The Best American Science Writing 2010

I'm excited to announce that the latest edition of the annual science anthology that I edit, The Best American Science Writing 2010, is now available at your favorite bookstore. Not, however, available for Kindles yet.

The Kids are All Darwinian

I felt the way a lot people did about "The Kids are All Right"--that it presented characters who can be both likable and awful, that it caught some moments of genuine and natural feeling, and that when it trusted itself it achieved both real comedy and real insight. But I also wonder if anyone noticed, as I did, that the heart of the story was a kind of natural-world allegory of a struggle by two alphas over a troop or herd (in this case, a family). Mark Ruffalo's and Annette Benning's characters are the alphas, and the tension between the two of them is about competition and domination; Julianne Moore's character and the "kids" of the title are the subordinates who are long for and resent these powerful presences in their lives. Will Ruffalo topple Benning, or will she maintain her hold on power?

I'm not sure if I've seen a film that has had this kind of evolutionary-psychology approach woven into its story. This isn't a simplistic, social-Darwinist-type of thing. It's more subtle. I even wonder if the filmmakers intended it, or whether it's just a quality inherent in the story, or so ingrained in the filmmakers' worldview as to be unconscious.

Obama on Roth, Roth on Obama

Funny what you find on a French web site: Le Magazine-Litteraire has an item that quotes from an interview that Barack Obama gave to Jerry Goldberg--an interview that I can't find on the web--in which he is quoted as saying (translating back into English from the French): "I often say in jest that my intellectual development came about, without my knowing it, through reading Jewish writers and scholars. From theologians to Philip Roth, they have helped me forge my sensibility." ("Je dis souvent en plaisantant que ma formation intellectuelle s’est faite à mon insu, à travers la lecture d’écrivains et d’universitaires juifs. Des théologiens à Philip Roth, ils m’ont aidé à forger ma sensibilité.")

The item then goes on to quote from an interview Roth gave Der Spiegel in which he says kind things about Obama before adding (translating back from the French, itself a translation of the German): "But don't write that I'm going to vote for him [Obama]! This is the kiss of death. I rarely vote for the winner." ("Mais n’écrivez surtout pas que je vais voter pour lui ! Ce serait le baiser de la mort : je vote rarement pour le gagnant.")

Five-Minute Record Review

Donizetti's Roberto Devereux is so well known as a sopranos' opera--thanks in no small part to Beverly Sills's traversal of the so-called "Three Queens," a ridiculous piece of marketing that would have baffled Donizetti--that it's easy to forget that the title role belongs to a tenor. Naxos's recording of a live performance from the Bergamo music festival makes a good case for the centrality of the tenor part. Massimiliano Pisapia's Roberto is beautifully sung, if a touch veristic. His voice may need some ripening--the upper register sometimes seems poorly blended with the rest of the voice--but the intonation is good and the overall tone is virile and lyric.

The rest of the cast is quite good, too. Dmitra Theodossiu's Elisabetta may not hurl thunderbolts like Gencer, and perhaps she doesn't pull off the floating pianissimi that some other singers perfected, but she has the notes and the temperament. Federica Bragaglia's lyric soprano hardens a little in the high notes but overall fits the role's character ably. The conductor Marcello Rota paces the performance intelligently. Worth checking out.

Bad Signage

I saw this ad for the French Toast line of clothes on the side of the M104 bus ... in "Manhatten." Doesn't anyone proofread anymore?

Upcoming Issue of Opera News

The September issue of Opera News is hitting newstands now, and it's really worth seeking out. (Its content is not yet up on the Opera News web site.) Just to point out a few highlights:

• Renee Fleming on current singers: "I just sang a gala last night in Montreal. ... It was Matthew Polenzani, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and me. And they were just spectacular. Spectacular. Those three artists have it all. Stage presence and beauty and charm and unbelievable virtuosity and charisma. There are probably fifteen singers about whom that could be said right now, and ten years ago, there ... three, maybe. The bar is very high right now." (from her cover-story interview with F. Paul Driscoll)
• A profile of the likeable, up-and-coming American tenor Lawrence Brownlee.
• Some perceptive comments on Leonard Bernstein's much-maligned Mass, from Nico Muhly. One sample: "I have always liked to think about Mass as a Christian appropriation of the pagan holiday that is West Side Story."
• And, in the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, yours truly has a signed article in the august pages of the world's pre-eminent opera magazine: a book review of a memoir by Michael Kaiser, who runs the Kennedy Center in Washington.

And, yes, I do work for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, publisher of Opera News, but I'm writing this of my own volition.

A Scorecard Might Help

Those of us who are fond of the music of France during the fin-de-siècle have our hands full keeping names straight. It’s not just about knowing your Chabrier from your Chausson. The great composer Gabriel Fauré had a dear friend named Gabriel Faure—no accent. Weirder still, Faure wrote a biography of Fauré—one that can presumably be shelved with equal usefulness by author or by subject.

But if that isn’t confusing enough, just think of the confusion that the Erlangers caused their local post offices. There’s Camille Erlanger, a Parisian, whose operas include Aphrodite, Saint Julien l’Hopitalier, and Le fils d’étoile, perhaps the only opera about Simon Bar-Kokhba. There’s Frédéric Erlanger, who was part German, part American, who held the title of Baron, lived in England, worked primarily as a banker, and wrote an opera called Tess, based on Hardy’s novel, to an Italian text by Puccini’s librettist Luigi Illica.

And then there’s Rodolphe Erlanger, also a Baron, resident of Tunisia, famous for his ethno-musicological investigations of the Arab world.

Camille was born in 1863; Frédéric in 1868; and Rodolphe in 1872. Three musical Erlangers born within nine years of each other, and none related!

You Read It Here First

The Times has noticed the kerfuffle involving Siné, blogged about below.

Siné: Quoi? Non!

Last year Tom Reiss wrote in The New Yorker about a French "comedian" named Dieudonné whose humor, if that's what it can be called, is unabashedly anti-semitic. It was sobering reading.
Earlier this month another one-named French humorist, Siné, made an anti-semitic crack in the pages of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, and an interesting and rather sorry brouhaha has ensued, according to Bernard-Henri Lévy's more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger essay about the controversy.

Siné, no doubt infected with that crazed anti-Sarkozy hysteria that I alluded to in an earlier post, was complaining that, to translate Lévy's paraphrase, "in Sarko's France, converting to Judaism is a form of upward mobility" ("la conversion au judaïsme est, dans la France de Sarkozy, un moyen de réussite sociale"). This led M. Siné to declare "that he prefers a Muslim woman in a chador to a shaved Jewess" ("qu'il préfère 'une musulmane en tchador' à 'une juive rasée'").

These kinds of words are so spiteful and irrational it's hard to know how to react. You'd really have to dig deep into the diseased literature of anti-semitism to find this kind of ordure.

Interestingly, as Lévy points out, the controversy that has ensued is less about Siné's remarks and more about the demand of Charlie Hebdo's editor, Philippe Val, that Siné retract and apologize for his statement or never write for the magazine again. The argument seems to be that Val's ultimatum is not in keeping with the magazine's championing of free speech, even if it is offensive: an enemy of cant and empty-headedness is falling prey to "political correctness."

Lévy's intriguing point is this: there's nothing particularly "free" or courageous or non-conformist or even original about humor that appeals to racism and anti-semitism. If anything, it's conforming to a rather old, and tired, rhetoric, "the same eternal return to the same humor of the cabaret that not even you, Siné, find funny" ("le même éternel retour du même humour de cabaret qui ne te fait, j'en suis sûr, plus rire toi-même").

Obviously there are echoes of debates here, but I am most fascinated by the anti-semitism that no doubt propels much of the extreme reaction to Sarko.

Bittersweet Off-Topic

My wife enjoys watching reruns of "Will and Grace," and once called me into the living room to show me a scene in which Will, at his first hockey game, starts chanting "Here we go Strangers, here we go!"

These days the team looks a lot more like Strangers than Rangers. I'm brokenhearted that Jagr is leaving, especially as the team is opening its season in Prague. To say he was my favorite player on the Rangers is something of an understatement. He was my favorite hockey player before he came to the Rangers.

Losing Avery is really hard to accept. This guy won hockey games, plain and simple. The future hall-of-famer and all around great guy Brendan Shanahan most likely will not return. Marty Straka, one of the few short-handed threats the Rangers had, is gone. Tyutin played hard all season long and was a great linemate with Girardi. Hollweg added a lot of heart and soul to the team, even if he took some knuckle-headed penalties.

Hard to figure out some of the new acquisitions; it seems like Redden's and Naslund's best years are behind them, and some of the younger guys they've traded for are unproven. A lot is riding on their big pick-ups from last season, Drury and Gomez.

And an oddity: the Rangers are only playing only one afternoon home game all next season! I don't get it. My soon-to-be eight-year-old son is going to be disappointed that with so many late games his chance to see them play at the Garden will be severely limited.