Archives for September 2013

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I take note of the current plight of New York City Opera, which is no less dire for being painfully familiar-sounding. Here’s an excerpt.
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New York City Opera is in trouble–again. The company could fold if it fails to raise enough money–again.
Yes, you’ve heard it all before, and no, NYCO isn’t crying wolf. If the company fails to raise $7 million by the end of September, the first production of its new season will very likely be its last.
So what?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not at all indifferent to the fate of City Opera, which has been around for 70 years and throughout most of that time was central to the history of opera in America. But when an artistic organization has been in imminent peril of collapse for the better part of a decade–and when its struggles have reduced it to a shadow of its once-familiar self–such blunt questions are inescapable. In fact, they’re essential. Unless George Steel, NYCO’s general manager and artistic director since 2009, can explain why the company deserves to continue in its present form…well, it won’t….
Whenever opera buffs hear the words “New York City Opera,” they reflexively think of the good old days when NYCO was an indispensable part of the cultural life of the city after which it was named. I do, too, and probably always will. But those days ended when City Opera cut its ties with Lincoln Center. Mr. Steel did what he thought he had to do, and he may well have been right–but for better or worse, his New York City Opera is now a thing unto itself, one whose success or failure will have nothing to do with the company’s celebrated past….
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Read the whole thing here.

“It’s sometimes discouraging to see all of a director’s movies, because there’s so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director’s artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he’s a hack.”
Pauline Kael, interview with Francis Davis (The New Yorker, Oct. 22, 2001)

Mrs. T and I returned from Maine to Connecticut this afternoon and found a package on our front porch that contained the first finished copy of Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington. I took it out of the envelope and handed it to her, and she turned to the dedication page. “I had to look at my page first,” she said with a grin.
We sat on the couch and passed the book back and forth in silence for a few minutes. What I felt is not to be put in words, but I doubt that any moment in an author’s life is more purely pleasurable. No matter whether you’ve written two books or twenty, you never get blasé about holding the latest one in your hands for the first time.
Afterward I took my copy of Duke outside and snapped a photo of it. Then I went back into the house and sent this e-mail to my colleagues at Gotham Books:

I just got home and opened your package. It’s the most beautiful-looking book I’ve ever had anything to do with. Bless you all for helping to make it possible.

Whatever happens to Duke in the days and weeks to come, I’m as happy right now as it’s possible to be.
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The dedication page of Duke:

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Annie (musical, G, closing Jan. 5, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Major Barbara (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 19, reviewed here)

• Our Betters (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 27, reviewed here)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• My Fair Lady (musical, G, closes Nov. 3, reviewed here)

IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 20, reviewed here)

• Dickens in America (one-man play, G, too demanding for small children, closes Oct. 19, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 4, reviewed here)

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 5, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Faith Healer (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Oct. 9, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• All My Sons (drama, G, too grim for most children, closes Sept. 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• Too Many Husbands (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• The Weir (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new.”
Pauline Kael, “Trash, Art and the Movies”

Francis Poulenc’s Élégie, played by Alan Civil and Jacques Février:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“‘Tis said that courage is common, but the immense esteem in which it is held proves it to be rare.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Courage”

Periodic loneliness is the hard part of a happy marriage. Mrs. T and I recently spent a week and a half apart, she in Connecticut and I in Wisconsin, and one morning I found myself in the hotel gym, pulling endlessly on the handle of an ancient rowing machine and feeling sorrier for myself with every tug. Then, without warning, my iPod served up Count Basie’s 1938 recording of Every Tub, than which there is nothing more uncomplicatedly festive, and all at once my eyes filled with tears of pure joy.
Not everyone is as susceptible as I am to the mood-altering powers of music, but for those who are, it’s usually possible to cheer yourself up by listening to the right record at the right moment. With that in mind, I took great care for the remainder of my stay to listen only to just such unshadowed, unambivalent records during my twice-daily workouts. No Schubert or saudade, no Donald Fagen or Stephen Sondheim, only the kind of hopeful music that is by its very nature suited to what one of Arnold Bennett’s fictional characters called “the great cause of cheering us all up.”
It occurred to me after returning to New York that you might possibly enjoy listening to some of the records that saw me through my temporary separation from Mrs. T. Here are twenty, listed in no particular order. Most of the links will take you to YouTube versions of the music in question, but two require that you make a small purchase in order to download them. (Believe me, it’s worth it.)
Warning: if none of these records does the job for you, it’s probably not going to get done.
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• Bing Crosby and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, I’m an Old Cowhand
• Erin McKeown, Air
• John Philip Sousa, The Stars and Stripes Forever, transcribed and performed by Vladimir Horowitz
• The Rolling Stones, Honky Tonk Women
• Edvard Grieg, Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, performed by Percy Grainger
• R.E.M., Radio Free Europe (the original Hib-Tone single version)
• Fats Waller and His Rhythm, Loungin’ at the Waldorf
• Joe Williams and the Count Basie Orchestra, Every Day I Have the Blues
• Jim and Jesse, Air Mail Special
• Benjamin Britten, Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, performed by Britten and the London Symphony
• Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five, Don’t Worry ‘Bout That Mule
• No Doubt, Just a Girl
• Richard Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger, performed by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony
• The Who, Summertime Blues
• Horace Silver Quintet, Cookin’ at the Continental
• Sidney Bechet and His New Orleans Feetwarmers, Maple Leaf Rag
• Anton Arensky, Waltz (from Suite for Two Pianos, Op. 15), performed by Harold Bauer and Ossip Gabrilowitsch
• Aaron Copland, El Salon Mexico, performed by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony
• Wild Bill Davison, That’s A-Plenty
• The Dominoes, Sixty Minute Man