Archives for 2003

I can’t imagine that the death of Bob Hope meant anything whatsoever to anyone under the age of 30, and for those much under the age of 50 it can only serve as a vague reminder of Seventies TV at its cheesiest (unless you happen to have served in the military, in which case your memories of him may be very different). Hope, after all, never quite succeeded in making the transition to the small screen. Though he made some pretty good movies, he was essentially a creature of network radio, and who remembers that? It was a wonderful medium, a generation of gifted artists poured their souls into it, and now their work is almost completely forgotten.

This, I suspect, is why some of us who aren’t quite old enough to remember Hope when he was funny (which he was, believe it or not) still felt queasy at the news of his passing. The world spins immeasurably faster today than it did when I was a boy, and the fixed stars I remember are mostly fallen now. Meanwhile, here I sit, writing about a hundred-year-old comedian for a journalistic medium that didn’t even exist five years ago. What will I be doing in another five years? In the words of my favorite refrigerator magnet, “Time passes quickly, whether you’re having fun or not.” (I wonder what that sounds like in Latin.)

That’s what makes you cling to the landmarks of your youth, cherished or not. The older you get, the more you cherish everything that used to be, not so very long ago.

“He was never in a hurry, never anxious to make an effect or sensation. He sat still and men came to him.”

Winston Churchill, My Early Life

If you wanted to, you’ve seen the pictures of the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons by now. They were broadcast on TV and scattered throughout cyberspace last week, usually labeled “warning–graphic photos,” or words to that effect. And they were graphic, I guess…but I can’t say they shocked me. I’ve seen a lot worse (I used to work for the New York Daily News, after all). More to the point, the photos released by the Defense Department were tame compared to what you can see any day of the week by renting any reasonably violent Hollywood film released in the last 30 years or so, going all the way back to 1969 and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. For that matter, you can even view the “sealed” autopsy photos of John F. Kennedy at your leisure, 24/7–they’re scattered throughout cyberspace, too, easily accessible to anyone with a computer and a taste for the macabre, along with all sorts of other nightmare-inducing death-scene photos posted by peculiar folk. (And no, I’m not posting any links.)

It may also be relevant that I once witnessed a shootout in a big-city bank. Granted, I didn’t actually see guns blazing–I was around the corner, a few feet away–but I did stand over the robber seconds after he was shot dead by a security guard. Forgive the cliché, but the whole thing seemed less like real life than a scene from a movie. The sound of the guns going off was far more frightening than the sight of the corpse.

Is my experience commonplace? Have most of us become blind to the pathos of cooling corpses? Did Hollywood do that to us–or was it modernity? I can’t tell you. All I know is that I looked at the pictures of the Hussein boys and didn’t flinch, though I wish I had.

A reader writes:

You recently mentioned “snobbery” in your blog:

I can’t think of many things I loathe more than the hyper-aggressive snobbery whose effect–perhaps even its purpose–is to frighten away well-meaning people who want to dip their toe into the pool of beauty for the first time.

Question: Do you believe in pre-concert audience talks? I’m not talking about those pre-concert lectures which some concerts and operas offer (like my Houston Grand Opera), which take some time before the show, in a special room, to discuss the piece in detail. They might be great, but my wife and I are too busy grabbing a bite before the show.

I’m talking about when the conductor comes to the podium, turns to the audience, and says a few words about the piece just before playing it. Do you think this would be a good or bad thing to do?

My personal opinion is that it would double orchestra attendance overnight.

I couldn’t agree more–if the conductor in question can talk. Some can, some can’t. One who can is Michael Tilson Thomas of the San Francisco Symphony, who has an uncanny knack for getting his audiences on the side of difficult new music by chatting about it in a direct and engaging way from the podium. Needless to say, it helps that Thomas is also a great conductor who has turned the San Francisco Symphony into one of America’s top orchestras. And all things being equal, I’d rather hear a good performance by a mute conductor than a fair performance by a talkative conductor. But all things aren’t equal anymore, and it seems to me that conductors who can’t talk as well as Thomas would do well to learn how–or hire speechwriters. Sure, it’d be nice if they wrote their own speeches, but talent is not apportioned equally or logically, and the ability to write a good pre-concert talk probably isn’t found on the same chromosome as the ability to conduct Beethoven.

I just finished reading the galleys of a new biography of Alfred Hitchcock. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember his TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, whose episodes he used to introduce in the driest, drollest manner imaginable. Well, Hitchcock didn’t write those introductions. They were written for him by a witty playwright named James Allardice, the same fellow who knocked out his after-dinner speeches. Hitchcock just read them–brilliantly–and they helped make him a star in his own right.

Me, I think all musicians, classical and non-classical alike, should talk to their audiences. If I ran a conservatory, I’d require every student to take a class in public speaking. Failing that, though, I think a little discreet ghostwriting might prove to be a shrewd investment in the future of classical music in America.

If you long to purchase real art that won’t require you to take out a second mortgage, Lincoln Center’s List Art Poster & Print Program is worth a visit. Each year, the program commissions signed limited-edition screenprints from well-known artists, subsequently turning them into high-quality posters advertising a Lincoln Center constituent. Prints are limited to 108 copies, posters to 500. The batting average, artistically speaking, is impressively high, and several List screenprints, like Helen Frankenthaler’s Grey Fireworks, have sold out quickly and appreciated considerably in value since their publication. I own a List print, and look at it lovingly several dozen times each day. (I paid for it, too–this is not a commercial!)

“Celebrating 40 Years of List Posters,” an exhibition drawn from the 160-plus prints commissioned to date, goes up August 11 at the Lincoln Center Gallery (across the hall from the downstairs entrance to the Metropolitan Opera House) and will remain on view through September 6. Artists in the show include Frankenthaler, Jennifer Bartlett, Wolf Kahn, Robert Motherwell, Jules Olitski, Gerhard Richter, and Jamie Wyeth. All works on display will also be available for sale. In addition, you can purchase List prints and posters on line any time by going here.

“Interesting is easy, beautiful is difficult.”

Gustav Mahler, quoted in Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler

The New York Times ran a story last week about a now-deceased Texas oil heiress whose estate is suing the Metropolitan Opera. During her lifetime, Sybil Harrington, the lady in question, gave the Met $27 million, with the explicit (and obviously well-lawyered) proviso that the money be used in support of “at least one new production each Metropolitan Opera season by composers such as Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Wagner, Strauss and others whose works have been the core of the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera during its first century, with each such new production to be staged and performed in a traditional manner that is generally faithful to the intentions of the composer and the librettist.” The Met obliged, going so far as to name its auditorium after her.

After Harrington died in 1998, her estate gave the company another $5 million to televise its productions, with a similar stipulation that the gift be used “exclusively for the televising of traditional/grand opera productions of the Metropolitan Opera…set in a place and time and staged as the composer placed it.” The estate charges, among other complicated things, that the Met spent some of that money on a telecast of a non-traditional production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and wants her money returned.

Joe Volpe, who runs the Met, isn’t talking, except to say he’s “confident that, at the end of this affair, the name of the Metropolitan Opera will remain unsullied.” Right. In fact, the Times story seems to leave little doubt that the Met did what the Harrington estate says it did, though if you’ve followed the eternalitigation in which Philadelphia’s Barnes Collection is entangled, you know nothing is simple when cultural institutions find themselves in legal hot water.

What interests me, though, is less the suit than the terms of the original gift. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Met agreed to let a Texas oil heiress dictate a good-sized chunk of its artistic policy, which strikes me as…well, where shall I begin? Provincial? Irresponsible? How about downright boneheaded? On the other hand, the whole thing starts to sound less surprising when you consider the past decade or so of new Met productions. Yes, I’ve seen some theatrically breathtaking things there (Mark Lamos’ Wozzeck comes immediately to mind), but in recent years, with only a few exceptions, the company’s productions have typically oscillated between rigidly hyper-traditional stagings of standard operas like Madama Butterfly and Eurotrashy anything-for-an-effect stagings of non-standard operas like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All of which makes me wonder: To what extent were Sybil Harrington and her oil money responsible for the fact that the Met has become so tired and unadventurous, theatrically speaking?

Granted, it isn’t easy for the Met to put on a theatrically serious show–the house is too large. Nor do I believe that neo-traditional stagings of standard operas are necessarily a bad thing (though I can’t remember the last time I saw a good one). In any case, I’m well aware that older operagoers as a group tend to hate adventurous operatic productions. They want trees with leaves. So maybe Harrington simply made it possible for the Met to do what it would have done anyway, only with more leaves.

All I’m saying is that when I go to the opera, I want to see something that’s worth seeing, not just hearing. Which may be why I now go to New York City Opera far more often than the Met. But that’s another posting.

(Incidentally, the Times is also reporting that the powers-that-be have decided against including a new downtown house for New York City Opera in their Ground Zero redevelopment plans–a huge disappointment for those, myself included, who thought it a terrific idea. I suspect it won’t be the last such disappointment as the plans start to take clearer shape.)

From time to time, one of New York’s theatrical publicists sends out an e-mail called “Who Was Seen at the Theatre Last Week?” Here are excerpts from the most recent edition (all spelling and punctuation guaranteed unaltered).

Last weekend in London Arnold Schwarzenegger, in town to promote with opening of Terminator 3 in Europe, was spotted at the West End
production of MAMMA MIA! along with wife Maria Shriver and their children.

Toni Braxton, dressed in an exquisite gown designed by special guest and dear friend, Marc Bouwer, was feted at Laura Belle last Thursday (July 17) by family, friends and Broadway luminaries celebrating the 6-time Grammy-winner’s return to the Great White Way in AIDA.

“Friends” star David Schwimmer caught up with Broadway’s long running URINETOWN at the Henry Miller.

The sensational Broadway show NINE was visited this week by a variety of sensational Broadway stars: Jon Secada, Rebecca Luker and Lou Diamond Phillips. Also seen was Broadway newcomer, and Antonio’s wife, Melanie Griffith.

I never fail to be amused by this charming little relic of the stone age of press agentry, redolent as it is of the dear departed days when Walter Winchell ruled the earth. I mean, does anybody, anywhere, care how Lou Diamond Phillips spends his spare time? Then again, maybe it’s just me. Obviously somebody, somewhere, is paying attention, otherwise the publicist in question wouldn’t bother, right? Or is “Who Was Seen at the Theatre Last Week?” actually being knocked out on an Underwood manual (that’s a typewriter, Gen-Xers) by an 85-year-old guy who wears a fedora at his desk and doesn’t know that the only kind of gossip people want to hear these days involves the sex lives of the rich and famous? As Captain Renault might have said, that’s what I like to think–it’s the romantic in me.