Kurt Erichsen

What do you REALLY want for Christmas? - Part 1

2009-12-20T04:29:52Z

Happy holidays to all -- our card is in the next three posts. You can download the whole thing from my website.

What do you REALLY want for Christmas? - Part 2

2009-12-20T04:27:55Z

What do you REALLY want for Christmas? - Part 3

2009-12-20T04:18:42Z

Happy holidays, all. Some of you are also getting the card on paper, the black and white version. This year there's a slight difference in the artwork.

Sketch of the Day

2009-12-03T02:37:48Z

Setting: Equality Toledo Executive Committee meeting
Venue: Lebanese restaurant
Inspiration: don't know -- I just drew this egg shape and the rest grew from it. We did not have mouse tabouli on the menu.

At least nobody asked, "who's that a drawing of?"

Sketch of the Day

2009-12-01T03:34:32Z

Sketch from a meeting I attended today. Inevitably, the person next to me wanted to know who it was a drawing of. As usual: "Nobody. I'm just making it up."

Setting: retirement lunch for a local elected official
Paper: the meeting agenda / my placemat (any chicken gravy stains are incorporated into the artwork)
Image I had in mind: the banker goblins in the Harry Potter films
Inspiration: Orcs, having just rewatched the Lord of the Rings movies.

Fall Theatre Reviews

2009-11-30T02:09:02Z

Kurt and I have finished our fall theatre circuit. This year it geographically spanned from Stratford to New Orleans and chronologically from the Roman playwright Titus Macchius Plautus to American playwright Doug Walker. Along the way we there were some dramatic highs, laughs and ponderings on the human condition. I would like to record some of those moments in this journal.

Early October took us to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. We saw five shows. The Festival gave a contrast between the low comedy of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with the highbrow satire of The Importance of Being Earnest. Forum is based on the Plautus’s plays with music and lyrics by Sondheim. All of the humor and situations in Forum are roman except for a slave wanting to be free. Freedom as we conceive it was not a theatrical device in late republican Rome. There are several versions of Forum, original Broadway, movie and Broadway revivals. Stratford did a revival version with some deleted/added song deviations from the original cast album. We were looking forward to seeing Bruce Dow play the role of Pseudolus, but he had to leave the 2009 season due to an injury. He played the role of the cabaret host in “Cabaret” with oozing perfection last season.

For me spoken English reached its apex with Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The play is full of the sharpest exchanges of wit ever written. Some of the best lines are for Lady Bracknell, the epitome of all aunts in English literature. One of Stratford’s great Shakespearian actors, Brian Bedford, played Lady Bracknell to perfect timing and delivery.

Have you ever been self-conscience in public due to something about yourself? That is the premise of Cyrano de Bergerac, the poet and sword fighter with a large nose. Like Wilde’s Earnest, Cyrano’s dialogue is full of witty lines delivered in rhyme. The repressed love Cyrano has for Roxane is not very believable with his extroverted personality. However, the final scene when Roxane realizes the dying Cyrano has loved her all these years and was the author of the love poetry to her is touching. The movie is faithful to the play and is worth seeing just for this final death scene. The sword fights at the Stratford are as good as the movies.

The art of political spin was obliviously alive and well in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare shows us the workings of spin in Julius Caesar. Mark Anthony’s speech “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” is pure spin. It was done to great effect at Stratford with the cast in the aisles heckling back at Mark Anthony as he starts these lines. Slowing they react positively to Anthony and he wins the Roman mob to his side against Brutus. I felt part of the Roman mob.

West Side Story is not an easy show to perform. Knowing the depth of talent at Stratford, I knew they could provide the raw energy needed to sing and dance the parts. The cast did not disappoint. Not only did they dance, but did feats of gymnastics on the steel girder set representing Manhattan tenements. I just sat back and enjoyed the Bernstein music and Sondheim lyrics. I have read that some critics consider the show dated with idealized gangs. But a gang leader is murdered. And Maria must resolve her love for Tony with the fact he murdered her gang brother.

Mid October took us to University of Michigan’s student production of Evita. The caliber of the performance was good and the sets pieces adequate if a bit wobbly at times. The tango singer ("On This Night of a Thousand Stars") is usually done by a slightly off key and past his prime actor. Our student performer was virile and pitch perfect and stole the show. His curtain call applause was equal to Evita’s. This is another show with several versions. The cast album was done first and is one version. The Broadway version was more political than the original London production. I like the movie version adding scenes from her early childhood as a bastard daughter. It explains her latter rejection of middle class morals.

For some R & R we spent the first week of November in the French Quarter, New Orleans. Two blocks away, in a downtown shopping center, Southern Rep Theatre was doing I Am My Own Wife. This play won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Play, the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. We had to go see this show. A one-man play, actor Bob Edes was a superb Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The role also called for Mr. Edes to voice several other characters. He moves in and out of these character voices seamlessly while being dressed as Charlotte. The play is the true story of a German transvestite who was a teenager under Nazi Germany and spent most of her adult life under communist East Germany. Her story was celebrated after her biography came out in 1995. Later it was clouded when evidence came out that she had cooperated with the East German secret police. The story is riveting.

Last weekend we saw Michigan Opera’s production of A Little Night Music in Detroit. Sondheim frequently writes a Broadway show in a fresh or unusual way. Best example is Pacific Overtures. Night Music is no exception. Done mostly in waltz time, it has the feel of an operetta. The plot involves the romantic lives of several couples. The first act introduces the characters. The second act brings all the couples to a country home for the weekend. By shows end each person is mated with his or her true kindred spirit. Sondheim has said of this show it is “whipped cream with knives.” We enjoyed hearing Sondheim’s music preformed by an orchestra with good opera voices. All in all, it is an elegant romantic show with some sassy lyrics.

128th Ohio House of Representatives Resolution #132

2009-11-29T00:34:25Z

There’s no particularly modest way of saying this, so I’ll just blurt it out. The Ohio House of Representatives presented me with a resolution of recognition on November 18th.

Here’s the story. Last May I received an award from a national trade organization to which the agency I work for belongs. That sort of recognition is very gratifying, to put it lightly. I didn’t mention it here because I said in my very first post that I wasn’t going to discuss my career (except cartooning, of course). The next development is too much on a personal level not to include here. Here's the next point: my job is political in nature. I don't mean political patronage, but it does involve working with local and state elected officials. If Ohio legislators didn’t know who I was, I wouldn’t be doing my job. One of our legislators heard of my award, and decided to second it. So you could say the House resolution is an award for getting an award — but the point is who it comes from.

John accompanied me as photographer (“nothing’s real till you do the PR”). I envisioned the presentation like something on C-Span: the Representative giving me the award on the dais, and three or four scattered Members in the chamber not particularly paying attention. But no: it was at the beginning of a day’s session, with a full chamber. I was even more surprised when Representative Brown called the rest of the NW Ohio delegation up to the dais. The presentation was made with me surrounded by the Speaker and five Members. I was ready with a three-sentence speech, thanking everybody.

In conclusion … being appreciated is wonderfully gratifying, as I’ve already said. In practical terms, it means:

I’m not likely to get fired. Not unless I screw up in a Really Big Way (not impossible – I’ve seen it happen to others)
Maybe my staff will listen to me now. Maybe.
It’ll look great in my resume. Let me clarify that: the program I run depends on soft money. We chase grants all the time. A standard part of a grant proposal is the c.v. Message to funding agencies: “yes, this guy is worth funding.”
Of course the recognition is not all about me. It’s also recognition of the agency I work for, and all the people and other agencies we partner with. That was about half of my thank-you speech, but it’s not just words.

Appropriately enough, all this happened on Operetta Day. Appropriately, John and I listened to Die Herzogin von Chicago on the way back from Columbus. So in honor of Operetta day: Ein kleiner Slowfox mit Mary, bei Cocktail und Sherry …

Recent Reading: Le Morte d'Arthur

2009-11-28T23:05:24Z

Inspired by The Once and Future King, I made another attempt to read Le Morte d’Arthur, this time successful.

I have to stop short of saying I read Malory: look carefully at the cover. “A rendition in modern idiom by Keith Baines.” The Introduction comments:

Keith Baines here renders Le Morte d'Arthur in readable form, removing all of the idle rhetoric but faithfully preserving the sequence of events. This workmanlike task should earn him general gratitude, since of the numerous educated people who profess to have read Malory, few indeed could give a straightforward account of any tale except perhaps the last. The fact is that late medieval English prose style was based on amplificatio--the embroidering of a simple statement to the point where it almost ceased to make sense-and on the practice of lulling the ear with hypnotic rhythms. The story was regarded as of lesser importance.

The Introduction? By Robert Graves, writing from Deyá, Majorca. The same place Keith Baines was writing from. Apparently Baines was a friend/protégée of Graves’ — it makes me wonder how much Graves had to do with the whole project. Not a bad endorsement in any case.

Morte d’Arthur is a collection of earlier Arthurian tales. We all think we know the story, but I was in for a few surprises. I’d call the book an instructive tale intended to demonstrate correct chivalric behavior. It is full of demonstrations of how a knight should or should not behave. I found that White invented less of the tale than I thought. I found that the Holy Grail is inseparable from the tale, because it represents the ultimate achievement of grace: Launcelot, the world’s best knight, does not fully achieve the Grail because of his sin with Gwynevere; Galahad, his bastard virgin son, does. Equating sex with sin implies that any sexual experience — even for procreation — is morally degrading. The very failure of the Round Table itself results from sin and human failing.

All that is missing from The Once and Future King — White omits the Grail and discusses Launcelot’s character in terms of 20^th century psychology. Camelot omits the Grail and views the failure of Round Table as a romantic tragedy.

Staff Meeting

2009-11-04T03:15:11Z

Some people doodle during meetings. You're paying attention, but need to do something besides sit and listen -- but nothing is being said you need to take notes about. But when I do it, it comes out as cartoons. People around the table notice. The inevitable question: "who's that a drawing of?" Well, nobody. Actually, what you're seeing on paper is my subconscious and what I'm thinking but not saying -- but I never go into that. Here are today's doodles. My boss wanted to see them (good naturedly), and I had to assure him neither character was a portrait of him.

Recent Viewing: Viktoria und ihr Husar

2009-09-26T03:01:58Z

In the 1920s and 1930s, the American musical theater split in two directions. Romberg, Friml, and Herbert wrote operettas; while Gershwin, Berlin, and Rodgers used popular song styles of Tinpan Alley and incorporated elements of jazz. Jerome Kern, composer of Showboat and Leave it to Jane, took Yogi Berra’s advice years before he gave it: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Kern did both.

In the world of Germanic operetta a similar split took place. Lehár and Kálmán stuck mostly with older forms of operetta — though there’s no confusing Lehár with Strauss, and Kálmán used some American forms in his Herzogin von Chicago. Paul Abraham was one composer who wrote what we’d call a “musical comedy,” though the term «operette» is applied. His best-known work is Viktoria und ihr Husar (1930).

Like its American counterparts, Viktoria und ihr Husar uses a lightweight plot, and dispenses with the doings of gypsies and disguised counts. Here’s the plot: a soldier is taken prisoner in World War I. His wife, thinking him dead, remarries — to an American diplomat. After the war, the soldier searches for her in one embassy after another. He finds her, she agrees to return to him, and the American gracefully steps aside.

I can see some wisdom in this nearly nonexistent plot. The simpler it is, the less likely the librettist is to trip over it: witness the complexity of some of Strauss’ less successful librettists. Meanwhile, the audience does not worry too much about the plot, and just listens to the songs and watch the dance production numbers.

And the songs are great fun, and about as mindless as American Tinpan Alley/Hollywood songs. They are written in German (with snatches of English), of course. They sound so American — and yet not quite.

High points: “Meine Mama war aus Yokohama”, “Ping Pong”, “Wir singen beide doo-doo-doo”, “Mausi” — I don’t think any of these need translation — all upbeat 20s dance numbers. At the moment, my favorite from the show is the more traditional “Pardon, Madame”, a sentimental waltz.

This particular DVD is a 1992 Budapest performance, sung in Hungarian, with multi-lingual subtitles. In addition, there have been three movie versions of this show! Seefestspiele Mörbisch featured it in their 1973 season — I came back from Vienna in ’07 with an LP of that performance from a Catholic thrift shop.

Beyond that, just listen to two songs. First a 1930 recording of “Meine Mama war aus Yokohama”

Second, Richard Tauber’s performance of “Pardon, Madame”. Interesting to hear an operatic voice render Abraham’s popular song style.

Recent Viewing: Memories and other Experiments

2009-09-08T02:48:42Z

We’ve been watching quite a few movies. Lately we’ve turned to inexpensive sources for movies we knew nothing about on the grounds that if we didn’t like them, we wouldn’t be out much.

The best find has been Memories, a 1995 compilation of three short SF anime features by Kôji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, and Katsuhiro Ôtomo. Good stories and good animation. My limited experience with anime led me to hope there would be a lot of material of this type. Apart from the films of Hayao Miyazaki, Planetes, Steamboy, and a few others, we haven’t found as much as I’d hoped (a lot of samurai stuff, which I don’t much care for). Memories was a real find, in the $3 bin at Big Lots, and worth every penny.

Patrick Stewart as Captain Nemo sounds like really intriguing casting, doesn’t it? The 2005 TV version of Mysterious Island was a disappointment. A thin adventure film mixing 19^th century technology, early 20^th century science, 18^th century pirates, and giant vegetables. Did they really intend to provoke a laugh when the Pirate King got killed?

I bought the 2004 A Separate Peace without looking closely enough, and thinking it was the 1972. No matter. I thought it was well done, on par with the ’72 version. My only question is why did they do the remake?

John picked out Timeline, which turned out to be a watchable action-adventure movie. Its main attraction to us is that dealt with history and archaeology. It had at least as much archaeology in it as Raiders of the Lost Arc(haeologist).

The Harry Potter series is nearly over. Daniel Radcliffe, what are you going to do with your career? I was hoping for an answer from December Boys, also in the Big Lots $3 bin. The mortality rate of child actors in very high; what a child star does to try to become an adult star is always interesting. Usually it means taking on Terribly Adult roles. Often, graduating child stars take roles as homosexual characters. It worked for Matthew Broderick. It didn’t for Scott Baio (Gemini — a Showtime production not listed in IMDB!). This film is a buddy/coming of age movie. Underwhelming. The plot includes several red herrings (a horse that strives to catch a fish and eat it, and finally succeeds; a kid who catches a legendary local Great Fish only to bury it; the boys’ summer hosts who seem eccentric at first, making you think the kids are spending the summer with the Addams Family — but they turn out to be normal). I got the feeling these red herrings were supposed to mean something, but I wasn’t sure just what. Daniel Radcliffe has a couple other recent movies that sound more substantial. And he also starred in a stage production of Equus, which is definitely Terribly Adult.

Recent Viewing: Citizen Kane

2009-09-08T02:37:49Z

We spent Sunday in Ann Arbor. Besides the beautiful weather, our main reason for going was to see Citizen Kane. We still think it’s fun to go see a movie at a real theater, and when they’re showing a good movie, all the more reason. Yesterday Citizen Kane was on at the Michigan Theater. I’ll just say that it’s a favorite movie, and leave it at that. Everything there is to say about it has already been written, and I’ve nothing to add.

We took about a four-mile walk through the Nichols Arboretum. Summer’s getting long in the tooth, and we won’t be able to do that many more times. Lots of people were using the trail — mostly younger than us, and many of them running, while we stuck to a brisk walk.

The only shopping we managed was at Encore Records. I found DVD replacements for three of the Star Trek movies, and the 1962 Manchurian Candidate. (I haven’t seen the remake — why did they make it?) A couple good CD finds: the Merry Widow with Schwarzkopf / Wächter, and la Fille de Madame Angot — both of which I have on vinyl and might actually MP3 someday, but this is easier. John came prepared with a list of obscure musicals to look for, and came away with Best Foot Forward, Blackbirds of 1928, and Carmelina.

A pleasant sunny Sunday. Especially nice since it rained all day on Labor Day.

Recent Listening: Juno

2009-09-04T03:01:02Z

I’ve been listening to a lot of musicals lately as I convert vinyl to mp3. If most of my “reviews” seem positive, it’s because I write about shows I think are worth writing about.

Juno closed after 16 performances in 1959. I like it.

Marc Blitzstein, the composer, is remembered principally for one song: the English translation of Brecht / Weill’s "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." It was a big hit for Bobby Darin, and the Blitzstein/Lenya Broadway revival of Die Dreigroschenoper made that show famous to Americans. This is only relevant here because it’s a reminder of Weill’s influence on him. His better known works make him seem like an American Kurt Weill.

In recent years, Blitzstein has become better known for The Cradle Will Rock and No for an Answer. Cradle Will Rock is remembered not so much for itself as the circumstances of its first performance. A few years ago John and I saw a production of it at the University of Michigan. Performed as it was in 1937. Yes, they made us walk to the theater — luckily it wasn’t 20 blocks.

Like Brecht and Weill, Blitzstein was a leftist — he believed in social causes, and wrote musicals about them. Cradle and Answer were pro-union stories about the struggles of the working class.

So it’s no surprise that that Juno (remember Juno?) is set in Dublin of the ‘20s and involves the IRA. The source material was by Sean O'Casey.

The songs are very good, and drip with Pure Irishness. Without having read the libretto, it’s evident the show is based on strong characters, which the songs illustrate vividly. The original cast starred Shirley Booth as Juno Boyle and Melvyn Douglas as Captain Boyle. They both act their songs, more than they sing them. Douglas couldn’t carry a tune to save his life; he speaks his songs, kind of like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, but without as much musical flair. But his and Booth’s characters are so strong that you don’t especially notice.

Blitzstein’s words and music matured greatly in 32 years. He shows a great gift for turn of phrase that makes character conversations into lyrics (“Daarlin' Man” and “Old Sayin's”). Blitzstein’s music is dramatic, less coarse, more subtle, more polished than Cradle. It uses a full orchestra, while Cradle is performed with a lone piano.

Picnic in Oak Openings

2009-09-04T02:56:47Z

When I had an opportunity to take a Friday off, we wanted to do something special together. John’s wanted to visit Cranbrook for years, because he knew what architecture to expect. I didn’t, but was willing to go along. Once there, the haven for arts and crafts architecture made it clear to me why John wanted to visit. We also recollected going to a party there, many years ago — at Maia’s house. It was dark that time. I didn’t notice the architecture.

We had several options for day trips. In the end, we settled on Cranbrook. Just as well, it was rainy, and would not have been a good day for a picnic. But Saturday it was beautiful and we got a second half-holiday.

Oak Openings is the name for an ecological area west of Toledo. It came about from sand ridges left behind from the edges of primordial Great Lakes; the rest of northwest Ohio is flat with heavy silt-clay soils and is known as the “Great Black Swamp” — former lake bottom. A piece of the Oak Openings — even at nearly 4,000 acres, a fairly small portion — is preserved as a Metropark.

Still, this park is big. By comparison: New York City’s Central Park is 843 acres. Oak Openings Metropark is a mostly natural area with many trails and several picnic areas. We picked one of the more secluded ones. We brought in our lunch. We went for a short walk (1.4 miles) around a lake. Had lunch. Went for a longer walk (3 miles or so) into the woods and along Swan Creek. We only saw one corner of the park — less than 10%. The trail around the periphery of the park is 17 miles. We returned to the lake and read till dusk. No trolls or barrow-wights, just a pleasant day.

Cranbrook Walk

2009-09-04T01:27:23Z

Architecture is in abundance at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills outside of Detroit. Kurt and I spent a pleasant Friday afternoon walking the grounds. Extensive gardens surround the arts and crafts George Gough Booth House designed by architect Albert Kahn. Each garden is a landscape vista. Several terminate with a fountain. We also walked around the art deco Cranbrook Art Museum designed by architect Eliel Saarinen. Unfortunately, the museum is closed for renovations. And we arrived too late to take the Booth House tour, but we did take a tour of the Saarinen townhouse. The 1930 interior has art deco moldings, lighting, furniture and other decorative arts all designed by Saarinen and his wife as a unified whole. The ground floor rooms are rather formal for everyday living, but Saarinen was the president of Cranbrook Academy and did much entertaining there.

Saarinen was also a noted city planner having done work in Helsinki and Budapest before his arrival in America. In 1925 George Gough Booth asked him to design the campus of Cranbrook Educational Community, intended as an American equivalent to the Bauhaus. Much of Cranbrook’s school grounds, although designed by Saarinen, are in an arts and craft style interspersed in an English countryside setting.

Dinosaurs can be found within the walls of the Cranbrook Institute of Science. Never one to pass up an opportunity visit them, we saw a special dinosaur egg exhibit.

We both wondered where the money came from for Cranbrook. The buildings and grounds are well maintained right down to weed less flowerbeds. George Gough Booth’s philanthropic money came from newspapers. We finished the day with an Indian dinner at Priya Restaurant in Troy.

Recent Viewing: Gräfin Mariza

2009-08-25T04:12:28Z

A hot summer night seems a traditional time to listen to a Viennese operetta, and Kálmán’s Gräfin Mariza (Countess Mariza) is a classic of the “silver age.” The term “silver age” refers to Viennese composers of the early 20^th century, who continued the genre after of the death of Johann Strauss and many of his contemporaries. Silver age operettas followed Strauss tradition to a degree, but continued to grow and develop the genre. Two of the principal composers were Franz Lehár and Emerich Kálmán, both Hungarian. Kálmán used a mix of comedy and drama; most of Lehár’s mature works had unhappy endings.

If you’re like most Americans, you are totally unfamiliar with Gräfin Mariza and wouldn’t know one of its songs if you heard it. It’s one sparkling dance song after another — an evening of champagne, whipped cream, and paprika — one at a time. The most stirring songs are poignant Hungarian melodies. One song you may not know of itself, but you know it by imitation and parody. The I Love Lucy episode you remember is a parody of Kálmán, or of Kálmán through Friml and Herbert. The Fine/Kaye “Play Gypsy, Sing Gypsy” number in The Inspector General is an even more direct parody of “Komm, Zigany” from Mariza.

The plot of Mariza is interesting, mostly in the sociological sense. It involves an impoverished nobleman who takes a job as an estate manager to pay off his late father’s debts, and falls in love with the beautiful and wealthy owner (the Countess). Play that to an American audience and it falls flat because neither the audience nor the cast believes it. What we miss is that it’s not just that she thinks he’s a gold digger — he, a nobleman, has sullied his hands as a tradesman for sordid money. The nobility know each other on sight, just by the way they move. An aging prince recognizes Törek/Tassilo as a nobleman when he sees him in evening dress:

Fürst Populescu: Yes, this Törek. Well, that’s too simple for me.

Gräfin Mariza: What do you mean?

Fürst Populescu: He is not what he pretends to be. His manners, his way of moving in evening dress. For that, you need at least 500 years of training with the Habsburgs.

At least that was Austrian and Hungarian tradition a hundred years ago. Do they still view their nobility in this way, or is it as anachronistic to them as it is to us?

One strength of this 2004 Seefestspiele Mörbisch production is its success in portraying this class conflict. The way that Mariza throws a glass of water in Tassilo’s face, and then slaps him contemptuously with a fat wad of banknotes carries conviction. This dramatic success in Act 2 is the undoing of Act 3, which gets out of the dramatic tension using comic characters as a deus ex machina. They are comical, but Acts 2 and 3 seem like two different shows.

Act 3 involves a night at a cabaret. For entertainment, Mörbisch interpolates a ballet on a medley from Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago, which in 2004 had never been revived, and whose music was mostly unknown.

And I must talk about Seefestspiele Mörbisch. But later.

Below: in a clip from this production, Nikolai Schukoff as Törek/Tassilo sings “Komm, Zigany”. Gasp.

Recent Viewing: Edward the Seventh

2009-08-25T04:10:14Z

Now here’s an idea for a television series: thirteen one-hour episodes about a man who spent most of his life doing nothing.

Okay, that’s not very fair to anyone involved. The series, which spans some 70 years of British history, is a veritable feast of first-rate actors. It is entertaining, if not action-packed. Much of the conflict comes from Edward being denied a royal role in government. A couple comments on IMDB are very perceptive, along the lines of the series not doing justice to Edward’s personality or the situation he was in. An interesting point. As for Edward, compare him to his contemporaries — Rudolph von Habsburg, Wilhelm II of Germany, Nicholas II of Russia — at least Edward died with the crown on his head.

One further comments that this series lacks the “dramatic intensity” or I Claudius. Now that I did pick up on my own. Wouldn’t it have been more entertaining if Victoria, like Graves’ rendition of Livia, had schemed to do in her entire family? Why, more entertaining, because it was such a large family. It could tell of how her agent introduced radioactive substances into Marie’s food to induce hemophilia in the Russian royal family. How a sorcerer hired as a spy in the German Kaiser’s own household hexed little Wilhelm II into becoming a raving lunatic. And how she blackmailed ladies into cavorting with Edward, causing scandal, and giving her an excuse to deny him a role in government, hoarding all power for herself.

The only problem is that it’s just too easy to prove this is a lot of pigswill. With I, Claudius, there’s doubt. There are only a handful of ancient sources, often written with dubious motives. There are many gaps, and an author can connect the dots as best suits his drama. That’s the problem with recent history. There’s too much documentation, and it gets in the way of drama.

Recent Listening: The Apple Tree

2009-08-19T03:18:10Z

I remember seeing a high school performance of The Apple Tree while I was in high school. At that impressionable age when I was discovering the wonders of Broadway. It left practically no impression on me. Well, I saw it starring Brian Haliski, not Alan Alda, so perhaps that’s understandable. Wikipedia explains: This musical is popular for high school productions because of its ease of presentation.

And also because it’s mild and inoffensive. My junior year (1972) the Drama teacher tried to stage Cabaret. It was the bowdlerized Broadway version, not the Liza Minnelli film … but that’s another story.

Listening to the songs, I keep asking myself: why these three stories? Is there supposed to be some common thread? Bless Wikipedia’s heart: I never would’ve guessed: someone who believes that they want something, but once they get what they wanted they realize that it wasn't what they wanted. This is evident in “Passionella,” (Jules Feiffer) the third story. The other two are Mark Twain’s “Diary of Adam and Eve” and “The Lady or the Tiger?”

From the songs, the show seems a bit pedestrian. The Bock and Harnick songs were written by two of the best in the business. The only memorable tune that struck me from high school was “Beautiful, Beautiful World.” Most of the songs are listenable if not memorable. In “Lady of the Tiger” the narrator gets a bit old, explaining character motivations for those of us who might not get the plot. Several songs are very good; in two cases, aligning with the act’s dramatic highlight.

It's a Fish – the main comic piece from the Adam and Eve story. They have a baby; since Adam and Eve are the first humans in the world, Adam tries to puzzle out what this creature is.

Which Door? – I’d call this an operetta-style song for the way it tells the story: three characters wonder which door to pick. The woman sees terror or jealousy; the man imagines sudden death or guilt; and it builds the tension.

You Are Not Real – again, this song highlights the punch line: Passionella has gotten her wish of being a glamorous movie star, only to find that movie stars are out of vogue, and what she used to be is now considered gorgeous. The song is a country-western parody — you could even say it’s sung in the study of Tom Jones doing “What’s New Pussycat?”

Music Under the Stars

2009-08-19T02:16:43Z

Nostalgia overcame me this evening. It happens when I attend “Music Under the Stars” at the Toledo Zoo’s Amphitheater. I’m pushing 60 but nothing has changed at this summer evening pops concert series since my childhood. Toledo Concert Band leader Samuel Szor has been conducting them for the past 57 years. The MC is Gordon Ward, the “Walter Cronkite” of a local TV station from decades past. How many more years can these two keep going?

The program featured big band music. Perfect for the 1936 WPA built amphitheater. Not because the space is art deco, in fact the stone façade surrounding the stage is Italianate. But because the jazz music fits the time period when it was built. Thoughts of FDR, public works, cities and jazz filled my mind.

The amphitheater holds about 5,000 people using bench seating. Perhaps 2,000 attended but spread out so it seemed like a full house. Overall, an aesthetically pleasing space that keeps me coming back every year.

Sunday was the last concert of the season. It’s shortened season because of sponsor cutbacks. The mood was a little like the last night at the proms, especially when the last number was played, Stars and Stripes for Ever.

It Was a Very Good Year

2009-08-16T17:35:48Z

You never know what will turn up from a house cleaning project. My partner's name is John Widmer -- occasionally we've run across the products of Widmer winery/brewery, no relation. A colleague of John's gave him a pair of logo beer glasses. It's always nice to run across a Widmer beer sign in our travels -- it's not distributed in Toledo.

Years ago, more years ago than we care to think, we got a couple bottles of Widmer non-alcoholic wine. Wait, what in the world is non-alcoholic wine? Isn't that just another way of saying "grape juice"? Anyway, these bottles were special. Much too special just to drink. So they sat in a cubboard. And sat. And we forgot about them.

The year we met was 1983. These bottles are dated 1984. By 1984 we were taking our first travels together, and I started my current job. In hindsight, a very good year.

But what is wine, even non-alcoholic wine, for if not drinking? So we did. We got out the corkscrew and twisted and pried and the champagne-style plastic cork would not come out. I gouged my finger with a table knife in the process. We tried pliers, and finally it came loose just a little.

Well, this stuff had been sitting in the bottle all these years. Was it still drinkable? Had it fermented to the point of being explosive? We took the bottle out to the back porch, carefully aimed the cork in the general direction of Saturn, and gingerly pried, expecting the cork to launch like a rocket.

Nothing.

Not even the slightest pop.

The wine -- clearly just grape juice -- was not carbonated (anymore), more brown than purple. It tasted like ... well, grape juice. But it'd been sitting in that bottle for 25 years. Was it safe to drink? Had it built up some toxin that would do us in over night?

Well, it tasted fine, if that's anything to go by, butSDLKFNSDLKVGNI
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Recent Reading: the Once and Future King

2009-08-15T19:51:32Z

Why do we Fans (or ordinary book worms) insist upon owning copies of books and keeping them on our shelves, when we could get anything we wanted from the library or download (often free)? Because books are important to us, because browsing one’s collection is fun, and because we want to re-read books?

How many books on your shelf have you read more than once? Me — some; not a lot. What books are special enough to read over when you have stacks of unread books waiting?

The Once and Future King was on my list. I last read it 20-30 years ago, and it was time. I’m glad I did. Over time you think of the book in terms of the movies made from it, and so you forget what the movies left out.

The Sword in the Stone was faithful in its way; White's characters lend themselves well to caricature, actually. Some obvious Disney inventions like the talking owl, the befuddled Merlyn being whisked off to Bermuda because of a slip of the tongue, magic dishes, and Merlyn turning Wart into animals — are all from the original book. The songs, not up to the Sherman Brothers’ usual standards, are not. The wizard-duel, one of the best scenes, was a Disney invention. Disney trivializes Wart turning into animals and the lessons he learns. He becomes a fish (he learns that big fish eat little fish), a squirrel (he learns about love); but gone is the 1984-like world of the ants, the rigid protocol of the rookery, the society without borders of the geese. Disney adds tension to the plot by showing Wart as an “orphan” (read: inconvenient bastard) who’s at the bottom of the pecking order and will never be more than a servant to Kay. In the book his childhood is idyllic.

Camelot, being a musical, turns the book into romantic material. Its style is very different from the book —which I’d describe as philosophical and applying 20^th century psychology and politics to medieval knights— but it reaches the same conclusion. The musical plays up the tragedy (in the classic sense) of the loss of Arthur’s dream; it turns to hope in the bittersweet concluding scene where Arthur passes it onto a boy we know will become Thomas Malory. What’s missing — a rougher, more complex and flawed characterization of Lancelot, most of the Orkneys, the quest for the Grail, and a more complicated relationship between Lancelot and Guenever. What is in the book: the song “Camelot” in prose form, and the nicknames “Jenny” and “Lance.”

The White’s version of history, Uther Pendragon was the Conqueror and William was a myth, along with his Plantagenet ancestors. I can’t help thinking of Arthur as the replacement for Coeur-de-lion and Mordred for King John.

White acknowledges Malory as his source, and offers a number of asides to the reader, to the effect of “Malory says this, so I’m not going to bother covering it.” The last time I read this book, I was inspired to read Le Morte d’Arthur afterward. I couldn’t get through it. This time I found that White explained the reason why in Chapter 39 of Book 3:

If people want to read about the Corbin tournament, Malory has it. He was a passionate follower of tournaments-like one of those old gentlemen who nowadays frequent the cricket pavilion at Lord's-and he may have had access to some ancient Wisden, or even to the scorebooks themselves. He reports the celebrated tournaments in full, with the score of each knight, and the name of the man who bowled him over, or how knocked out. But the accounts of old cricket matches are inclined to be boring for those who did not actually play in them, so we must leave it unreported. The only things which are apt to be dull in Malory are the detailed score-sheets, which he gives two or three times-and even they are not dull for anybody who knows the form of the various smaller knights.

Yes, I found Le Morte d’Arthur to be an endless string the “the red knight rode out and did this, the green knight rode out and did that, and the Puce Knight rode out and did the other thing.” I gave up.

Maybe I’ll try again.

Recent Viewing: Zwei Nächte in Venedig

2009-08-15T18:54:19Z

I’ve gotten into a summer operetta streak lately — does it show? Having just written about the Ohio Light Opera Night in Venice, finally placed an order for the new DVD of the 1973 Nacht in Venedig directed by Václav Kaslik and starring Anton De Ridder.

Wow.

This is one of the 1970s operettas produced by Unitel. Like the Fledermaus of the series, it’s an intimate telling with close shots that capitalize on strong comic acting and winks aside to the audience. The liner notes hint that the libretto’s been fixed. I don’t know the original well enough to say what they did — except that they did fix it. The story’s basically the original tale of husbands turning their wives, all disguised as the wife of an old Senator, over to a lecherous Duke. In this version, that plot actually works! The music is gorgeous too.

The Unitel Operettas of the 1970s

2009-08-15T18:49:27Z

On a new year’s eve shortly after I got my first VCR — 1981-2 or so — I got as copy of Johann Strauss’ Fledermaus from the local PBS station. It was a production I fell in love with — directed by Otto Schenck, conducted by Carl Böhm, performed by the Wiener Staatsoper. Besides the music, the acting was very good, so it worked both as a farce and as a performance of Strauss’ engaging music.

But here’s what set me on a 30-year quest: the PBS production added commentary by Anna Moffo. At the end of the show, she went through previews of other operettas in the series to be broadcast! But this was an old re-run on PBS — just the New Year’s Fledermaus and no others to follow it. The previews included Land of Smiles starring Anna Moffo and Rene Kollo, A Night in Venice starring Anton de Ridder, and Csárdásfürstin — starring Moffo, sung in English!

Whatever happened to this whole series of operettas from PBS?

Years passed and the Fledermaus remained a gem of my collection. No sign of the others. Eventually the Internet and DVDs were invented, and answers started to emerge.

It finally dawned on me that I found no series of operettas because there was no series. PBS assembled them as a package — the productions had no relation to one another. But I did discover at last a common thread: Unitel. While the productions had no relation to one another, they were all produced (for television and more recently for DVD?) by Unitel. I found proof when I came across a listing of the Unitel operettas that included all of the above about perhaps a dozen others. A website that I can no longer find.

Gradually these operettas are starting to appear on DVD. And what's even better -- these productions all seem to be real gems. All of the shows mentioned above are now available — though the Moffo/Rollo Csárdásfürstin is the same production but in German — apparently they filmed it in both languages. And I don’t have the Moffo/Rollo Land des Lächelns — yet.

Other operetta performances of the 70s that’ve popped up on DVD over the past few years: Zarewitsch and Zigeunerbaron — both Unitel.

I don't have enough DVDs!!

2009-08-10T04:49:02Z

Hence my latest order. Lortzing's Zar und Zimmerman and Weill's Der Kuhhandel have arrived. Yet to come: the Unitel productions of Strauss' Nacht in Venedig and Zigeunerbaron from the 70s, along with Abraham's Viktoria Und Ihr Husar.

Obscure tastes? Who, me?

In the interest of obscurity, no links. But more later!

Recent Viewing: La Vie Parisienne

2009-08-10T04:39:12Z

Laurent Pelly has become a favorite operetta director of ours. He has shown a talent for bringing energy to these hundred year old shows. His productions are contemporary (as in Vie Parisienne) or an odd mix of contemporary and historic (Belle Hélène). The four we've seen so far have been edgy, with inventive staging, and with characters that come to life.

One complaint on this performance: the heavy footfalls of the cast are quite audible. Sometimes it sounds like Offenbach is being performed by a herd of cattle.

The music is one of Offenbach's most firey scores Of special note -- the train station can-can that ends Act I and is reprised at the end of the show. Offenbach seems to have had a talent for great first acts. This is another one, with the world visiting Paris for a debauched fling. The can-can (in a subway station, this time) matches the fury of the more famous can-can of Orphée. Lots of lively Offenbach songs throughout, incluiding two tipsy songs.

After the bombast of Act I, this is not one of Offenbach's better libretti, so Pelly's skills are needed. Still ...

By Act II I couldn't remember which was Bobinet and which was Gardefeu. Both young Parisian dandies. Both tenors, both youngish, similar looking. I wish they'd cast one of them as fat, or with flaming red hair, or black, or something just so I can remember which is which.

By Act III I couldn't remember the logic by which this cockamamie scheme was supposed to win the heart of Métella for whichever is in love with her (or both of them?)

By Act IV I realized that none of the above makes a damn bit of difference. In the end the Swedish baron learns he's been duped -- but he has to admit he was entertained in the process, and that he got his money's worth. He laughs off the whole thing, much like the end of Fledermaus. Well, same for us. Was it a good plot? No. But did Offenbach's music and Pelly's clever staging keep us entertained? Yes. So there.