Leben und Schicksal

According to Sign and Sight, a new translation of the complete version of Vassily Grossman's masterpiece, Life and Fate, goes on sale in Germany. It's a chance for me to say that this book is well worth reading--its more than 1,000 pages rush by, thanks to Grossman's narrative gifts. It also has some of the most unforgettable scenes and characters I have ever encountered in literature, and the comparison some make between it and War and Peace is completely deserved.

Visualizing Hansel

Lorenzo Mattotti gets it: his beautiful, scary, mystery-laden images inspired by Hansel und Gretel are on view at the Gallery Met, which teamed up with New Yorker cartoonists to mount an exhibit in connection with the Met's new production. Mattoti's images capture the story's sense of foreboding, and the wide-angle perspectives make the viewer feel small, childlike, and vulnerable. The New Yorker web site has an online slide show of the drawings and paintings from the exhibit. Edward Koren's and Jules Feiffer's contributions are also atmospheric and not merely decorative, but Mattotti seems to feel about the story the way I do.

Popularity Contest

According to StatCounter, my most viewed post is the one about Anu Tali. Not sure what that says ...

Reviving Friedemann

The enterprising folks at Naxos have embarked on a complete set of recordings of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann. The first volume is out, and it's a real treat. It includes 12 feisty and playful polonaises (in contrasting major and minor keys), a beautiful sonata which reminded me a little of Scarlatti, and an A-minor fantasia that oscillates between courtly grace and passionate outburst. Robert Hill captures all the twists and turns of the music on a delightfully untwangy fortepiano, which deftly undercuts any tendency toward sentimentality that might creep in. I greatly look forward to the next volumes in the series.

A Bad Idea Returns

I received the December Opera News over the weekend, and was reminded by the cover image of Philip Langridge, that once again the Met will be camping up Hansel und Gretel by having the witch played by a tenor. I suppose there are those who find this kind of thing wicked and great fun, but it adds a layer of silliness to an opera that is already misunderstood. It's my firm belief that Hansel und Gretel is not at all for children, that it's beyond their capacities to appreciate. Hansel und Gretel indulges, it is true, in any number of superficially sentimental gestures, from the Sandman and the Fourteen Angels to the wood spirits and so on. But the strategy is one of purposeful regression: it is meant to take us back into the world of our childhood, of primal fears and naive beliefs. Without this tug of memory and nostalgia, the shattering, cathartic finale, in which the lost children are returned to life and to their parents, is ineffective. A drag-queen witch only breaks the spell.

However, one compensation will be the magnificent Christine Schafer, just about the finest Lulu I ever heard, as Gretel. And, as mentioned earlier, a chance to sample Vladimir Jurowski.