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Pastore, a very infrequently performed Mozart work, which I was told was the opera tosee. I could only attend Fldelro, but I did not regret the trek up to James Fenimore Cooper country for only one performance. The opera house itself is stunning architecturally, andeverything about Glimmerglass suggests that the opera is a community affair not overly concerned about being authoritative or central. Slowly onecan discern an emerging predilection for smallish operas intelligently and tastefully done;it would not be hard to imagine Glimmerglass mounting Faurks Hnklope or Rossinis Litalrana in Algeri (scheduled for 1992). One cant expect to see the Met try such pieces very often.

Novernber II, 1991 resemblance to the sort of Benthamlte Panopticon memorably described in Foucaults Discipline and Punish-left the singers ample opportunity to show off their powers. This bringsus back to the questionof opera away from great metropolitan centers like NewYork and Chicago: The budgets for famous and often theatrically effective singers do not exist. Millers Leonora was Jeannine Altmeyer, an imposingly handsome woman who first became famous fifteen years ago as the Boulez-Cherau Bayreuth Sieglinde. I gather that she has gone on to o Brunnd hilde at Bayreuth and elsewhere, but my general impression is that her star has somewhat faded. She has a huge voice but it does not have much warmth or continuity to it. In Leonoras great Komm, Hoffnung enormous aria blasts of sound were followed by sudden dips in volume that were most disconcerting, as if she could only manage short bursts of singing before she needed a rest. But she had a dignity and passion that were moving to me (for all its tremendous weaknesses Fldelio has never failed to make its effect, which leads me to wonder whether there can ever be a downright bad performance of it). Mark W. Bakers Florestan was passable, as was Brian Steeles eccentric portrayal of the usually demonic Pizarro as an unctuous bureaucrat.Neither of them had the voice to dominate a role as, for instance, Jon Vickers or Fischer-Dieskau could, but its hard to think of heroic tenors and baritones today who would be a real step up from Glimmerglasss. The dearth is everywhere. Rocco, the opportunistic and, Ivealways thought, unpleasant jailer who supposed to be fais therly and expansive in his manner, was very well realized by Thomas Paul, who did the best all-round work of the evening. Like Millers dramatic direction, Stewart Robertsons conducting was intelligently direct, unfussy and antiromantic. But it did not do a great deal to transfigure the proceedings. Beethoven clearly had thateffect in mind, especially when Leonora reveals herself and is reunited with Florestan in intoxicating music that presages the Ninth Symphony. His orchestra wasnot upto such strength, but he did not pace the orchestra enough so as to build inexorably to the massive climaxes.

MUSIC.
EDWARD W. SAID
Die Tote Stadt Fidelio The Death of Klinghoffer

he center cannot hold, Yeats said apprehensively and cosmically in The Second Coming. When the metaphor of world falling apart is a applied to the ratherless grand realm of institutions that have put themselves in charge of performances of Western classical music, it is not entirely so bad a thing as that. Still, there is a much greater likelihood of adventure and exploration at the peripheries. Better the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) than the New York Philharmonic or the Metropolitan Opera; andwhere choice of repertory, if not always successful realization, is concerned, better theNew York City Opera than the many Giovannis and Aldas Don across the plaza. You would therefore actually want to attend (as I did) a rare performance of Korngolds Dre Totestadtat City, though its shamelessly derivative music and the minimal production and stage direction Millers Fidelro was an odd, slightly by Frank Corsaro diminished the effort discouraged production, although it is pretty conclusively. I cant help wondering very difficult at this point do to anything why a good idea has tobe left so much particularly new or striking with the to shabby design and lackluster prepara- piece. FIdelro is in many ways not only tion. For most of Act I1 a sizable group Beethovens remorselessly middle-class of onstage singers (John Absalom, Steph- answer to Mozarts libertine perspectives anie Sundine, Richard Byrne, Charles in the Da Ponte operas but also an atHuddleston, Fritz Masten) seemed to be tempt to give musical life to a set of abstanding around, not doing much of any- stract ideas about human justiceand thing dramatically except to sing and freedom taken from the French Revoluthen stop singing on cue; meanwhile, tion. An excellent article by Paul Robinspectators were forced to endurea dizzy- son in the March 1991 Cambridge Opera ing series of slide and film projections Journal argues that so strong was the supposedly suggesting Bruges and a connection in Beethovensmind between Freudian story of obsessive love, but in the events of 1789 and Fidel10 that the fact making it impossible to distinguish operas characters and plot are almost clearly mostof what was happening on- completely desexualized and disembodstage. There is a moderately interesting ied. You cannot therefore make genuinely quasi-Straussian opera lurking within the believable human beings out of Leonora City Operas well-conducted (by George andFlorestan,norcan you do much Manahan) performances, but it was kept more than dutifully follow the outlines of from appearing in all but its most obvi- a dauntingly austere narrative. I regret ous lines-a pity. that I was unable to grasp Millers central interpretive point, except that I much r take the GlimmerglassOpera Com- commend his wish to give short shriftto pany in Cooperstown, NewYork, the usual affectations andbyplay attachevertheless, Glimmerglass is defiwhose annual monthlong repertory this ing to most productions of Fidelio. A nitely a place where skill and reyear wasmade up Beethovens Fldelro ponderously stern and yet streamlined set sourcefulness are at work, largely as a of (directed by Jonathan Miller) and I1 Re by John Conklm-bearing an uncanny consequence of not being able (and

The neoconservative attack on the literary andpictorial arts has ako taken atoll in the world of classical music.

November 11, 1991

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therefore not wanting) to imitate the Met. ceeded by Edward Rothstein. Henahans These are not solely aesthetic decisions negative attitude toward nearly every but, I t is pretty obvious,political ones as manifestation of the modern was exwell. If artists and institutions concerned plained in this articleas stemming from with the arts aredetermined not simply his regret that twelve-tone music ever to perform musical works but, in the happened. Certainly, as Adornowas one fashlon of The New York Times, to pro- of the first to realize, even twelve-tone very often did) become duce works for some self-established rec- music could (and ord, another agenda at work. I do not co-opted and boring, but bewailing its is think it IS at all peculiar that precisely appearance altogether is rather like regretting the discovery ofthe law of gravity. those institutions and their supporters who try to produce work for the record, It is the fact that music, like society, is who think of themselves as preserving subject to change anddevelopment that tradition,banningoutrageous experi- maddens neoconservatives; this has made of ments, holding the line and so forth, are musical tradition into one those unprofoundalso the ones who advance a notion of assailable catch phrases serving political correctnessthat makes some of ly regressive ideas about law and order, the posturingof the left in this field look mechanical realism and rigid and unimaginative performance style. pitiful by comparison. What is more, such efforts have the he paradox is that opera is supposbudgets, command the spaces and own edly the most nonideological of the organs that can make tradition into an orthodoxy. Many of the Mets recent all musical genres, yetit is the most manidirectly influenced ideas about Wagners Rlng cycle and festly saturated in and Parsrfal-weighty, grave, realistic, pro- by politics, history and social movements. grammatically unexperimental-are the Wagner nonideological?Mozart nonideovirtual equivalents of political statements logical? Beethoven and Verdi nonideologthat say that the rich and powerful own ical? Nonsense, of course. But the phrase aesthet~c traditions, in which size, lavish has been evident in recent discussions verisimilitude and uncritical replications and reviews that have bludgeoned BAMs of the past are an acceptable substitute production of The Death oJKhnghoffer, for rethinking, intelligent experiment and with score by John Adams, libretto by daring conceptions. Thus you can over- Alice Goodman and direction by Peter rulethecontemporary,and even the Sellars. A furtherirony is that the phrase ideological indicates politics that the modern, in favor ofsomethingmuch more easily salable and far less contro- critic happensto disapprove of, whereas a politics that does not trouble New The versial to boot. I do not mean to say that there is noth- York Times or The Wall Street Journal and ing at the center thatworth having. Of is construedasnonideologlcal, 1s course there is, as Ive noted in many col- consequently never explained or even umns here. But what I am saying is that discussed. This is not to deny that, as someone not enough notice is taken of how the neoconservative attack on the literary with a considerable personal stakeboth in Middle East, I and pictorial arts has also taken a signif- music and the modern icant toll in the world of classical music. was greatly disturbed at the prospect of One sees it more easily perhaps in the an opera on the Klinghoffer murder. I discourse of music journalism, where as- have long been a critic of Abul Abbas, the tonishing corruptions of language and Iraqi-supported Palestinian whose gang thought have come to be acceptable. The did the dreadful killing, but I have also basic idea is that the best thing about been a consistent admirer of Sellarss music is that it is (the word turns upwith work, which I have discussed here more Israeli propaganda some frequency) nonideo1ogica1, so than once. Thanks to that any attempt to interpret music po- and to the criminal idiocy of a small litically or to introduce contemporary number of Palestinian desperadoes, most concerns into mus~cal practice is consid- Americanstend to apply the terrorist ered an intrusion. image to the whole Palestinian people, How inadequate a suchnotion is although since the intifada began there (which has become received dogma at has been a change for the better in that The New Criterzon and, to a very large odious habit. Yet so ugly and gratuitous degree, The New York Tlrnes) was best was Klinghoffers killing that onewould incident exemplified last spring in a valedictory have thought an opera about the article by Dona1 Henahan, the Timess was in a sense ideologically predetersenior critic, whohassince been suc- mined, especially forAmericanaudi-

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November 11, 1991

Arab than with the American-Jewish side of things. In sticking to the AmericanJewish, banal, middle-class aspect of the episode Goodman stacks the deck, thereby letting the inherently more dramatic dimensions of the Palestinian tragedy take precedenceover, and somewhat unfairly dominate, the senseless kllling of the invalid tourist, whose only crime was that he happened to be on the Achille Lauro when the Palestinians boarded it. But as you slt there watching this vast work unfold, you need to ask yourself how many times you have seen any substantial work of music or dramatic or literary or pictorial art that actually tries to treatthePalestinians as tragically aggrieved, albeit sometimes criminally intent, people. The answer 1s never, and you must go on to ask Messrs.-the-

ences. The question I asked myselfbefore yourself sympathetically to this usually I saw the operawas whether,without dis- scanted aspect of the Palestiman story. torting events, there was anything Adams- I was certainly prepared for it (since it Goodman-Sellars coulddo with the epi- replicated my own experience), but I do sode that might shed new light on it, that not think my response was entirely an would not only heighten our awareness ideological or autobiographlcal predisof the appalling background from which position. The stillness and confidence of Palestinians and Israelis draw so much of Adamss minimalist music was, I believe, their anger and continued suffering but at its rarest best in the first chorus, as was also present an interesting aesthetic expe- Goodmans sober diction. I did not think rience. How would the three collabora- that level was achieved more than a few tors eludethe many traps inherentin the times more during the evening. To my raw history and the incredibly embroiled taste Adamss minimalism makes itself passions that have fed that history for al- felt best in meditative or lyrical, rather most a century? than dramatic, modes; he clearly does To say (as Rothstein as well as Ray- not seem to be able to speak in a very mond Sokolov of The Wall Street Jour- assertive or overcoming musical idiom, nalsaid) that the opera scants or carica- although hismusic for Klmghoffer is altures or reduces or diminishes the Jewish ways expertly laid out. The overall imside of the terrorist incident is, I think, pression I got on this one hearing (I lisa lapse into automatic thinking, into an tened to it again a month later on the easy formula thatapplies neither to the incident nor to the aesthetic experience of the opera. Thereis no way of palliating or excusing the violence that killed Klinghoffer. and the opera does not try. What thework attempts instead, I believe, is to imagine a frame, a background, a historical and aesthetic envelope for what, in another context, Thomas Hardy called the convergence of the twain. Strictly speaking, the frameis an accurate oneonly in a general sense, because Klinghoffer was an American, not an Israeli, tourist; his assailants were Palestinian refugees whose driven, almost possessed sense of mission can be imagined to contrast strikingly with the innocent Klinghoffers relatively ordinary back- radio) is that he sounds asif he writesfor ground and apparently apolitlcal charac- occasions and purposes that stand outter. The backgroundis compellingly es- side and at distance from themusic; the a tablished with the operas opening chorus result is music that generally accompaof Palestinian exiles who sing: nies (often with a kind of defeated pulsating and arpeggiated repetitiveness) the Of that house [in Palestme], nota wall action, or music that frequently sounds In which a bird might nest strangely retrospective, vague or only Was left to stand. Israel Laid all to waste. partially convinced of where it is going, I found this the most musically impas- or music that (in the Achille Lauro Capsioned and moving sequence in the score, tains opening sohloquy)is distracted by not least because Adamss music unfolds the words into relatively short bursts of clarity followedby longish passages of unwith a majestic calm that in the final idiomatically accented recitative. Adams strophes of the chorus blossoms into an extraordinary arabesquedigression that has said thatKlinghoffer is not a Verdia loops up and down and around single style opera but ceremonial work, rather a word with breathtaking continuity, sear- like the Bach passions; indeed, the three ing the spectators consciousness with the characters played by Janice Felty, a very competent Sellarsregular, are commenterrible sadness of it all. tators on the action,as much as the EvanNaturally you would respond to the operas inaugural sequence (the so-called gelist is in the St. Matthew Passron. There is no doubt, however, that Adams Prologue, made up choruses of exiled of Palestinians and Jews, plus a sendup of is an adeptcollaborator with the librettist American middle-class life represented and director, whose vision of the strugby the Rumor family) only if you opened gle overPalestine resonates more with the

nomdeological-music-and-culture-critics
whether they ever complain about works that are skewed the other way, or whether for instance, inthe flood of images and words that assert that Israel is a democracy, any of them note that million Pales2 tinians on the West Bank and Gazahave fewer rights than South African blacks had during the worst days of apartheid, and that the paeans and the billion $77 sent toIsrael from the United States were keeping the Palestinian people endlessly oppressed? And how manytimes have we heard people say that Cynthia Ozicks Insufferably turgid anti-Palestinian polemics are one-sided, or that when Joseph Papp canceled a Palestiman theater companys performance in 1989 he was also being one-slded? How could anyone complain that a subject this operas like was too ideological when it 1s perfectly clear that by the same standard most artistic performances at the center are so often overlaid with stereotypical pieties and justified by a whole chorus of politically correct maintamers of the status quo as to be not openly ideological enough? here can be no obllgatlon laid on any performer or artist to replicate the politlcs of m e MacNe&LRhrer NewsHour when it comes to so-called balance and respectability. That Adams-GoodmanSellars d o not even try is a gigantic plus, I thlnk, and they should be admired for it. But by the same token Klinghoffer does mfact requlre a critical look-albelt one based on having seen only one full theater performance-which quickly reveals striking strengths andweaknesses. There 1s a studiously antlbourgeols quality to the whole that is interesting when the work is powerful and strong and far

How many times have you seen a substantial work of art that tries to treat the Palestinians a s a tragically aggrieved albeit sometimes criminally intent, people?

November 11, I991

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less so when it is, in view, insufficient- Prologue, theeasy satire of a New Jersey my suply forceful because capricious or clumsy. suburban family-the Rumors-is The first of these qualities is contained posed to define the Klinghoffers backin what completely dominates the entire ground as away of limiting or deflating performance-that is, Sellarss directo- it. Most of the critics found the scene rial vision. It 1s lyrical and dramatic at the offensive; they alleged that it was antisame time, but also comic (as opposed to Semitic in portraying the Rumors as reptragic) and oddly formal and ceremonial. resentative of the worst kind of consumIn his extraordinarlly inventive use of erism and bargain hunting. Actually, there space Sellars is superbly abetted by de- is no conclusive indication that they are signer George Tsypin, whosegigantic ver- in fact Jewish, but I thought the scene was trying to tical tubular metal structure, with its var- was far too long for what it ious levels and gangways, majestically do, which I also thought was not so important to d o in any case. Some of the surveys audience and actors alike. The chorus weaves in and out of the longer narrative pieces, for example the Captains opening soliloquy with hisface proceedings,as dotheMarkMorris dancers, never more beautifully present reproduced on a TV monitor upstage, asananimatinghuman pulse in the were too drawn out, given that persondrama thanin thelr work here; a couple ages fundamentally unproblematic charof years ago Morriss perverse but mark- acter. But on the other hand, chorus the edly ineffective verslon of Purcells D d o about Hagar that opens 11, with its Act and Aeneas (also at BAM) had impressed magnificent pavane for chorus and dancme through its narcissism and its unjus- ers, distended the action with just the tified assaulton Purcells deeply mourn- rlght degree of accented slowness and ful score and flnely calibrated drama. In formality. It was at this point that1 also Klinghoffer, Morriss choreography and felt something of the same aesthetic dighis dances are used to double thelyrico- nity that so dlstinguishes Gillo Pontedramatic action, and alsobind togeth- corvos direction in The Battle Algiers, to of er the whole performing space in arcs with his stress on the collective identity that flow through the fairly static pro- (what he calls the personnage choral) ceedings. Dancers, principal singers and characterizing all sides of the struggle. chorus members are dressed alike in simIn effect, then, The Death of Kllngple, pastel-colored street clothes, varied hoffer is grossly political and ideologlcal in the case of the terrorists with colored only In its initial attitude toward the hisrobes and occasional headdresses. torical givens. The work moves almost Most impressive of all, Sellarss di- quietistically well beyond that in its perrectlon removes the sense of bloody con- ception of the Jewish-Palestinian agon, flict from the drama. There are seven and what it achieves thanks to Sellarss quasi-Aeschylean choruses interspersed darlng is considerable, both in what It throughout, andin their calm reflective- risks and in what i t gains. The dominant ness, then cosmically placid awareness of emotions of the opera are not strictly the sacred and the profane, these choruses speaking political but aestheticones, irradiate andto a considerable degree ele- similar to those we derive from Yeatss vate the actlonto thelevel of ritual rather Byzantium poems or Wallace Stevenss than of history. Nowhere is the transfor- great odes. I suspect that Klinghoffer will mation fromviolence to ceremonial pas- last as anoccasional repertory item,the sion more striking,however, than when way Messiaens Saint Francors dAssise Klinghoffer is killed, an action that first has lasted, although there is something takes place offstage and is then transfig- quite special about this version of the ured-that is the only word to use herepiece, which will only attach tothis parin an extraordinary gymnopPdie of the ticular group. Sellars has gotten magniffalling body, as a dancers body is slowly icent performances from Sylvan as lowered from the ceiling until it reaches Klinghoffer, JamesMaddalena as the the stage, where baritone Sanford Sylvan, Captain, Eugene Perry as Mamoud (misas the already dead Klinghoffer,lies op- spelled disastrously), Thomas Young as posite It. Molql (and JonathanRumor), Stephanie In effect, then, what Sellars has done Friedman as Alma Rumorand as Omar, to the operais to provide a mesmerizmg and Thomas Hammons as Rambo. formal meditation on historical violence, There was a special heart-rending preciin which one is able to perceive the waste sion to Sheila Nadlers final soliloquy as and tragedy tying the characters together Marilyn Klinghoffer that was formidably in a new ambience. This is not always moving. And Kent Nagano, the remarkconsistently successful: As part of the ably fluent and responsive conductor,
~

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held the music together with singular brilliance. But the evening was really Sellass, rigorously thought through and luminously realized by his remarkable talents. 0

MUSIC.
GENE SANTORO
Prince of Darkness

tart by thinking of Miles Davis as jazzs Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Whitman or Joyce. Like theirs, his encyclopedic body of work-forty-plus years worth-both sums up what preceded it and charges into the future like a clarion call. Although he began career playmg with his beboppers, he wasnever really one of them. Although he ended playing frequently shapeless funkathons, when his health and his chops and his too-often lackluster 1980s bands rose to the occasion he could still light them up with a jabbing run from his incandescent horn. Although he vowed time and again never to goback to his past, the final trlumph before his death on September 28 came at the Montreux JazzFestival, where he played what was, by all accounts, a stunning version of his old collaboration with Gil Evans, Sketchx of Spain. So Miles was, like those looming literary figures, a great conundrum as well. Acute as he was about music, in other ways he was, judging by his autobiography (Mdes), profoundly unreflective [see Santoro, The Serpents Tooth, January 29, 19901. But however distressing and hurtfulto the people around him, his impatience and restlessness steered him for most of his career toward upsetting the status quo. The implications of his many revolutions still havent been fully worked out. Jazz-like another great American popular art form, the movies-is a collaborative effort. For all his viciousness, Miles knew how to draw his cohorts into his ideas, how to let them take possession of what he wanted to hear. LikeDuke Ellington and Charles Mingus, Miles set up a feedback loop that included his sidemen, himself and his musical goals. The difference was that Dukes and Minguss loops were closed. Ellington, for instance, would take aninspired lick by a Johnny Hodges or a Tricky Sam Nanton and ramify it into an arrangement thatwould be embedded into the ongoing body of

work that was the Duke Ellington Band. to synthesize the salient points of a seemMiles, by contrast, led by indirection. ingly unbounded musical space that inHis feedback loop remained open: He cluded Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Gil waited to hear what would happen and Evans, Tadd Dameron, Charles Mingus, deduce where it could go. Thus his impa- Sun Ra, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, OrBrown, Jim1 Hentience and restlessness-balanced by his nette Coleman, James ability to listen and by an irascible tough- drix, Sly Stone, Prince, Ravel, Debussy, Karlheinz ness that eventually became at least part- Harry Partch. John Cage, Stockhausen, African sources, technolly a mask-helped him become a rare and successful leader. Dont play none ogy-it was all the sameto him. He took of that bebopshit, or Lay off your left what he wanted fromwherever he found told me, for example, that he hand, or d 4 Y ~ ~ dont have to plug every it. He once hole were typical remarks hed make wanted Herbie Hancock tolay off his left mid-to-late 1960s partly while waiting or his bands to figure out hand during the what to make of his sketchy imperatives. because hed seen an Afrlcan concert For It washis democratic modelof lead- with an mbira that turnedhis whole conershlp-letting his cohorts fill out his ception of piano around. That imagiseen skeletal design, then seizing and synthe- native talent could be as, and could sizing the results and pointing them to- be, opportunistic. But as Stravinsky put ward an overall goal-that spawned one it, Lesser artists borrow; great artists stylistic turn after anotherin a career that steal. His restlessness made Miles anathespanned nearly half a century, one of the most astonishingly long and productive ma to manycritics and musicians, who deplored his abandonment of bebop and that jazz has ever seen. acousticjazzforthe rock- and funkdriven sounds he pursued from the mid1960s on. On the other hand, change that won him an idolatrous audience among the kids he touched for the first time at venues like the Fillmores. As a result, he became a wealthy man, which inflamed his detractors even more. But thoughhis turn to fusion seemed like treason to those who scorned it, that only one was of a series of watersheds. Miles came to New York in 1945, ostensibly to study at Juilliard. That, at At the center of that career, of course, least, is how he sold the tripto his father, was Miless instantly recognizable trum- a prosperous dentlst In East St. Louis. Inpet: eerily vocalic with its parched, acer- stead, he looked for Bird, who roomed bic tone, its elastic sense space punc- with him while he studied bebop firstof tuated by note flurries and its occasionalhand on the bandstands of clubs and at dramatic stab into upper register. The jam sessions. But Miles, who was cheapthe combination, which may have owed more ly dismissive of Parker in his autobiograbebop anddidnt to Bix Beiderbecke than anyone else, phy, never really played lines the made him an alchemical balladeer who clone Birds or Dizzy Gillespies could transmute Tin Pan Alley lead like way so many did at thetime. That mdeit Bye Bye Blackbird into burnished gold. pendence and contrast probably made It also marked him as one of the first easier for him to land agig as Birds sidepost-louis Armstrong hornmen back man of choice. to On Bird/Savoy Original Master Takes off from the rush to stratospheric high notes as a sign of virtuosity. Even if that (Savoy Jazz), which includes early seswas because, as some have claimed, he sions in which he played with Parker, simply couldnt hit them, made a vir- Miles isclearly hearing different harmohe tuosos virtue of his limitations, and thus nies stacked in different ways. Like Thelredefined the soundof the jazz trumpet. onious Monk,his sometime antagonist, In the process, he helped expand the ho- like contemporary American composers, rizons of what we label jazz, that ever- he was interested in silence as a compogrowing accretion of stylistic choices. nent of sound. Althoughhe became perFor if Miles was one of jazzs great con- fectly capable of boppish note flurriesundrums, he was also one of its major thats especially evident on his series of adrenaline-charged live recordings, even nexus points. One of Miless talents was his ability as late as theexcellent 1964 Mdes In Ber-

MiZes expanded the

horizons of what we labeljazz: Ifhe was one o its conundrum, he f was also a major nexus.