{"id":1019,"date":"2018-04-29T01:40:58","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T05:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2018-04-29T01:40:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T05:40:58","slug":"leonard-bernstein-at-100-an-american-archetype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2018\/04\/leonard-bernstein-at-100-an-american-archetype.html","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Bernstein at 100: An American Archetype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My 5,000-word piece on the Leonard Bernstein Centenary, in <em>The Weekly Standard<\/em>\u00a0this week, begins with a story you\u2019ve never heard before:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 1980, at the age of 62, Leonard Bernstein undertook the composition of a formidable full-scale opera, commissioned jointly by La Scala, the Kennedy Center, and Houston Grand Opera. He called it\u00a0<em>A Quiet Place<\/em>. It\u2019s the story of an unquiet family, the same one that Bernstein had depicted in\u00a0<em>Trouble in Tahiti<\/em>\u00a0in 1952, when he was just 34.\u00a0<em>Trouble in Tahiti<\/em>\u00a0is a romp, deftly dispatched. But Bernstein had not composed an opera since, and\u00a0<em>A Quiet Place<\/em>\u00a0did not come easily\u2014so much so that he decided to incorporate\u00a0<em>Trouble in Tahiti<\/em>\u00a0as a flashback. As he worked on the score, he confided to an associate that\u00a0<em>Trouble in Tahiti<\/em>\u00a0was \u2018a better piece.\u2019 And so it is. The Bernstein trajectory of promises fulfilled and not is anything but simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis August will mark Leonard Bernstein\u2019s 100th birthday. The centenary celebrations started last August and are worldwide. The Bernstein estate counts more than 2,000 events on six continents. And there is plenty to celebrate. But if Bernstein remains a figure of limitless fascination, it is also because his story is archetypal. He embodied a tangled nexus of American challenges, aspirations, and contradictions. And if he in some ways unraveled, so did the America he once courted and extolled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike the United States, Bernstein came late to classical music. . . .<\/p>\n<p>To read the whole piece, click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/joseph-horowitz\/a-wunderkind-at-100\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My 5,000-word piece on the Leonard Bernstein Centenary, in The Weekly Standard\u00a0this week, begins with a story you\u2019ve never heard before: \u201cIn 1980, at the age of 62, Leonard Bernstein undertook the composition of a formidable full-scale opera, commissioned jointly by La Scala, the Kennedy Center, and Houston Grand Opera. He called it\u00a0A Quiet Place. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-gr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}