer Saygun. His music alone—20th-century, western European-oriented, conservative but innovative—is most definately worth going!
  
• On February 27th, Leila Josefowicz will perform modern music (Yay!) by composers out of Los Angeles, among them some of E. P. Salonnen's works. Music with a pulse, again!
  
• On March 6th, the chamber music event of the year (I can say so much already, with the year young, still) takes place at the NGA when the Takács Quartet will perform their completely ravishing Bartók (Quartets 3 and 4) and Beethoven's third "Rasumovsky Quartet." If you think you don't like Bartók, I especially urge you to go and get a seat where you can see them: you will leave a convert!

The complete schedule can be checked out here.

Don Quixote at 400

As noted around Blogistan (credit for first link that I saw goes to Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation), on January 16, 1605, Cervantes published the first part of Don Quixote. An article (Cervantès en majesté, January 17) by Diane Cambon for Le Figaro describes the 400th anniversary celebrations in Spain. There have been all sorts of new editions of the novel in Spain, from a lowly paperback (made to sell to the masses at 1 € [US$1.30] a piece) to a 3,000-page critical edition with illustrations and annotations. Here is my translation of an excerpt:

Since the last months of 2004, Quixote is heading up book sales. For many Spaniards, the myriad of celebrations is an opportunity to rediscover the hero of La Mancha. For the majority of them, this work, unavoidable in any scholarly curriculum, is perceived like barely digestible concrete. "Here, you study Don Quixote at the age of 10. It's much too early to be able to appreciate the breadth of the work. Young Spaniards confront classic Castilian and find the novel too complicated," admits Ramiro Sanchez, a high school literature teacher in Madrid. Anyway, most Spaniards recognize only the book's first line («En un lugar de la Mancha cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme...», or "In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind") and very few claim to have read both parts of the novel.

And yet, Don Quixote is firmly anchored in Spanish society. "In contrast to other countries, where the national heroes are real people, here the country's most charismatic and heroic figure is a fictional character," says Ramiro Sanchez. The Spanish make pilgrimages to Don Quixote's sacred places, as if they were following the trail of a famous person. The village of El Toboso, where the picaresque hero meets his lady, Dulcinea, in reality only a peasant girl, has become an important location. The road of the windmills, which Don Quixote mistakes for giants, has also become part of an ecotourist, cultural circuit. For the anniversary, the government has furthermore marked out 2,500 km [1,553.5 miles] of paths throughout Spain (Ruta de Don Quijote), on which tourists can lose themselves in the quest for a picaresque adventure.

The Spanish government's official Web site for the anniversary, IV Centenario de El Quijote, is chock full of information. You can download the novel (as two .PDF files, in Spanish, of course), look at 238 images of the Don Quixote pilgrimage route, find links to a speech on Don Quixote («Mi entrañable señor Cervantes») given by Jorge Luis Borges in 1968 at the University of Texas, Austin, among other papers and articles, and lots more.

Playing Nine Parts

Other Reviews: Jackie McGlone, Looking for Layla (The Scotsman, July 24, 2003) Michael Billington, Nine Parts of Desire (The Guardian, August 5, 2003) Charles Isherwood, A Solitary Woman, Embodying All of Iraq (New York Times, October 14, 2004) Lauren Sandler, An American and Her Nine Iraqi Sisters (New York Times, October 17, 2004) Jorge Morales, Smart Bombs: Raffo stirringly documents the 'collateral damage' in Iraq (Village Voice, October 26, 2004) Simi Horwitz, Heather Raffo: Exploring the Complexity of Identity (BackStage.com, November 2, 2004) John Lahr, The Fury and the Jury (The New Yorker, November 8, 2004) Deborah Amos, One-Woman Show on Iraq Draws Accolades (NPR, November 26, 2004) Emily Botein, 3 Parts of Desire (The Next Big Thing, December 10, 2004) Victoria Linchon, Nine parts of desire (theater2k.com, December 13, 2004) Barbara Schoetzau, Iraqi-American Actress Scores Big Off-Broadway (VOA News, December 14, 2004) Terry Teachout (Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2005)

I've already told the story here (9 Parts of Desire, December 13, 2004) of how I heard about Heather Raffo's one-person show, 9 Parts of Desire, now playing at Manhattan Ensemble Theatre in New York. I saw the show last weekend, on January 16, but I should let you know, in the interest of full disclosure, that Heather is a friend of mine from high school (as I wrote in that previous post), whom I was very glad to see again, briefly, after the show.

9 Parts of Desire is a taut, energetic 75 minutes of intense monologue, which shows how economy of style is superlatively incisive. Every word has been carefully measured, and there is little time for one's mind to wander until, with no intermission break for a rest, it's over. At least part of the attention the play has received comes from the timeliness, politically speaking, of its subject, because of that American military action grafted, through what has been revealed as little more than a sleight-of-hand trick, onto the "War on Terror," the Liberation of Iraq. Heather Raffo's father is an Iraqi immigrant to the United States, and she has many family members still living in Iraq, whose names she calls out during the play in a sort of protective mantra. What she reveals in her creation of nine Iraqi women's voices is the multifaceted nature of the problem we have created in that country. The rule of Saddam Hussein is depicted in the only way it can be, as brutal and oppressive. "How can we expect these people to liberate themselves?" one character asks.

No less brutal is the candid assessment of the American military's intervention, such as the effects of a bunker-blasting two-bomb system dropped by an American plane on an Iraqi target, leaving only "the silhouette of a woman vaporized by the heat" on the wall. Perhaps worse than the killing of civilians is the cavalier attitude in which we are implicit. The character closest to Heather herself, an American woman with Iraqi roots watching the television coverage of the war (CNN is mentioned by more than one character), cries out, "Why don't we count the Iraqi dead?" Because we don't really care about them, terrible as that is, is the only answer that makes sense. Why don't we, indeed? Doing so would make us more honest. (This week's edition of The Onion, as usual, cuts right through the bullshit of this jingoistic attitude: an "In the News" capsule has the tagline "Tsunami Death Toll Rises To 36 Americans.")

Technically speaking, what Heather does for these 75 minutes on the stage is virtuosic. With a simple twist of her abaya, the black robe that sometimes covers her body or head, she rapidly shifts among her range of characters under the distracting sound of booming music. She has created characters who remain in Iraq: a doctor dealing with the cancers and birth defects caused by traces of uranium left behind by decades of war; Umm Ghada, the mother who saw all her children die in a bombing raid and lives in the ruin of the shelter; a teenager who thinks that the American soldiers look like the members of her favorite band, 'N Sync; Amal, a Bedouin woman who describes her ex-husbands; Nanna, a woman trying to sell junk; the Mulaya, a mourner who feeds old shoes to the river; and the real source of all the characters, based on a rather famous Iraqi artist, Layal Attar, former curator of the Saddam Arts Center (she died in 1993). She also incarnates expatriate women, like Hooda, living in exile in London and perpetually nursing her Scotch, and the American woman watching CNN in dismay.

At one point, all the characters are juxtaposed in a wild tumult. As I listened to all of those voices and scenes again, mixed together, I realized how alive the characters were. We care about them, and that's the point. Roger Armbrust reports (Cancelled Play Among Blackburn Prize Noms, BackStage.com, January 20) that 9 Parts of Desire is one of 12 plays nominated to receive the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize this year. Hopefully, American recognition will follow Heather's success in Great Britain, where The Times (London) judged 9 Parts the best play in London in 2003 and The Independent said it was one of the best five plays in London. I wish Heather all the best. I'm so glad that I got to see her again.