New Year's Eve at the Met

Today's program at the Metropolitan Opera in New York is a study incontrasts. For the matinee, Musical Director James Levine will present Alban Berg's Wozzeck, while Maestro Jacques Lacombe will present Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus for the evening program. There are not two more different opera's in the repertoire.

Filled with dance tunes you can whistle and comedic schtick you can't but laugh at, Strauss' operetta is the perfect introduction to the art form. After Baron von Eisenstein is sentenced to jail for eight days, he decides to fortify himself by attending a grand ball given by Russian Prince Orlofsky where he intends to engage in a little extramarital amusement. The party is also attended by von Eisenstein's chamber maid Adele, his wife Rosalinde, the director of the prison Frank, and his friend Faulke. Everyone pretends to be someone they are not, with Rosalinde masked and unrecognizable. The domestic hysterionics which follow are all orchestrated by Faulke as retorbution for a prank von Eisenstein once played on his friend, dressing him as a bat (die fledermaus) for a costume party.

What seems bizarre about this operetta is its popularity. It has become a holiday favorite, probably because the flowing champagne, yet it is a comedy about marital inifedility and drunken perfidity. Musically, Die Fledermaus is light and airy, driven by waltzes and polkas, while the costumes and set sparkle as only nineteenth century Vienna can. Look more deeply though, and there is social commentary. Though none of the characters is evil, neither do they have many redeeming qualities. They are each completely self-absorbed, willing to cheat, lie, and fake their way through life just for the entertainment of a bored aristocrat.

This production rises to the level of perfection one expects from the Met. All of the voices are pitch perfect, and the choreography revivals the most holiday productions of The Nutcracker. Two stand outs in the present cast must be noted: Marlis Petersen, the German soprano who makes her Met debut in the role of Adele, is marvelous both as an actress and singer, and Bill Irwin, Broadway and television star, enlivens the third act with his non-singing portrayal of Frosch the drunken jailer.

Die Fledermaus is worth seeing, but as one friend said, once you have seen it, you don't need to see it again.

Wozzeck, on the otherhand, warrants a lifetime of listening. Alban Berg's modern atonal masterpiece tells the story of a poor soldier who is crushed by life. The opera opens with Wozzeck shaving his captain while being berated for having a child out of wedlock. Wozzeck reponds that the poor cannot afford morals. In order to support his common law wife Marie and child, Wozzeck offers his body for experimentation by a quack doctor who berates him for urinating without permission. While gathering wood, he is beset by evil visions. Finally, Wozzeck witnesses Marie dancing with a military dram major, and the officer humiliates Wozzeck by beating him bloody in the barracks in front of the other soldiers.

Berg's opera is difficult to listen to because it is so different from what we normally hear. The atonlity works. As Wozzeck loses his grip on his sanity, the music becomes more dissonant. In other words, the music has meaning; it is not just an airy accompaniment to the singing. In this way, Berg is more in line with Johann Sebastian Bach's countrapuntal baroque than Strauss' dance tunes.

The present revival at the Met is dark and mysterious as it should be. The harsh lighting and bare modernist stage reinforce the wasteland that is the life of the poor. Alan Held, the American bass-barritone who portrays Wozzeck, is emotionally brilliant, while Katrina Dalayman the Swedish soprano who sings Marie, is touching when she sings to her son, played by Jacob Wade.

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Finally, CS Lewis' masterpiece of children's literature, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has arrived on the silver screen. Though the movie version was suffused with moments of sublime beauty, it lacks for sake of too much detail. Following Peter Jackson's precident set by The Return of the King, director Andrew Adamson includes too much minutiae, creating a plodding film that only begins to pick up speed at the climactic battle scene.

The best part of the movie is the young actress Georgie Henley who plays little Lucy Pevensie. She embodies the innocence and wonder of childhood. When she stumbles through fur coats in the wardrobe into Narnia, one can only gasp in unreserved delight. Skandar Keynes, who plays Edmund, is another delight. He is such the middle child--angry, resentful, even traitorous. Yet, he is tinged with sweetness. When he bites into that first piece of Turkish delight, a thrill shivers run through you for the innocence the boy is about to throw away.

While the movie is worth seeing, once again, read the book for to experience the magic of Narnia.

Andrew Jackson biography

Andrew Jackson was a fighter. He battled the British, his fellow lawyers, the Creek Indians, the British again, the Spanish, the Seminole Indians, John Quincy Adams, and the Washington establishment. In another in a series of revisionist biographies of early American leaders, H.W. Brands' Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times is short on revision but long on sycophantic acceptance of the theory that Jackson single-handedly reshaped the republic into a democracy by being a man of the people.

David McCullough's John Adams and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton set the standard for compelling American biographies that transformed the dust covered, moribund history writing that plagued the industry. Brands's research and writing are superb. He tells Jackson's story in the third person but from Jackson's own point of view, which leads the reader to empathize with the orphaned teen ager who reads law and makes his way west to find his fortune.

The story of Andrew Jackson is essentially narrated in two parts, from birth to the transfer of Florida to the US and from the 1824 election to Jackson's death. The first half of Brands' chronicle excels. He captures the heroicism of Jackson's meteoric rise from frontier lawyer to victor at New Orleans. Witnessing Jackson's victories over the marauding Red Sticks or Wellington's crack troops through Brands' eyes is like being there, adrenaline pumping, patriotism suffusing your entire being. The characteristics that led Jackson to unbridled military success, though—his fiery temper, his brash temerity, his kindly paternalism, his single-minded dedication to national security, his willingness to ignore the rules—were his weaknesses as president.

Jackson the warrior, sworn to protect the Constitution, was not above ignoring it in order to save it. In both New Orleans and Florida, Jackson willingly put aside the Constitution for the sake of security. In the Crescent City, after the defeating the British, Jackson refuses to lift the martial law he had imposed, and when questioned on constitutional grounds by a Federal judge, he escorts the man out of the city for "abetting mutiny." Jackson excursion into Spanish Florida during the First Seminole War, without the permission of President Monroe, was an act of war and certainly unconstitutional. Brands dismisses the concern, stating that Jackson's myopic vision where the Constitution was concerned was rooted in national security concerns.

The premise that Jackson's election in 1828 led to the transformation of the US from an aristocratic republic to a democracy of the people. As often as Brands beat the drum of Jacksonian democracy, he never makes a convincing argument that Jackson actively initiated the conversion. Instead one is left with the impression Jackson was the focal point of more direct democratic participation by a larger percentage of white men, driven namely by the nastiness of Jackson's 1824 defeat by John Quincy Adams and Old Hickory's popularity as a war hero, but Jackson did little to affect the change.

Brands gives short shrift to either contemporary or modern criticism of Andrew Jackson. As President, Jackson signed the Indian removal Act and refused to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia, which led to the removal of the Native American Indians west beyond the Mississippi ending in the Trail of Tears. Brands dedicates precious few pages to Jackson's treatment of the Indians, acknowledging the disaster but exonerating Jackson of all culpability with arguments about national security and Jackson's paternalism toward the Indians.

Ultimately, one must ask: What is Jackson's legacy? At best, it's a mixed bag. He deserves shared credit for the acquisition of both Florida and Texas. His handling of the Nullification Crisis held the Union together for another twenty-eight years. At the same time, Jackson legacy includes the spoils system, economic recession after his battle with the Bank of the United States, and the Trail of Tears. H. W. Brands missed an opportunity to set the Jackson record straight, instead opting to accept the same old historiography encouraged by Jackson himself.

Literary Stars Shine Bright at Boston University

Last night at Boston University, the Creative Writing Program held its annual evening of faculty author readings. The high caliber department—including two Poet Laureates, a Nobel Prize winner, several PEN/Faulkner Award winners, a Rhodes Scholar, a T.S. Elliot Award winner, a National Book Award recipient—speaks of BU's consistent effort to woo big names to their faculty. At least in the case of the creative writing department, these writers are not just well known, they are producing some of the country's most original and inspiring work.

The evening began with the valedictory reading of poet Geoffrey Hill, who will retire from BU at the end of this academic year. With gravitas befitting a man who has been called "the strongest and most original English poet of the second half of our fading century" (John Hollander, The Los Angeles Times), Hill made everyone laughing at his self-depracating humor, commenting on how competetive he can be. He tossed off a couple of free translations of two Italian poems before reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 66, which may have been the most poignant moment of the evening.

Jennifer Haigh, the young novelist whose Mrs. Kimble won the Pen/Faulkner prize, took the stage after Geoffrey Hill, obviously having drawn the short straw. She held her own, sharing a scence from her first novel. Birdie, the first Mrs. Kimble of the novel, Haigh describes as having developed "quite a fondness for cheap wine." Her descriptions of ruddy and alive, and her inflected reading was the same.

Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky next shared his "Poem of Disconnected Parts," which should be included in his forthcoming volume. As its title implies, the poem ranged all over the place, including several stops at Camp X-Ray at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Pinsky is capitavting in person, just like his writing. In addition to his poem, Pinsky shared with his favorite prose line from his recently published The Life of David: "They were polygamists those monotheists."

Student-cum-professor Ha Jin, whose autobiographical novel Waiting, about his five teenaged years in Mao Tse-Tung's People's Liberation Army won the National Book Award, next read from his new novel War Trash. Almost timid in approaching the podium, Ha Jin is a literary lion in sheep's clothing. His prose sing like poetry, which may explain why his next novel includes a volume of poetry as well.

Louise Glück, BU's second former Poet Laureate, shared from her soon to be published volume Averno. "Landscape," a poem in five parts, is a multi-voiced journey between the the world of the living and that of the dead. Glück crafts her evocative images with care, no more so than when she described the past, present, and future as the sun and the moon, the earth, and the frozen water below her feet. BU is determined to add Professor Glück permanently to their most vaunted collection.

As the long-time Director of the Creative Writing Program, Leslie Epstein is singularly responsible for its success. What became obvious last night was that Epstein has been able to assemble his prize-winning stable to writer professors because he is one of them. Sharing from the semi-autobigraphical San Remo Drive, Epstein related how the experience of his mother's death and burial and a visit to his childhood home all ended up in the novel. My only complaint of the night was Epstein's need to stop and explain his writing instead of just reading it.

Finally, saving what very well may have been the best for last, Nobel Prize Winner Derek Wolcott came to the podium. A native of the West Indies, Walcott's calypso intonations revived the flagging crowd. He read his much loved poem "Spoiler's Return," which make specific reference to Lord Rochester, whom Johnny Depp plays in the movie The Libertine. Walcott's cadences ebb and flow like the Carribean tides he's known since childhood, and every word evokes just the right image or emotion.

If you are looking for a good read, check out these writers; they are simply some of the best. If, on the other hand, you want to be one of these writers, then the place to start is BU.