Tuesday, May 20, 2008
There may be one further delay on finishing one of the house’s systems, and this one I will welcome. As you’ll see from the following notice sent out by the New England sustainable energy Association, the State of New Hampshire’s legislature has passed a bill establishing rather generous financial incentives for installing exactly the kind of solar electrical generation system I’ve contracted for.
The reason for the possible delay is that to be eligible for the rebate, the system has to be constructed after July 1, the date at which the bill becomes law, assuming the governor signs it, which he’s expected to do, and that funding is secured, which will probably happen given the energy crises and global warming we’re going through.
Slightly edited, here’s the text of the NESEA’s jubilant email to the sustainable energy community :
Fantastic News!!!
Thank you all so much for your continued support and patience through the passage of HB1628. New Hampshire now has a financial incentive for small renewable energy systems! Some final tweaking through the senate has clarified some of the language, and we thank you for all of your input, as well as the consistent support from the Public Utilities Commission and Office of Consumer Advocate, and so many of the legislators that supported this effort. We do anticipate that Governor Lynch will sign this bill into law.
A quick overview of the bill:
* $3/watt up to a maximum payment of $6000, or 50% of system costs, whichever is less, per "facility"
* one-time payment
* 5kW and smaller systems qualify
* photovoltaic, wind, microhydro, and other renewable electricity generating systems qualify
* built on or after July 1st, 2008
* located on the owner's property
* 10% of the Renewable Energy Fund will be available for this program, to the extent that such funding is available - see below for more details
* assumed to be first come, first served, although the application process cannot start until the bill is law, and no payments can be made until the Fund is actually funded
* verification of parts and labor costs, that certified equipment meets safety standards of ANSI and UL or similar, and that local zoning and inspections are met
* Must be connected to the utility grid - this is a senate amendment
* Also amended is that the Public Utilities Commission may establish additional incentive or rebate programs for thermal and renewable energy projects.
State law mandates that utilities need to add growing percentages of renewable energy to the mix they deliver to their customers, ultimately closing in on 25% by 2025. When the utilities cannot buy those "green" electrons on the market, or generate them themselves, they pay an Alternate Compliance Payment (ACP), a fair and mutually agreed upon payment specifically for the purpose of encouraging generation of renewable energy, as defined by law.
I will be one of the generators of said renewal energy.
This program could not have gained the momentum it did without your support of it and your support of the NH Sustainable Energy Association.
Many thanks!
The NHSEA Legislative Committee
Given the fact that I sold my house in Boston after the foreclosure crisis had begun and that I had to accept a reduced selling price, this little financial break is extremely welcome. The delay will be for just under six weeks and is more than worth it. The foundation posts have been set into the ground and are all ready to go, so as soon as July 1 arrives, I’ll have one of the first photovoltaic systems in the state to qualify under this new incentive program
*******
We played this spring’s operas to two very good houses last weekend at the Mass College of Art. The double bill was Socrate by Eric Satie (best known for the Gymnopedies for piano as orchestrated by Debussy) and A Last Goodbye, a newly commissioned gay-themed work in its premiere performances.
Intermezzo, the company that’s the only theatrical job I’m maintaining in my “retirement,” is now firmly established in Boston’s operatic scene to the point where the critics now call us to make sure they’ll have tickets waiting for them at the box office. This time we had reviewers from the Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix and the web-based The Edge.
The Globe’s review came out yesterday and was very positive. The only glitch is that for the third time in my career in Boston, even though the program clearly gave my name as William Fregosi, the Globe’s reviewer credited my design to Jim Fregosi, former baseball player, then team manager, and some degree of second cousin to my father. I’ve always been grateful to Jim on one level—because of him there’s at least a chance I’ll get my name spelled correctly. But these reviewers need to learn that not every Fregosi in this country is named Jim!
*******
Work that’s going on up at the house is the construction of the bridge . . . .
. . . . and the first coat of stucco covering the Styrofoam insulation. The finish coat will consist of a textured, warmer color.
This is Colby, the plasterer's dog, who likes to walk around with a hunk of branch in his mouth for extended periods of time visiting everybody on the site. After that's over it's serious rest time.
I spent most of the afternoon and part of the morning pulling rock out of the pits and out of the piles left by the excavator as he prepared for the solar array footings. Our ledge often shatters into flat strata and we need huge amounts of flat rock to lay the walls for the planters and raised beds we want around the house. Right now I am pretty exhausted but it’s a good kind of tired, caused by exercise and getting something accomplished.
*******
This is just irresistible, and so completely true.
The reason for the possible delay is that to be eligible for the rebate, the system has to be constructed after July 1, the date at which the bill becomes law, assuming the governor signs it, which he’s expected to do, and that funding is secured, which will probably happen given the energy crises and global warming we’re going through.
Slightly edited, here’s the text of the NESEA’s jubilant email to the sustainable energy community :
Fantastic News!!!
Thank you all so much for your continued support and patience through the passage of HB1628. New Hampshire now has a financial incentive for small renewable energy systems! Some final tweaking through the senate has clarified some of the language, and we thank you for all of your input, as well as the consistent support from the Public Utilities Commission and Office of Consumer Advocate, and so many of the legislators that supported this effort. We do anticipate that Governor Lynch will sign this bill into law.
A quick overview of the bill:
* $3/watt up to a maximum payment of $6000, or 50% of system costs, whichever is less, per "facility"
* one-time payment
* 5kW and smaller systems qualify
* photovoltaic, wind, microhydro, and other renewable electricity generating systems qualify
* built on or after July 1st, 2008
* located on the owner's property
* 10% of the Renewable Energy Fund will be available for this program, to the extent that such funding is available - see below for more details
* assumed to be first come, first served, although the application process cannot start until the bill is law, and no payments can be made until the Fund is actually funded
* verification of parts and labor costs, that certified equipment meets safety standards of ANSI and UL or similar, and that local zoning and inspections are met
* Must be connected to the utility grid - this is a senate amendment
* Also amended is that the Public Utilities Commission may establish additional incentive or rebate programs for thermal and renewable energy projects.
State law mandates that utilities need to add growing percentages of renewable energy to the mix they deliver to their customers, ultimately closing in on 25% by 2025. When the utilities cannot buy those "green" electrons on the market, or generate them themselves, they pay an Alternate Compliance Payment (ACP), a fair and mutually agreed upon payment specifically for the purpose of encouraging generation of renewable energy, as defined by law.
I will be one of the generators of said renewal energy.
This program could not have gained the momentum it did without your support of it and your support of the NH Sustainable Energy Association.
Many thanks!
The NHSEA Legislative Committee
Given the fact that I sold my house in Boston after the foreclosure crisis had begun and that I had to accept a reduced selling price, this little financial break is extremely welcome. The delay will be for just under six weeks and is more than worth it. The foundation posts have been set into the ground and are all ready to go, so as soon as July 1 arrives, I’ll have one of the first photovoltaic systems in the state to qualify under this new incentive program
*******
We played this spring’s operas to two very good houses last weekend at the Mass College of Art. The double bill was Socrate by Eric Satie (best known for the Gymnopedies for piano as orchestrated by Debussy) and A Last Goodbye, a newly commissioned gay-themed work in its premiere performances.
Intermezzo, the company that’s the only theatrical job I’m maintaining in my “retirement,” is now firmly established in Boston’s operatic scene to the point where the critics now call us to make sure they’ll have tickets waiting for them at the box office. This time we had reviewers from the Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix and the web-based The Edge.
The Globe’s review came out yesterday and was very positive. The only glitch is that for the third time in my career in Boston, even though the program clearly gave my name as William Fregosi, the Globe’s reviewer credited my design to Jim Fregosi, former baseball player, then team manager, and some degree of second cousin to my father. I’ve always been grateful to Jim on one level—because of him there’s at least a chance I’ll get my name spelled correctly. But these reviewers need to learn that not every Fregosi in this country is named Jim!
*******
Work that’s going on up at the house is the construction of the bridge . . . .
. . . . and the first coat of stucco covering the Styrofoam insulation. The finish coat will consist of a textured, warmer color.
This is Colby, the plasterer's dog, who likes to walk around with a hunk of branch in his mouth for extended periods of time visiting everybody on the site. After that's over it's serious rest time.
I spent most of the afternoon and part of the morning pulling rock out of the pits and out of the piles left by the excavator as he prepared for the solar array footings. Our ledge often shatters into flat strata and we need huge amounts of flat rock to lay the walls for the planters and raised beds we want around the house. Right now I am pretty exhausted but it’s a good kind of tired, caused by exercise and getting something accomplished.
*******
This is just irresistible, and so completely true.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
We’ve come full circle up at the house. It began with excavation and it’s ending with excavation.
Here is the divided trench that was dug to hold the foundations and posts that will support the photovoltaic solar panel array. It’s on the hillside up behind the house, where the panels will have totally unobstructed access to sunlight in all four seasons.
This much smaller pit is for the footings that will support the “cliff” end of the bridge out to the hillside. After it’s snowed, we’ll be able to walk directly from the second floor of the house up the rise with brooms and sweep the snow off the panels.
This impressive piece of rock—seven and a half feet wide—was blasted out of the hill a year ago. We first saw it standing alone in on the floor of the excavation in the middle of what is now our bedroom. From the beginning, we knew we wanted to use it for something dramatic.
After floating a lot of ideas back and forth with each other, we finally decided that it would be a kind of terrace in the steps leading up to the hot tub that’s going to be moved up from Fritz’s current house. Almost in the middle there’s a hole drilled into the rock that was originally to be used for dynamite in the blasting. For some reason it was left empty and now suggests an ideal socket for the pole of an outdoor umbrella.
*******
Now here’s a very interesting piece that could really open up a big can of worms:
Vatican says aliens could exist
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out. Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.
Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world. The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
The official Vatican newspaper headlines his article 'Aliens Are My Brother'. Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God, and some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Asked about the Catholic Church's condemnation four centuries ago of the Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo, Father Funes diplomatically says mistakes were made, but it is time to turn the page and look towards the future. Science and religion need each other, and many astronomers believe in God, he assures readers.
To strengthen its scientific credentials, the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.
This is somewhat amazing on several levels. Father Funes airily dismisses the Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo at the hands of the infamous Inquisition as being a simple mistake from which we should all move on. Galileo declared the sun to be the center of the solar system, not the earth, something that had been known by Islamic astronomers for centuries, and by the ancients who had also known not only that the earth was a sphere, but had plotted its circumference with startling accuracy.
But the popes said the earth was flat (because pagans are always wrong by definition) and that the sun revolved around it because Jesus had come down to earth; therefore the earth had to be the center of everything, from our solar system on out into the greater universe. Presumably, God wouldn't have put people on, or sent Jesus to, anything that wasn't the center of something.
Galileo was eventually forced to recant his theory and say it was all a lie, for which he was allowed to live--under house arrest for the rest of his life. Others, many others, were not so lucky. They wound up chained to heavy wooden stakes and burned alive. These unfortunates weren’t able “to turn the page and look towards the future” as their futures ended the minute the popes got their hands on them. Murder, it would seem to me, rates something stronger than "mistake".
In Catholic school, we were taught that only earth could have life on it as Jesus came here, and because the Bible doesn’t mention the creation of any other life-bearing planets. I wonder if the Vatican’s insistence on all this in the past is covered under the doctrine of papal infallibility when speaking on matters of faith and morals.
It would seem so. While morals aren’t relevant here, it was obviously made a matter of life and death concerning one’s faith—believe the church’s errors and live, believe the truth and die, horribly. If they’re saying now that it was all a mistake, does that open the door to admitting that they were wrong in many other areas as well? Crack Infallibility in one place, does it stand firm elsewhere?
That conference on Darwin, roundly condemned by the church for a hundred and fifty years since publication of Origin of the Species in 1859, should be very interesting.
Here is the divided trench that was dug to hold the foundations and posts that will support the photovoltaic solar panel array. It’s on the hillside up behind the house, where the panels will have totally unobstructed access to sunlight in all four seasons.
This much smaller pit is for the footings that will support the “cliff” end of the bridge out to the hillside. After it’s snowed, we’ll be able to walk directly from the second floor of the house up the rise with brooms and sweep the snow off the panels.
This impressive piece of rock—seven and a half feet wide—was blasted out of the hill a year ago. We first saw it standing alone in on the floor of the excavation in the middle of what is now our bedroom. From the beginning, we knew we wanted to use it for something dramatic.After floating a lot of ideas back and forth with each other, we finally decided that it would be a kind of terrace in the steps leading up to the hot tub that’s going to be moved up from Fritz’s current house. Almost in the middle there’s a hole drilled into the rock that was originally to be used for dynamite in the blasting. For some reason it was left empty and now suggests an ideal socket for the pole of an outdoor umbrella.
*******
Now here’s a very interesting piece that could really open up a big can of worms:
Vatican says aliens could exist
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out. Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world. The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
The official Vatican newspaper headlines his article 'Aliens Are My Brother'. Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God, and some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Asked about the Catholic Church's condemnation four centuries ago of the Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo, Father Funes diplomatically says mistakes were made, but it is time to turn the page and look towards the future. Science and religion need each other, and many astronomers believe in God, he assures readers.To strengthen its scientific credentials, the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.
This is somewhat amazing on several levels. Father Funes airily dismisses the Catholic Church’s persecution of Galileo at the hands of the infamous Inquisition as being a simple mistake from which we should all move on. Galileo declared the sun to be the center of the solar system, not the earth, something that had been known by Islamic astronomers for centuries, and by the ancients who had also known not only that the earth was a sphere, but had plotted its circumference with startling accuracy.
But the popes said the earth was flat (because pagans are always wrong by definition) and that the sun revolved around it because Jesus had come down to earth; therefore the earth had to be the center of everything, from our solar system on out into the greater universe. Presumably, God wouldn't have put people on, or sent Jesus to, anything that wasn't the center of something.
Galileo was eventually forced to recant his theory and say it was all a lie, for which he was allowed to live--under house arrest for the rest of his life. Others, many others, were not so lucky. They wound up chained to heavy wooden stakes and burned alive. These unfortunates weren’t able “to turn the page and look towards the future” as their futures ended the minute the popes got their hands on them. Murder, it would seem to me, rates something stronger than "mistake".
In Catholic school, we were taught that only earth could have life on it as Jesus came here, and because the Bible doesn’t mention the creation of any other life-bearing planets. I wonder if the Vatican’s insistence on all this in the past is covered under the doctrine of papal infallibility when speaking on matters of faith and morals.It would seem so. While morals aren’t relevant here, it was obviously made a matter of life and death concerning one’s faith—believe the church’s errors and live, believe the truth and die, horribly. If they’re saying now that it was all a mistake, does that open the door to admitting that they were wrong in many other areas as well? Crack Infallibility in one place, does it stand firm elsewhere?
That conference on Darwin, roundly condemned by the church for a hundred and fifty years since publication of Origin of the Species in 1859, should be very interesting.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
While our excavator reconfigured some of the hillside above the house in preparation for installing posts that will support the photovoltaic panels, and for the bridge that will join the "cliff" to the second floor of the house, Fritz and I did a rough layout of the walkways we want across the front of the house. We hammered stakes into the ground and stretched white string between them to define the triangular raised bed of native New Hampshire wild flowers that will sit directly outside the great room's windows.
It remains a cold spring here, with heavy winds yesterday. I'm home less this week as I've designed the set and lighting for Intermezzo Chamber Opera's spring production, a double bill of operas by Eric Satie and Charles Shadle, a colleague of mine from Music and Theater at MIT. So far, the technical rehearsals are going well.
Socrate, about the life and death of the great Greek Philosopher, uses a combination of front projections cross-fading in and out with the work of actors who appear only as silhouettes behind a plain muslin drop. I'd wanted to take pictures last night but my laptop has been pressed into service with power point to run the projector.
The score is quite lovely, very early twentieth century French, with long lyric lines and great refinement. I get to hear the brand new Shadle opera, A Last Goodbye, for the first time tonight. Word from those who've heard it, and from those who are in it, is that the music is extremely beautiful.
*******
My cousin in Montreal sent me these three pictures, preceded by the challenge, "See if you can identify where these pictures were taken" . . . .
And followed by the answer, "India! That's where we have to call to get instructions on how to work our computers and other electronics. Makes you think, doesn't it?"
I wrote back to tell him that several years ago, Dell's computer support in Bangalore had completely destroyed my computer in approximately three weeks time. They eventually had to send me a whole new computer absolutely free because of all the damage their tech support had done.
It remains a cold spring here, with heavy winds yesterday. I'm home less this week as I've designed the set and lighting for Intermezzo Chamber Opera's spring production, a double bill of operas by Eric Satie and Charles Shadle, a colleague of mine from Music and Theater at MIT. So far, the technical rehearsals are going well.
Socrate, about the life and death of the great Greek Philosopher, uses a combination of front projections cross-fading in and out with the work of actors who appear only as silhouettes behind a plain muslin drop. I'd wanted to take pictures last night but my laptop has been pressed into service with power point to run the projector.
The score is quite lovely, very early twentieth century French, with long lyric lines and great refinement. I get to hear the brand new Shadle opera, A Last Goodbye, for the first time tonight. Word from those who've heard it, and from those who are in it, is that the music is extremely beautiful.
*******
My cousin in Montreal sent me these three pictures, preceded by the challenge, "See if you can identify where these pictures were taken" . . . .
And followed by the answer, "India! That's where we have to call to get instructions on how to work our computers and other electronics. Makes you think, doesn't it?"I wrote back to tell him that several years ago, Dell's computer support in Bangalore had completely destroyed my computer in approximately three weeks time. They eventually had to send me a whole new computer absolutely free because of all the damage their tech support had done.
Friday, May 09, 2008
My two most recent Chinese fortune cookie “fortunes”:
With integrity and consistency, your credits are piling up.
Some pursue happiness; you create it.
Fritz was very gallant to say that he agreed with second one especially.
*******
This has been a big opera week for me both as an audience member and professionally. It began on Sunday with the Boston Symphony’s complete performance of Hector Berlioz’s epic Les Troyens, based on Virgil’s The Aenead.
Troyens isn’t the longest opera in the standard repertory—at least three of Wagner’s are twenty minutes or so longer. But at four hours, with a huge cast, massive, magnificent choruses, ballet sequences, and a finale featuring the self-immolation death of Queen Dido of Carthage on a pyre built on the shore in sight of her lover fleeing by ship—well, it has a certain monumental presence that justified a 3pm starting time with a two hour dinner break between Parts One and Two.
The BSO assembled a great cast but the most impressive work was done by the peerless Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the orchestra, all of whom performed with sustained incandescence.
*******
Tuesday, Opera Boston gave the last performance of the run of it’s third and last production of the year, Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani.
There’s nothing particularly subtle about this opera based on the play by Victor Hugo that ignited riots in the theater at the Paris premiere in 1830. The French love nothing more than a roaring good scandale in the arts (well maybe a great cheese made from unpasteurized milk, but a scandale in the arts, preferably with fist fights in the audience, is a VERY close second). Hugo threw the very first messy, exciting, “rule”-breaking manifestation of Romanticism in Paris’s face; Verdi responded thirteen years later with a score overflowing with melody, rhythmic energy, deep purple passions, and virtuoso turns for four major stars.
Opera Boston had four very good singers, if not major stars, and two of them already have some respectable Metropolitan Opera credits. Eduardo Villa has a big, muscular dramatic tenor to match his solidly impressive physique. It takes a while to warm up a voice that heavy but once he got going he produced some nice, and even some delicate, tone. Barbara Quintiliani, something of a local heroine, is a genuine Verdi soprano with big, shining top notes. They, along with Jason Stearns, whose warm baritone has a satisfying snarl for the big moments, and Young-Bok Kim, a suave bass, all had big, Italianate voices over which they had varying amounts of control from about 85 to 95 percent.
The production embraced the fact that Ernani is and can only be a very old-fashioned opera. This was a deliberate director/design team choice, which they carried through successfully, and I thought it was a pretty smart way to go. The stage looked a lot like some of the old photographs from the 1910 Victor Book of the Opera. Costumes were rich and detailed, the singers stood and sang straight out to the audience a lot of the time although they had clearly been directed and had a good sense of character. It was a fun evening with some thoroughly decent singing.
*******
All this week I’ve been preparing for Intermezzo’s production of Socrate by Eric Satie and A Last Goodbye by two of my MIT colleagues, composer Charles Shadle and librettist Michael Ouellette. We do a put-in of my sets and lighting design on Sunday with technical and dress rehearsals all week, leading to performances on Friday and Saturday.
*******
Last night I drove four exits east on NH Route 101 to the town of Exeter and met with the owner/manager of the Ioka Theater, a World War I era theater/movie/vaudeville/burlesque house that’s transforming itself into a vibrant performance venue for music, foreign and art films, and a variety of mixed-genre rentals combining cinema, live performance and social events like wedding receptions and charity fund-raisers.
In the wake of the tremendous success of the Metropolitan Opera’s series of high-definition live telecasts the last two years, the Ioka’s presenting a series of recorded high definition video and audio performances of operas from three major Italian opera houses—La Scala (Milan), The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), and the Teatro La Fenice (Venice). I was there to see the place and discuss doing introductions and historical background for the audience before each showing, with some further discussion and a question and answer session during the first intermission.
The Ioka dates to 1915 and has a nicely sized, rather high auditorium. The operas won’t be shown there, however, but downstairs in the cabaret, an intimate space with table seating, a bar, and state of the art everything in terms of sound and projection equipment. The effect will be like inviting a bunch—a big bunch—of friends in to watch the operas in an art deco living room setting on an enormous flat screen system.
The operas to be shown are:
La Scala: Verdi’s Aida and La Traviata; Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Puccini’s Il Trittico
Maggio Musicale: Verdi’s La Forza del Destino
La Fenice: Puccini’s La Rondine
Each opera is shown twice, on a Wednesday and on a Sunday ten days apart with all performances at 2pm, running from mid-June to mid-December.
The owner and I got along very well. I left him a copy of my resume, and we have an agreement that I’ll do the whole series. We talked terms: I get to have a drink or two and whatever food items I want from the bar gratis, a season ticket for all the operas that I can give to anyone I want, and all my gas expenses will be reimbursed. It’s a decent deal, one that gets my foot in the door toward what I would eventually like to do which is writing program notes and perhaps doing dramaturgy for one of the opera companies here in the state.
Speaking of which, tonight I’m off to Granite State Opera’s production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte in Portsmouth, with a friend of ours playing first flute in the pit.
With integrity and consistency, your credits are piling up.
Some pursue happiness; you create it.
Fritz was very gallant to say that he agreed with second one especially.
*******
This has been a big opera week for me both as an audience member and professionally. It began on Sunday with the Boston Symphony’s complete performance of Hector Berlioz’s epic Les Troyens, based on Virgil’s The Aenead.
Troyens isn’t the longest opera in the standard repertory—at least three of Wagner’s are twenty minutes or so longer. But at four hours, with a huge cast, massive, magnificent choruses, ballet sequences, and a finale featuring the self-immolation death of Queen Dido of Carthage on a pyre built on the shore in sight of her lover fleeing by ship—well, it has a certain monumental presence that justified a 3pm starting time with a two hour dinner break between Parts One and Two.
The BSO assembled a great cast but the most impressive work was done by the peerless Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the orchestra, all of whom performed with sustained incandescence.
*******
Tuesday, Opera Boston gave the last performance of the run of it’s third and last production of the year, Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani.There’s nothing particularly subtle about this opera based on the play by Victor Hugo that ignited riots in the theater at the Paris premiere in 1830. The French love nothing more than a roaring good scandale in the arts (well maybe a great cheese made from unpasteurized milk, but a scandale in the arts, preferably with fist fights in the audience, is a VERY close second). Hugo threw the very first messy, exciting, “rule”-breaking manifestation of Romanticism in Paris’s face; Verdi responded thirteen years later with a score overflowing with melody, rhythmic energy, deep purple passions, and virtuoso turns for four major stars.
Opera Boston had four very good singers, if not major stars, and two of them already have some respectable Metropolitan Opera credits. Eduardo Villa has a big, muscular dramatic tenor to match his solidly impressive physique. It takes a while to warm up a voice that heavy but once he got going he produced some nice, and even some delicate, tone. Barbara Quintiliani, something of a local heroine, is a genuine Verdi soprano with big, shining top notes. They, along with Jason Stearns, whose warm baritone has a satisfying snarl for the big moments, and Young-Bok Kim, a suave bass, all had big, Italianate voices over which they had varying amounts of control from about 85 to 95 percent. The production embraced the fact that Ernani is and can only be a very old-fashioned opera. This was a deliberate director/design team choice, which they carried through successfully, and I thought it was a pretty smart way to go. The stage looked a lot like some of the old photographs from the 1910 Victor Book of the Opera. Costumes were rich and detailed, the singers stood and sang straight out to the audience a lot of the time although they had clearly been directed and had a good sense of character. It was a fun evening with some thoroughly decent singing.
*******
All this week I’ve been preparing for Intermezzo’s production of Socrate by Eric Satie and A Last Goodbye by two of my MIT colleagues, composer Charles Shadle and librettist Michael Ouellette. We do a put-in of my sets and lighting design on Sunday with technical and dress rehearsals all week, leading to performances on Friday and Saturday.
*******
Last night I drove four exits east on NH Route 101 to the town of Exeter and met with the owner/manager of the Ioka Theater, a World War I era theater/movie/vaudeville/burlesque house that’s transforming itself into a vibrant performance venue for music, foreign and art films, and a variety of mixed-genre rentals combining cinema, live performance and social events like wedding receptions and charity fund-raisers.
In the wake of the tremendous success of the Metropolitan Opera’s series of high-definition live telecasts the last two years, the Ioka’s presenting a series of recorded high definition video and audio performances of operas from three major Italian opera houses—La Scala (Milan), The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), and the Teatro La Fenice (Venice). I was there to see the place and discuss doing introductions and historical background for the audience before each showing, with some further discussion and a question and answer session during the first intermission.
The Ioka dates to 1915 and has a nicely sized, rather high auditorium. The operas won’t be shown there, however, but downstairs in the cabaret, an intimate space with table seating, a bar, and state of the art everything in terms of sound and projection equipment. The effect will be like inviting a bunch—a big bunch—of friends in to watch the operas in an art deco living room setting on an enormous flat screen system.
The operas to be shown are:
La Scala: Verdi’s Aida and La Traviata; Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Puccini’s Il Trittico
Maggio Musicale: Verdi’s La Forza del Destino
La Fenice: Puccini’s La Rondine
Each opera is shown twice, on a Wednesday and on a Sunday ten days apart with all performances at 2pm, running from mid-June to mid-December.
The owner and I got along very well. I left him a copy of my resume, and we have an agreement that I’ll do the whole series. We talked terms: I get to have a drink or two and whatever food items I want from the bar gratis, a season ticket for all the operas that I can give to anyone I want, and all my gas expenses will be reimbursed. It’s a decent deal, one that gets my foot in the door toward what I would eventually like to do which is writing program notes and perhaps doing dramaturgy for one of the opera companies here in the state.
Speaking of which, tonight I’m off to Granite State Opera’s production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte in Portsmouth, with a friend of ours playing first flute in the pit.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
The last scene of Georg Buchner’s incomplete 1820s play Woyzeck is only one line long. It takes place in a courtroom, as the prosecutor says, “It’s been a long, long time since we’ve had a nice juicy murder like this!” Yesterday, a trial began very near here for a very juicy murder indeed—the trial of The Epping Dominatrix.
Dominatrixes (dominatrices?) have provided good journalistic and media sensationalism the last several years. A little south of Boston a couple of years ago, there was The Quincy Dominatrix who had her client bound to something like a cross when he suffered a heart attack and died. Instead of calling the police and just saying that she was catering to a gentleman caller’s preferences during an afternoon tryst (which was actually the truth), she panicked and called her regular boyfriend. The two of themcut the body into pieces and stuffed them into plastic garbage bags, which they disposed of in an insufficiently safe and obscure place. The trial was evening news headline material for weeks.
Well, we may not be greater Boston up here—we’re a bit too far away to be even greater Manchester or Portsmouth. But we’ve got our very own Dominatrix, and this lady could teach her sister to the south a thing or two about domination.
Sheila LaBarre owns a farm in Epping, one town to the east of Raymond. Physically, she’s nothing like the lady from Quincy, a tall, 30-something leggy blond with a penchant for tight-fitting leather. Sheila, 49, is an earth mother type with a taste for younger men who would be invited to rent apartment space in her big old farmhouse. After a while, they quietly dropped out of sight. Parents and friends would miss them and begin asking questions, eventually going to the authorities. So, the authorities visited the farm one day and took a good look around.
Right out in plain sight they found a shallow pit filled with ashes. A preliminary investigation turned up some charred bones that were identified as human. This sort of thing tends to be a red flag to the police. They occupied the place, arrested the lady and began to collect evidence. In due course they found evidence of the death, dismemberment and incineration of two young men.
Ms LaBarre has admitted to killing Kenneth Countie, 24, of Massachusetts, and Michael Deloge, 37, of Somersworth, NH. Her defense is that she was insane when the murders were committed. Insanity in her case is apparently a sometime thing, as she’s considered sane now to stand trial and has been sane at times when she’s not overcome by her praying mantis tendencies to destroy males who mate with her.
But insanity is a very risky plea to make as it’s almost invariably rejected by juries. In LaBarre’s case, however, one of her two attorneys has actually argued an insanity defense to a successful “not guilty” verdict. The insanity in this case centers on LaBarre’s declaration that she'd somehow felt both men were pedophiles and that she was God’s angel sent to protect children from such men. God apparently didn’t frown on her having the guys demonstrate their technique on her before she spread her protective wings over the children of the area, however.
Last week, as final preparations for the trial were wrapping up, it was announced that toes belonging to a third man had been found on LaBarre’s property. Beyond the horror movie aspects of such a discovery, identification of a third victim makes it possible for both prosecution and defense to call experts in serial murder cases to testify. For several weeks to come, it’s going to be ALL dominatrix ALL the time around here.
*******
Something else is all the time around here now and it’s black flies. Black fly season is one of the more dreaded rites of spring in northern New England. Those of you who know them will understand; those of you who don’t know about them, you don’t want to know!
*******
As promised, here’s a shot of the façade of the house with the piers sheathed in New Hampshire fieldstone. We’ll be constructing the low stone walls in between the piers and filling the space with good topsoil ourselves to form the “planters” that will, by June, I hope, be growing herbs and colorful annual flowers for us every spring, summer and fall.
*******
Ladies and Gentlemen, Wotan has left the building
The following is an edited and slightly expanded version of an item on Alex Ross's essential music blog, The Rest is Noise. Potentially, one of the most contentious and problematic transitions of administration in any arts organization anywhere may be drawing to a close:
The official announcent was made late last week: Wolfgang Wagner, Richard Wagner's grandson, will step down as director of the Bayreuth Festival on August 31, one day after his eighty-ninth birthday. He has been in charge since the first postwar festival in 1951, though he shared power with his brother Wieland until Wieland's death in 1966.
For at least the past decade, Wolfgang has refused to step down or in any way settle the huge rifts in the Wagner family that have led more and more members of his childrens' generation to be "exiled" from the Festival, the town of Bayreuth, and any hope of succeeding to management of the unique theater and festival that Richard Wagner built and with which he radically transformed the way theater and opera were presented to the public. Wolfgang's niece Nike Wagner once commented that being born a Wagner was akin to being raised in the German branch of the House of Atrius (the legendary Greek family in which murder, exile, and revenge were handed down through the generations).
Wolfgang's daughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier (a professinal arts administrator and vocal scout for New York's Metropolitan Opera) and Katharina Wagner (a budding opera director in a style frequently labeled "post-modern" or "Eurotrash"), have made a joint bid to take direction of Bayreuth in his wake, Katherina in collaboration with the brilliant German conductor Christian Thielemann. The three of them together would make an admirably strong Administrative/Artistic/Music Directorship for the Festival.
Dominatrixes (dominatrices?) have provided good journalistic and media sensationalism the last several years. A little south of Boston a couple of years ago, there was The Quincy Dominatrix who had her client bound to something like a cross when he suffered a heart attack and died. Instead of calling the police and just saying that she was catering to a gentleman caller’s preferences during an afternoon tryst (which was actually the truth), she panicked and called her regular boyfriend. The two of themcut the body into pieces and stuffed them into plastic garbage bags, which they disposed of in an insufficiently safe and obscure place. The trial was evening news headline material for weeks.
Well, we may not be greater Boston up here—we’re a bit too far away to be even greater Manchester or Portsmouth. But we’ve got our very own Dominatrix, and this lady could teach her sister to the south a thing or two about domination.
Sheila LaBarre owns a farm in Epping, one town to the east of Raymond. Physically, she’s nothing like the lady from Quincy, a tall, 30-something leggy blond with a penchant for tight-fitting leather. Sheila, 49, is an earth mother type with a taste for younger men who would be invited to rent apartment space in her big old farmhouse. After a while, they quietly dropped out of sight. Parents and friends would miss them and begin asking questions, eventually going to the authorities. So, the authorities visited the farm one day and took a good look around.Right out in plain sight they found a shallow pit filled with ashes. A preliminary investigation turned up some charred bones that were identified as human. This sort of thing tends to be a red flag to the police. They occupied the place, arrested the lady and began to collect evidence. In due course they found evidence of the death, dismemberment and incineration of two young men.
Ms LaBarre has admitted to killing Kenneth Countie, 24, of Massachusetts, and Michael Deloge, 37, of Somersworth, NH. Her defense is that she was insane when the murders were committed. Insanity in her case is apparently a sometime thing, as she’s considered sane now to stand trial and has been sane at times when she’s not overcome by her praying mantis tendencies to destroy males who mate with her.But insanity is a very risky plea to make as it’s almost invariably rejected by juries. In LaBarre’s case, however, one of her two attorneys has actually argued an insanity defense to a successful “not guilty” verdict. The insanity in this case centers on LaBarre’s declaration that she'd somehow felt both men were pedophiles and that she was God’s angel sent to protect children from such men. God apparently didn’t frown on her having the guys demonstrate their technique on her before she spread her protective wings over the children of the area, however.
Last week, as final preparations for the trial were wrapping up, it was announced that toes belonging to a third man had been found on LaBarre’s property. Beyond the horror movie aspects of such a discovery, identification of a third victim makes it possible for both prosecution and defense to call experts in serial murder cases to testify. For several weeks to come, it’s going to be ALL dominatrix ALL the time around here.
*******
Something else is all the time around here now and it’s black flies. Black fly season is one of the more dreaded rites of spring in northern New England. Those of you who know them will understand; those of you who don’t know about them, you don’t want to know!
*******
As promised, here’s a shot of the façade of the house with the piers sheathed in New Hampshire fieldstone. We’ll be constructing the low stone walls in between the piers and filling the space with good topsoil ourselves to form the “planters” that will, by June, I hope, be growing herbs and colorful annual flowers for us every spring, summer and fall.
*******
Ladies and Gentlemen, Wotan has left the building
The following is an edited and slightly expanded version of an item on Alex Ross's essential music blog, The Rest is Noise. Potentially, one of the most contentious and problematic transitions of administration in any arts organization anywhere may be drawing to a close:
The official announcent was made late last week: Wolfgang Wagner, Richard Wagner's grandson, will step down as director of the Bayreuth Festival on August 31, one day after his eighty-ninth birthday. He has been in charge since the first postwar festival in 1951, though he shared power with his brother Wieland until Wieland's death in 1966.
For at least the past decade, Wolfgang has refused to step down or in any way settle the huge rifts in the Wagner family that have led more and more members of his childrens' generation to be "exiled" from the Festival, the town of Bayreuth, and any hope of succeeding to management of the unique theater and festival that Richard Wagner built and with which he radically transformed the way theater and opera were presented to the public. Wolfgang's niece Nike Wagner once commented that being born a Wagner was akin to being raised in the German branch of the House of Atrius (the legendary Greek family in which murder, exile, and revenge were handed down through the generations).
Wolfgang's daughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier (a professinal arts administrator and vocal scout for New York's Metropolitan Opera) and Katharina Wagner (a budding opera director in a style frequently labeled "post-modern" or "Eurotrash"), have made a joint bid to take direction of Bayreuth in his wake, Katherina in collaboration with the brilliant German conductor Christian Thielemann. The three of them together would make an admirably strong Administrative/Artistic/Music Directorship for the Festival.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Today’s blog post is being sent from the new house. Comcast’s installation crew arrived early Wednesday, pulled the short final set of cables from the big junction box about sixty feet below the house through the underground conduits into the mechanical room, and hooked them up to the house’s wiring. We’ve got wireless internet, in addition to phone and cable TV.
We’re continuing with finishing details. I’ve designed a Deco style wall rack that will give us 46 feet of shelf space for CDs. I spent that afternoon ripping scrap and reject pieces of the V-groove pine used on the great room ceiling, into 5-1/2” widths. I then cut it into the proper lengths and stacked it in sequence for sanding and assembly.
In the meanwhile, we’ve been working to get the kitchen set up and are facing the task of choosing the best versions of any particular item from among our utensils, cookware, etc. Sometimes it’s a case of self-selection—an item will not work with the Aga stove. In other cases, some sentimental connection influences the choice (my English grandfather brought this pepper grinder back from Paris just after World War I). Fritz has a general plan for which cabinet will be used for what. One of them will be for everything connected with coffee, tea and my bread-making, for example.
The big utility storage area under the stairs (a wonderfully wide and deep space) has been dubbed “The Harry Potter Room” because in his pre-Hogwarts days, Harry was made to sleep under the stairs by his foster parents.
Speaking of Harry Potter, Harry himself in the person of Daniel Radcliffe will be coming to the US in the production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus that created such a stir in London. Interest in large part was because Radcliffe appeared on stage totally naked, an event preserved in a series of now iconic pictures that proved that Radcliff was no longer a child star but a fully equipped adult (and yes, I know the "complete" version of that picture was almost certainly photoshopped).
And speaking of Equus, Fritz and I made our second foray into the small theater scene in Portsmouth on Friday at the Players’ Ring Theater where the Rolling Die Theater Company presented the play in a very successful production. Of particular interest was the young man who played Alan, the boy who blinds the horses, in a totally committed, beautifully controlled performance of tremendous intensity. As we left the theater, I jokingly asked Fritz if he thought there was any significance to the fact that both plays we’ve seen in Portsmouth this year (The Goat, or Who is Sylvia and Equus) have involved sex with animals.
*******
We’re suffering here from The Winter That Would Not Die. There’s been hard frost on the roof of the Center two mornings this last week, one of the nights being so cold that it killed all the flowers on the big magnolia tree. They turned muddy brown by mid-morning and were dropping off the tree in rotting blobs by nightfall. Then there’s been incessant rain and/or cold for three days. Shouting at the sky, “This is May already--get your act together” hasn’t helped.
Earlier in the week, I spent one entire morning chain-sawing tree trunk sections into stove cord length while Fritz fed them into the wood splitter, and then stacking it under cover. And that’s good, because it's obvious we’re going to need it a while longer.
*******
House update: The stonework on the piers could be finished by Tuesday, or even tomorrow if the rain stops later today. The facade of the house looks wonderful now that all its materials are in place. A picture will follow as soon as the last stone is set.
********
An interesting Deco poster from the 1930s, something I wouldn't have minded designing myself.
We’re continuing with finishing details. I’ve designed a Deco style wall rack that will give us 46 feet of shelf space for CDs. I spent that afternoon ripping scrap and reject pieces of the V-groove pine used on the great room ceiling, into 5-1/2” widths. I then cut it into the proper lengths and stacked it in sequence for sanding and assembly.
In the meanwhile, we’ve been working to get the kitchen set up and are facing the task of choosing the best versions of any particular item from among our utensils, cookware, etc. Sometimes it’s a case of self-selection—an item will not work with the Aga stove. In other cases, some sentimental connection influences the choice (my English grandfather brought this pepper grinder back from Paris just after World War I). Fritz has a general plan for which cabinet will be used for what. One of them will be for everything connected with coffee, tea and my bread-making, for example.
The big utility storage area under the stairs (a wonderfully wide and deep space) has been dubbed “The Harry Potter Room” because in his pre-Hogwarts days, Harry was made to sleep under the stairs by his foster parents.
Speaking of Harry Potter, Harry himself in the person of Daniel Radcliffe will be coming to the US in the production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus that created such a stir in London. Interest in large part was because Radcliffe appeared on stage totally naked, an event preserved in a series of now iconic pictures that proved that Radcliff was no longer a child star but a fully equipped adult (and yes, I know the "complete" version of that picture was almost certainly photoshopped).And speaking of Equus, Fritz and I made our second foray into the small theater scene in Portsmouth on Friday at the Players’ Ring Theater where the Rolling Die Theater Company presented the play in a very successful production. Of particular interest was the young man who played Alan, the boy who blinds the horses, in a totally committed, beautifully controlled performance of tremendous intensity. As we left the theater, I jokingly asked Fritz if he thought there was any significance to the fact that both plays we’ve seen in Portsmouth this year (The Goat, or Who is Sylvia and Equus) have involved sex with animals.
*******
We’re suffering here from The Winter That Would Not Die. There’s been hard frost on the roof of the Center two mornings this last week, one of the nights being so cold that it killed all the flowers on the big magnolia tree. They turned muddy brown by mid-morning and were dropping off the tree in rotting blobs by nightfall. Then there’s been incessant rain and/or cold for three days. Shouting at the sky, “This is May already--get your act together” hasn’t helped.
Earlier in the week, I spent one entire morning chain-sawing tree trunk sections into stove cord length while Fritz fed them into the wood splitter, and then stacking it under cover. And that’s good, because it's obvious we’re going to need it a while longer.
*******
House update: The stonework on the piers could be finished by Tuesday, or even tomorrow if the rain stops later today. The facade of the house looks wonderful now that all its materials are in place. A picture will follow as soon as the last stone is set.
********
An interesting Deco poster from the 1930s, something I wouldn't have minded designing myself.
Monday, April 28, 2008
I left for New York City early Friday afternoon, so I missed the Fire Chief’s revisit to the house to do the follow-up inspection. So, I got the word from Fritz by phone that when he’d gone up to the house to see how far the stone masons had gotten on Saturday morning, there was a signed Certificate of Occupancy waiting for us on one of the kitchen counters. It’s done! It’s finally ours to move into.
I had tickets for Friday night and Saturday afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera and an appointment to visit a very old, very dear lady in an assisted living facility in central New Jersey on Saturday morning.
The trip through southern Connecticut showed spring at its height. Flowering ornamentals were in full bloom everywhere. Trees of all kinds were just opening their buds, with soft pastel oranges and deeper Chinese reds highlighted against the mass of fresh yellow-green.
The Friday night performance was Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, one part of an epic three-opera look at influential thinkers who have changed the world (the other two panels are Einstein on the Beach (which lasts all day and which I haven’t seen performed—yet) and Akhenaten, a lovely work dealing with the monotheistic heretic Egyptian pharaoh.
Glass’s take on Gandhi’s development of non-violent protest as a powerful weapon for social change is set to a text in Sanskrit taken from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahatma’s favorite religious epic. Instead of having the translation on the back of the seat in front of us as usual, this production projected the text on the set. Giant caricatures of the forces of oppression (political, social and economic) appeared at intervals, made of newspaper, which also carpeted the stage.
The production was witty and inventive, and excellently performed, particularly by American tenor Richard Croft as Gandhi. His serene and magnificently sung final scene was alone worth the price of admission. Conductor Dante Anzolini got a big ovation for his work. He had conducted our symphony orchestra at MIT for five years, so I left a note congratulating him on this, his Metropolitan debut, at the stage door before the performance began.
I stayed at a motel by the Garden State Parkway Friday night and drove to Whiting Saturday morning. You have to want to go to Whiting for some specific purpose—there’s not very much that would draw you to the town otherwise, and it’s location is a bit remote out in the scrub pine barrens. I was visiting a 96-year old lady who, along with her late husband, had given me my first-ever job. It was an afternoon after high school position at their gift shop on Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens, New York that funded my early theater, opera and concert-going.
I had done this trip last spring and was anxious to see her again. She’s in superb condition, bright, active and in great health. Her only problem is a slurring of speech due to a mild stroke a couple of years ago, but she was easier to understand this year. I brought her a Chinese red Gerber Daisy plant, spent a pleasant hour or so with her and then got on the road back to New York.
My Saturday matinee was Donizetti’s pastoral comic romance, The Daughter of the Regiment with the enchanting French soprano Natalie Dessay and handsome Peruvian superstar tenor Juan Diego Florez.
Both were in top form. The production took full use of Dessay’s now legendary acting and physical comedy skills (she can sing a two octave run while doing a pratt fall), and the supporting cast was top notch. A delight. I drove home Saturday night right after final curtain.
*******
A friend of ours from way up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont sent us a copy of the 2007 Darwin Awards (thanks, Paul!). I didn’t think they were all up to some howlers from previous years, but here are my favorites:
Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the almost Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.
Here is the glorious winner:
1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again.
This time it worked.
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out
one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
(This could easily have happened in Boston, except the woman would have had to remove the kitchen chair used as a space keeper and then parked in the space. Mayor Mennino tried to ban the use of the “parking chair” a couple of years ago but found that butting heads with one of the most deeply ingrained icons of Boston culture was a losing battle).
5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]
8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the
snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."
9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man,
frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]
I had tickets for Friday night and Saturday afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera and an appointment to visit a very old, very dear lady in an assisted living facility in central New Jersey on Saturday morning.
The trip through southern Connecticut showed spring at its height. Flowering ornamentals were in full bloom everywhere. Trees of all kinds were just opening their buds, with soft pastel oranges and deeper Chinese reds highlighted against the mass of fresh yellow-green.
The Friday night performance was Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, one part of an epic three-opera look at influential thinkers who have changed the world (the other two panels are Einstein on the Beach (which lasts all day and which I haven’t seen performed—yet) and Akhenaten, a lovely work dealing with the monotheistic heretic Egyptian pharaoh.
Glass’s take on Gandhi’s development of non-violent protest as a powerful weapon for social change is set to a text in Sanskrit taken from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahatma’s favorite religious epic. Instead of having the translation on the back of the seat in front of us as usual, this production projected the text on the set. Giant caricatures of the forces of oppression (political, social and economic) appeared at intervals, made of newspaper, which also carpeted the stage. 
The production was witty and inventive, and excellently performed, particularly by American tenor Richard Croft as Gandhi. His serene and magnificently sung final scene was alone worth the price of admission. Conductor Dante Anzolini got a big ovation for his work. He had conducted our symphony orchestra at MIT for five years, so I left a note congratulating him on this, his Metropolitan debut, at the stage door before the performance began.I stayed at a motel by the Garden State Parkway Friday night and drove to Whiting Saturday morning. You have to want to go to Whiting for some specific purpose—there’s not very much that would draw you to the town otherwise, and it’s location is a bit remote out in the scrub pine barrens. I was visiting a 96-year old lady who, along with her late husband, had given me my first-ever job. It was an afternoon after high school position at their gift shop on Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens, New York that funded my early theater, opera and concert-going.
I had done this trip last spring and was anxious to see her again. She’s in superb condition, bright, active and in great health. Her only problem is a slurring of speech due to a mild stroke a couple of years ago, but she was easier to understand this year. I brought her a Chinese red Gerber Daisy plant, spent a pleasant hour or so with her and then got on the road back to New York.
My Saturday matinee was Donizetti’s pastoral comic romance, The Daughter of the Regiment with the enchanting French soprano Natalie Dessay and handsome Peruvian superstar tenor Juan Diego Florez.
Both were in top form. The production took full use of Dessay’s now legendary acting and physical comedy skills (she can sing a two octave run while doing a pratt fall), and the supporting cast was top notch. A delight. I drove home Saturday night right after final curtain.
*******
A friend of ours from way up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont sent us a copy of the 2007 Darwin Awards (thanks, Paul!). I didn’t think they were all up to some howlers from previous years, but here are my favorites:
Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the almost Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.
Here is the glorious winner:
1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again.
This time it worked.
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out
one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
(This could easily have happened in Boston, except the woman would have had to remove the kitchen chair used as a space keeper and then parked in the space. Mayor Mennino tried to ban the use of the “parking chair” a couple of years ago but found that butting heads with one of the most deeply ingrained icons of Boston culture was a losing battle).
5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]
8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the
snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."
9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man,
frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]
