Master Director

Stage Directions Dept.: We checked in with Jonathan Miller with pieces from 1989 and 1997; here’s my report of his July master class at the Glimmerglass Festival.

                                                                                            

“THE PERFORMING ARTS, LITERATURE, the visual arts—these are what draw our attention to aspects of our lives that we otherwise wouldn’t notice,” says Jonathan Miller, who celebrated the uniquely human ability to suspend belief during a master class in directing that he presented at the Glimmerglass Festival on July 25.

Jonathan Miller with Students at Glimmerglass.

Miller won the world’s attention as part of the 1960 satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. By 1970 he was directing Shakespeare at London’s National Theatre and began directing an acclaimed series of opera productions a few years later. Is he known at all as a comedian? I asked him during an earlier Glimmerglass visit.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s only the older people who’d know anything about Beyond the Fringe, and I don’t have anything to do with them.”

Man with a Camera

First reading of Girl with a Camera, a play by B. A. Nilsson
19 August 2014 | Photo by Richard Lovrich

Writers on Parade

From the Vault Dept.: Here’s my account of an event in Saratoga Springs in 1987 at which a quartet of excellent writers were turned loose upon the public – and I’ll let E.L. Doctorow take it from here.

                                                                                     

“‘THE WRITER AND THE PUBLIC’ is usually just an excuse to get a bunch of us together to talk about whatever we want to,” said E.L. Doctorow, speaking last night at Skidmore College. “But it’s not a subject that especially interests me.”

E.L. Doctorow | AP Photo by Mary Altaffer

Sitting in three rows of roped-off seats, the 80 students of the Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore joined a throng from the community Friday night to see E.L. Doctorow, William Kennedy, Russell Banks and Amy Hemphill speak on that topic.

It was the final event in the New York State Writers Institute-sponsored program, releasing the students back to the public even as that very subject was considered.

And it may have been an appropriate reinforcement of the intentionally solitary work a writer performs – the panel was hampered not only by a badly-equipped hall but also by the lack of showmanship inherent in the four representatives.

Schubert: A Summer Journey

Summer Music Dept.: This year's Bard Music Festival focused on Franz Schubert, filling halls that had been emptier for the likes of Stravinsky and Berg. Here's my report of the day my daughter and I spent at the Festival earlier this month. We're eager to see how next summer's celebration of Carlos Chávez plays out.

                                                                                               

IN THE END, Malcom Bilson was right. The distinguished pianist and early-music specialist spoke and performed during a 10 AM panel titled “Invention and Reinvention: Who Was Schubert?” and, comparing a piano from Schubert’s time with one of the modern Steinways, convincingly demonstrated that the composer’s keyboard music was intended for the particular sonority of the earlier instrument.

Franz Schubert

The day ended with a performance by the American Symphony Orchestra of Joseph Joachim’s realization of Schubert’s Sonata in C Major (“Grand Duo”), D. 812—a sweeping orchestration created 30 years after the work was written. Although Schubert intended it for two pianists, Joachim’s version seemed to employ the entirety of the orchestra at all times, each section in a frenzy of fortissimo. Combined with conductor Leon Botstein’s odd tempo changes within movements, the excess of it all grew so tedious that each of the finale’s false endings, which are amusing in the original, proved frustrating reminders that we couldn’t get away from it yet. Had Joachim crafted his version with a more Schubert-conscious orchestra and orchestration style in mind, he would have served the music better.

Not that orchestrations and other arrangements are a bad thing! Hector Berlioz showed how it can be done with his sublime orchestration of Schubert’s “Erlkönig” (which is an “elf king” and not, as the projected translation had it, an “erl king.” That’s a Texan). It blew Liszt’s orchestration of the same song (played in succession) off the map, and made mincemeat of Offenbach’s mariachi-band-like orchestration of “Ständchen” (the best instrumental realization of which was by the John Kirby Sextet).

Porch Setting

18 August 2014 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Felicitations and Male Factors

MOST OF US, if we’re lucky, need only deal with our more distant relations at once-a-year holiday times. Libby Skala, a frighteningly talented actor and writer, turns them into theatrical material, and now has impersonated three of those relatives in three different shows.

Libby Skala and Steven May
Photo by Shirin Tinati

It’s not surprising that her grandmother, Lilia Skala, should have been the first. She, too, was an actor, first in her native Vienna, then, after fleeing the Nazis, in the U.S., garnering an Oscar nomination for her role as the Mother Superior in Lilies of the Field.

Lilia’s sister, Elizabeth Polk, was next, a renowned dance therapist whose story allowed Libby to include her own such skills – and winning her a  “Best Solo Performer” award at the London Fringe Theatre Festival.

“Felicitas,” the latest, is the story of a third sister. She shares a name with the show’s title but was known as Litzi, and she recognized early in her life that she wished to care for babies, an ambition that eventually landed her a position at Vienna’s Home for Infants and Mothers, where Dr. Leopold Moll practiced the seemingly radical notion of offering the infants in-arms care.

Little Big Bard

Treading the Bard's Dept.: As promised, my review of the two-for-the-price-of-one Henry IV now on view at Shakespeare & Co. in the Berkshires.

                                                                                                             

IT’S A STORY OF GREAT SWEEP, a David Lean epic, but, as Shakespeare wrote it, laced with comedy of the Richard Lester variety. Henry IV is one of the Bard’s history plays, which right there condemns it to neglect; that the full story required two complete plays makes it the more forbidding.

Alexander Sovronsky, Henry Clarke, Malcolm Ingram,
and Michael F. Toomey. Photo by Kevin Sprague.

Unless you’re Jonathan Epstein, working with a talented cast of friends and family at Shakespeare & Co. He had the balls to combine and trim them to a total of less than three hours, and the smarts to do so with respect for the original.

Much else has been sacrificed to give us this fleet and funny Henry. The stripped-down set, the nonspecifically old costumes, the cast of thirteen – it’s a chamber-music version. The cell phones, the laptop computer – more proof that Shakespeare’s plays are timeless.

And when Hotspur (Timothy Adam Venable) shoots his computer, it’s a satisfying button on an emotionally wrought scene. By this time, we’ve learned to accept the convention of having electronic gadgets on hand. Early in the play, when King Henry (Jonathan Epstein) asks his son, Lancaster (his son, Benjamin) of Prince Hal’s whereabouts, Lancaster checks his cell phone to determine that the prince is with Falstaff – an easy-to-recognize gesture that invites sympathy for the beleaguered king.

Such a Full Sea

LIVING THROUGH THE KUNSTLER ERA meant enjoying intense evening-news exposure to the events that shaped those decades: the arrest of the Freedom Riders in Mississippi, the Attica uprising, the return of violence to Wounded Knee – and the repeated efforts of the United States government to railroad or otherwise bamboozle so many defendants into groundless convictions.

Nick Wyman and Gillian Glasco
in Jeffrey Sweet's Kunstler.

As depicted in Jeffrey Sweet’s play “Kunstler,” the notorious attorney recounts, with characteristic theatrics – some of the high points of his history. He has been invited to speak to law students at an unspecified college (but probably Columbia, his alma mater). It is 1995, the last year of his life. There is an aural background of anti-Kunstler protests – “Kunstler is a traitor!” “Kunstler must go!” – and the hostility is shared by Kerry (Gillian Glasco), a young law student who has been dragooned into introducing the notorious guest.

Even though Kerry is well aware of Kunstler’s commendable work for civil rights causes – and has a personal stake in one of those cases that we discover only at the end of the play – she is not prepared to forgive him for taking on such hated clients as John Gotti and Yusef Salaam. Glasco resists the obvious temptation to be a militant firebrand, instead nuancing her performance with shadings to that irritation. She’s fascinated by the man she wishes to hate, and makes a very credible show of compromising her dislike of him without compromising her character’s integrity. And she excels at the equally difficult task of being an onstage listener throughout much of the show

That Can Sing Both High and Low

State of the Stage: My review of two more operas in this summer’s season at the Glimmerglass Festival.

                                                                                      

TWO FISH-OUT-OF-WATER STORIES that nevertheless couldn’t be more dissimilar find a young Japanese woman trying to please her American lover by herself becoming as American as possible–and a starry-eyed composer forced to allow a commedia dell’arte troupe to infiltrate her new opera. Both Madame Butterfly and Ariadne in Naxos were directed by Francesca Zambello, who has shepherded the Glimmerglass Festival into its most successful seasons and yet seems to have a weakness for letting her singers run riot across the stage in at least one production.

Yunah Lee as Cio-Cio-San

This year it was Ariadne, a curiosity by Richard Strauss originally written as the finale of a Molière play that librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal had translated, later turned into a full-length piece with the addition of a prologue.

That’s the part that’s troublesome. But let’s look at Butterfly first to see how right it can go. Set designer Michael Yeargen made the little house in which much of the action usually occurs literally little, a model that goes from hand to hand as the opening scene plays out in the American Consulate’s office. Dinyar Vania, as the American officer Pinkerton, has a warm voice that’s not especially rich in its high end, but it blended well with the other principals–Yunah Lee as Cio-Cio San (Butterfly) and Aleksey Bogdanov as the consul Sharpless–and he created a fully engaging character.

Goro is the matchmaker who brings together the ill-starred lovers, and Ian McEuen’s sang the role nicely but was relentlessly (and distractingly) busy–a contrast to a chorus whose movement was a well-realized canvas of stillness or small gestures.

Hall of Family

What’s for Dinner? Dept.: One of my recent restaurant reviews ties in nicely with yesterday’s baseball theme. Welcome to Nicoletta’s!

                                                                                       

WHAT CUISINE MARRIES BEST with America’s national pastime? You may think hot dogs, of course, but that’s merely a distraction from the game itself. In Cooperstown, a compact and charming city dominated by the Baseball Hall of Fame, it’s Italian.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The legacy of Italian-American players aside, it’s a cuisine of comfort, and it lends itself to the American pursuit of excess. While my portion of eggplant parm with a side of sausage wasn’t overlarge, it was generous enough that if I’d had any sense I’d have saved some. But Nicoletta’s Italian Café won’t let you go away hungry. It’s gained through a small Main Street storefront surrounded by memorabilia shops, but its dining areas stretch back and culminate in a charming backyard patio where we dined under shady umbrellas.

Virtually alone, I might add, but that’s because it not only was only 5 PM but also the craziness of the recent Hall of Fame induction ceremonies was behind us. By the time we left, not only did we have patio company, but the indoor dining room was nearly full. That’s because chef-owner Phil Andrews has made sure that the restaurant appeals to locals as well as tourists. It’s open year-round, it’s open every day, its menu remains consistent and, if your server doesn’t know you when you’re seated, you’re nevertheless going to have a new friend by the time you leave.

Watching Baseball

Guest Blogger Dept.: Celebrating baseball season with an essay by Robert Benchley.

                                                                                

EIGHTEEN MEN PLAY A GAME of baseball and eighteen thousand watch them, and yet those who play are the only ones who have any official direction in the matter of rules and regulations. The eighteen thousand are allowed to run wild. They don't have even a Spalding’s Guide containing group photographs of model organizations of fans in Fall River, Mass., or the Junior Rooters of Lyons, Nebraska. Whatever course of behavior a fan follows at a game he makes up for himself. This is, of course, ridiculous.

Robert Benchley

The first set of official rulings for spectators at baseball games has been formulated and is herewith reproduced. It is to be hoped that in the general cleanup which the game is undergoing, the grandstand and bleachers will not resent a little dictation from the authorities.

In the first place, there is the question of shouting encouragement, or otherwise, at the players. There must be no more random screaming. It is of course understood that the players are entirely dependent on the advice offered them from the stands for their actions in the game, and how is a batter to know what to do if, for instance, he hears a little man in the bleachers shouting, “Wait for ‘em, Wally! Wait for ‘em,” and another little man in the south stand shouting “Take a crack at the first one, Wally!”? What would you do? What would Lincoln have done?

Royal Family

Chimes at Midnight Dept.: Here’s my preview of the production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV now being presented at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Mass. Review to follow at the end of the week.

                                                                                            

MUCH AS THE ROYAL FAMILIES depicted in Henry IV celebrated marriage and consanguinity, so too does Shakespeare & Company’s current production of the play. Shakespeare wrote two plays to depict the title character, but Jonathan Epstein has combined and trimmed them into a single evening’s-worth of show. He also directed the production and plays Henry IV.

Jonathan Epstein, Ariel Bock, Ben Epstein,
and Henry Clarke. Photo by B. A. Nilsson

His wife, Ariel Bock, has the plum role of Mistress Quickly; their son, Ben Epstein, makes his Mainstage debut as Francis. Also in the cast are Henry Clarke as Prince Hal, Kevin Coleman, Johnny Lee Davenport, Malcolm Ingram and composer Alexander Sovronsky, among others.

The company lately has been featuring more of Shakespeare’s history plays, and Jonathan, now in his 22nd season there, believes that the time is right for this Henry. “There’s an audience that’s ready for it,” he says.” They just had a success with it down in Washington, D.C., but that audience is used to sitting for three hours and finding forty minutes of it enjoyable and the rest educational, because they’re used to the government.

Custer LaRue: Ballads

From the CD Shelf Dept.: One of the ways the late, lamented Dorian Recordings label tried to monetize its inventory was through “Best Of” collections with a value-added extra or two. Here are the notes I wrote for one such release, celebrating the marvelous singer Custer LaRue.

                                                                                    

IF THE SUM OF A SINGER can be found in her songs, Custer LaRue is an intelligent, introspective person who’s no stranger to the gamut of human emotion. The songs she chose for this collection don’t let you pigeonhole her much more than that – they’re songs of love and loss, of fun and deception and heroic triumph. And they all sound as if LaRue were born singing them.

Effortlessness isn’t an obvious characteristic, but it’s one of the compelling components of her vocal technique. You don’t develop this through training: you do as LaRue did, and sing since earliest childhood.

“When I was a kid, I always said I was going to be a singer,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy, but it meant I was crazy enough not to give up on the idea. I grew up listening to my mother sing, with an incredible voice, and my grandmother and great-grandmother were very well known as local singers.”

She was raised in Virginia’s Allegheny Highlands, where LaRue also found in singing a valuable retreat from childhood’s craziness. “It was one of the few things that made me feel happy and complete, energized and consoled.”

Sorrow in Drowning

From the Opera House Dept.: My review of the Glimmerglass Fesitval’s current production of Tobias Picker’s “An American Tragedy.”

                                                                        

POOR GRACE BROWN! She was a small-town factory worker who would have lived an anonymous life had she not drowned in Big Moose Lake in 1906. Instead, she achieved a posthumous fame that lives on through song and story.

It was her love letters to two-timing boyfriend Chester Gillette, read aloud during his murder trial that, combined with his own ineptness at covering his tracks, packed the Herkimer courtroom, and then grabbed the imagination of Theodore Dreiser, who turned the story into a massive and very popular novel, informing the characters and events with compelling texture.

The challenge for librettist Gene Scheer was to find a core to this narrative that would work as the text of an opera, which he wrote with composer Tobias Picker. The version that premiered at the Met Opera (which commissioned it) in 2005 was more discursive. What debuted at the Glimmerglass Festival is shorn of its first 20 minutes, among other changes, and opens with a starkly-lit tableau of Clyde Griffiths (based on Chester) flanked by the women in his life: Roberta Alden (based on Grace) and Sondra Finchley (a never fully identified girlfriend).

Buoys and Girls

Provincetown, MA | 21 July 2014
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Marooned in Ithaca

Yesterday's post reprinted a 1989 piece I wrote after interviewing Jonathan Miller about his directing debut with the Glimmerglass Opera. We spent much of our time discussing the Goon Shows. A few years later, he was interviewed for a BBC documentary about the Goon Shows, and recalled meeting a fan "marooned in upstate New York." I asked Miller about it not long ago, again at Glimmerglass, and he said, yes, it was I of whom he spoke, even if he had placed me elsewhere in the state.

Hear My Song, Violetta

From the Vault Dept.: Two years after the Glimmerglass Opera relocated to the shore of Otsego Lake in the elegant Alice Busch Opera Theatre, it lured Jonathan Miller to these shores to direct aa piece for them. I met him there in July, 1989, ostensibly to talk about the production – but we spent the bulk of our time chatting about the Goon Shows. I’ll have more to say about this in an upcoming post, so stay tuned.

                                                                                             

Jonathan Miller

IMAGINE THE LAVISH SALONS and country houses in which the tragic action of Verdi’s “La Traviata” is set. You’ll have to imagine it, because the stage setting for the Glimmerglass Opera production of this well-known opera, which opens at 8 tonight, provides almost none of that glamor.

And that’s one of the keys to director Jonathan Miller’s vision of the piece. “People might be surprised by the stark simplicity of the setting,” he says, “but it gets stifled with upholstery and heavy representational realism. The luxury suffocates the work. I like some measure of simplicity and even abstraction.”

Miller sprawls in a lawn chair in back of the Alice Busch Opera Theatre, jeans and work shirt giving him the appearance of someone who’s just cut the grass. He waves to passing cast and crew, murmuring words of greeting to them as he considers the project at hand.

Jazz Sonata

Guest Blogger Dept.: George Antheil wrote his pithy "Jazz Sonata" (or Sonata No. 4) in 1922, and crams in to a frantic minute and a half an astounding array of trope and cliche characterizing the world of jazz and the dance hall at the time. The difficult piece meets its match in Marc-André Hamelin.

Fingernails

Epistolary Outpouring Dept.:Here’s a letter to my wife that I just found in the archives – nice how easy it is to retain an electronic version – that describes an encounter where this young woman ... but read it and learn for yourself. It dates back four years.

                                                                                       

YOU’LL WANT TO ADMIRE the nail of my right forefinger. It has been buffed to a fare-thee-well by a doughty salesdoll named Aliona, whose bottle-fed red pageboy and almond eyes would charm the frown off the face of even the most constipated Cardinal – but she turned her lamps on me as I hefted my way through the upper story of Crossgates Mall, proffering a takeaway packet of hand lotion and asking, “Is there a special lady in your life?”

“We’ve been married for over twenty-five years,” I said. “I don’t know if that qualifies any more.”

Undaunted (and unamused), she persuaded me to have the aforementioned fingernail polished, which wasn’t difficult as I had just jettisoned Lily and Emma from my orbit and had been admiring all the hi-there-springtime décolletage on generous view.

Although it was at times difficult to understand Aliona’s patter, she evidently having been recently Englished, I got the gist that this product, which looked like a large eraser, contained on its several sides all that was needed to knock my nails into opalescent luster, reinforced by a dab of something-or-other, impervious to the likes of acetone.

Public: Opinion

What’s for Dinner? Dept.: This week’s restaurant review takes us to North Adams, Mass., where Public Eat + Drink carries the industrially artistic look into a comfortable eating place.

                                                                                                    

MASS MoCA artfully changed the aesthetic sensibility of North Adams, teaching the former mill town to appreciate its vast brick-and-mortar expanses. Public Eat + Drink, which occupies a space a scant couple of blocks away from the museum, decorates its fine but easygoing dining milieu with exposed brick and ductwork, illuminated by hanging barn lights.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

It’s been open for nearly three years, and, if the busy-ness of a recent Monday is any indication, it has caught on with locals and museumgoers alike. The word “public” isn’t used accidentally: This is a welcoming gathering place. Owner Jared Decoteau worked for a predecessor restaurant and liked the space so much that he took it over when he got that chance. “I like its rustic artistic aesthetic,” he says, “which is what people around here are looking for.”

The menu offers plates of varying size, so that you can enjoy anything from a salad to a full-blown meal, and an emphasis on craft-brewed beer tastefully slakes that worthy desire.

American Pastoral

Sharon Springs, NY | 2 August 2014
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Bach in Your Own Backyard

Musical Sacrifice Dept.: A kid in my Boy Scout troop turned me on to the music of P.D.Q. Bach. So much for that thrifty, clean, and reverent stuff. I attended many a NYC concert featuring Peter Schickele and his notorious discoveries, and have performed a number of P.D.Q. Bach pieces. So it was with great pleasure that I attended and reviewed a recent concert in Pittsfield, Mass., featuring these forces, and if I seem overly familiar with the subject, I’ve interviewed Schickele, reviewed his radio series, and even wrote some pieces about a 1986 appearance in the Albany area.

                                                                                  

Peter Schickele

ALTHOUGH THE PROTEAN PETER SCHICKELE has proven himself a success as a composer of an enormously wide variety of music; a songwriter; a performer of great skill who can play piano and bassoon and, when necessary, both at the same time; a conductor; a monologuist who writes and delivers witty material with superb delivery and timing; a musicologist whose radio series Schickele Mix offered a finer musical education than any half-dozen college courses, and the indefatigable discoverer of the music of P.D.Q. Bach, one moment in particular during last Saturday’s concert in Pittsfield showed us what I believe to be his truest self.

It was a birthday ode he wrote to his mother, written when she turned 80 (on the auspicious date of 8/8/88). Because Peter couldn’t travel to the party, he wrote a piece for two voices, recorded one of them, and sent it to his brother, David, who performed the other part alongside the recording. This was recreated for us with Peter on both the recorded and live parts. It was a jazzy and impressively difficult piece requiring split-second timing to make it work. And it worked. And it was marvelous to witness just how cheering what seems to be a throwaway piece can be.

Holding a Baby

Guest Blogger Dept.: We re-welcome Heywood Broun to the blog, whose essay collection Seeing Things at Night (1921) offers a wide range of his occasional pieces, of which this is one of the better-known and remarkably-relevant.

                                                                                            

Heywood Broun

WHEN ADAM DELVED AND EVE SPAN, the fiction that man is incapable of housework was first established. It would be interesting to figure out just how many foot-pounds of energy men have saved themselves, since the creation of the world, by keeping up the pretense that a special knack is required for washing dishes and for dusting, and that the knack is wholly feminine. The pretense of incapacity is impudent in its audacity, and yet it works.

Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them. Accordingly, they don't have to sew buttons.

It might be said, of course, that the safety of suspension bridges is so much more important than that of suspenders that the division of labor is only fair, but there are many of us who have never thrown a railroad in our lives, and yet swagger in all the glory of masculine achievement without undertaking any of the drudgery of odd jobs.

Intermezzo Soprano

From the Vault Dept.: Among the current offerings at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY, is Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” which I look forward to seeing this weekend. Meanwhile, let’s remember a visit to Strauss that the company made in 1990, long before its current artistic staff was in place, unlike my abhorrence of bad stage business, which remains my constant companion.

                                                                                        

RICHARD STRAUSS’S “INTERMEZZO,” first performed in 1924, is a long, languorous soap opera of a piece that is almost entirely based on autobiographical elements.

Richard Strauss

It is not often performed, so the Glimmerglass Opera production that opened Saturday offers a rare chance to see this unusually-constructed, gorgeous-sounding work.

For soprano Lauren Flanigan, making her first appearance with the company, it is an unqualified triumph. She sings the role of Christine Storch, the central character of the piece (based on Strauss’ ill-tempered wife, Pauline) and from first to last displays an extraordinary voice and acting ability to match.

She obviously understands the subtleties of the score and brings out a satisfying, multidimensional aspect to her character. And she saved enough energy for a powerful finish.

This opera is taxing. Vocally, the leads have the challenges of a Wagner opera. Musically, the orchestra has to crank out a score that is horribly difficult. Conductor Stewart Robertson did a fantastic job shaping the piece, pulling off the kind of task for which there should be the musical equivalent of an Academy Award.

Gone Fishin'

Provincetown | 21 July 2014
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Smooth Sailing

From the Dais Dept.: A look back in time at an Albany appearance by novelist John Barth, who was here in late 1988 to read from the then-forthcoming The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (my review of which is here).

                                                                                                   

IT MAKES SENSE for a writer who follows Homeric tradition to be a good storyteller, and novelist John Barth brings the same eloquence to his speech as he does to the words he puts on paper.

John Barth

This was ably demonstrated by his appearance last Thursday (Sept. 29) at Page Hall under the aegis of the New York State Writers Institute. He read from a novel-in-progress titled “The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor,” explaining that, as the book was in its second trimester of gestation, he could safely read from it without fear of spontaneous abortion.

Barth has made a considerable reputation for himself based upon a very diverse body of novels that stretch from the ‘50s to the present. Common to it all is a conscious awareness of the techniques of telling stories. The three novellas comprising “Chimera” featured classic tales retold with the author himself swept through some of the scenes (he appears, for example, to Scheherezade with some tale-telling tips).

“Letters,” published as the 1970s ended, was an epistolary summation of Barth’s work featuring an exchange of letters among characters in each of his previous books, as well as with the author himself.

Susan and Tiberius

Lake Erie College | 23 June 2014
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The New Economics of Dining

Clever Dick Dept.: The five years since I wrote this piece haven’t changed my economic picture, and I’ll bet yours also isn’t too different now.

                                                                                             

SOME OF THE QUICK-FOOD JOINTS figured this out a while ago: Subway has been offering $5 sandwiches for over a year, around the time Boston Market also came up with $5 entrées. Joining the fray in May is T.G.I. Friday’s, which just dropped the price of several of its offerings to five bucks.

If places like that are feeling the pinch, what about white-linen and casual dining restaurants? A number of new deals have been appearing on menus throughout the area, recognizing that one of the first things to go when you’re closing household budget gaps is dining out. Restaurant meals can’t help but be exponentially more expensive than the dinners you cook at home.

Yet there’s evidence – it’s anecdotal, so don’t put my feet to the fire – that folks tend not to cut back on dining out as much as they might during lean times. I suspect that the comfort offered by a good restaurant meal becomes even more attractive as everything else in your life goes south.

Is it possible to continue to enjoy your favorite eateries even as paychecks shrink and disappear? I believe so – but, then again, I’m paid to believe so.

Life Is a ... Carousel

The State of the Stage Dept.: The Glimmerglass Festival includes a classic American musical as part of its season each summer, and this year’s offering is Carousel. I find the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein easily resistible, but, as my review below points out, this production was compelling.

                                                                                            

ON THE HEELS OF OKLAHOMA, their first collaboration, came Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, based on a depressing but popular play by Ferenc Molnár. Liliom presented a charming but hotheaded protagonist who gets a chance to redeem himself in the afterlife—and blows it. Molnár doggedly refused to release the rights for a musical version (even Puccini was turned down!) until Oklahoma convinced him that he’d found the right creative team, and he also was persuaded to go along with Hammerstein’s more upbeat ending.

Ryan McKinney in Carousel

But it remains the story of a man who hits his wife and a wife who makes excuses for it. It’s probably a credit to our improved sensitivity that justification for such an act now sounds embarrassingly fatuous; unfortunately, it inhibits us from appreciating that the 1909 play and 1945 musical are part of an era in which such abuse was considered acceptable and the moral condemnation these shows encouraged was therefore remarkable.

Although I remain unconvinced by the musical’s attempt at moral redemption for carousel barker Billy Bigelow, there’s no question that he participates in one of the greatest moments in musical theater, the extended act one sequence in which he and mill worker Julie Jordan sing the timeless “If I Loved You” and realize their love for each other without actually finding the words to say it. You may know the song (you’d better know it), but if you’ve not seen it in the context of this show, you’re in for a big and probably tear-stained surprise.

And, in the Glimmerglass Festival presentation, you get a full-sized orchestra playing the original orchestration, singers trained not only to sing but also to sing in English and a production that is uniquely microphone-free.

Truro

Otherwise it would have been $12.50 for the ceramic variety.

23 July 2014 | Lettering and photo
by B. A. Nilsson

Sausage, Eggs, and Butter

From the Cookbook Shelf Dept.: A look at three recent titles that suggest we still have a journey to get back to the truly beneficial basics.

                                                                                                 

SAUSAGE, EGGS, AND BUTTER: Add some toast and you’ve got breakfast taken care of, but, as three recent books suggest, they offer concepts that go far beyond the morning meal. Back to Butter is a passionate plea for a return to the sense that’s in precedence. Specifically, noting that a healthy avoidance of processed food doesn’t include eschewing all fats. Inspired by the books of Weston A. Price (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) and Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions), the authors (a daughter-mother team) run a farm and a blog (organicspark.com) that espouse a traditional foods approach, harkening to a time when we grew and raised what we ate. It’s not a cure-all diet; as they state early in the book, it’s intended “to keep an already healthy body strong.”

After the chapter-one examination of fats and oils—a reasoned analysis of what’s in butter, lard, tallow and a variety of oils (goodbye, margarine!)—you’ll probably be ready to welcome even bacon back into your diet. But the source is the key. The butter comes from grass-fed cows; the bacon from humanely raised pigs. And if you’re not growing the fruits and vegetables the recipes require, you’re looking for farmer’s-market sources.

Among the 75 get-you-started recipes are preparations of basics like mayonnaise and mustard, sides like red rice salad with cumin dressing and such main courses as mushroom marinara over roasted spaghetti squash and a low-heat, 12-hour roasted turkey recipe that coats the bird with bacon fat.

Live Louis

JAZZ IS RESTLESS MUSIC. Louis Armstrong’s mid-’20s recordings gave the music an identity that tore it away from the tea-dance stylings of the likes of George Olsen, and set the stage for swing, a development of the big band sound that Armstrong enjoyed. But World War Two thinned the band ranks and saw the rise of the small-group sound of be-bop. Artie Shaw got it, Benny Goodman didn’t, and Louis didn’t want it. He soldiered on with his big pre-war ensemble.

Mosaic’s new nine-CD collection of Armstrong’s All Stars sessions opens with the concert on May 17, 1947, that changed everything. The story of its inception is recounted in Ricky Riccardi’s excellent program notes, a story wisely left in press agent Ernie Anderson’s own words – for it was Anderson who bribed Armstrong’s intractable manager Joe Glaser into allowing his client to perform in a small-group setting that fateful day.

Because from then on it was pretty much small groups all the way, with some actual stars easing in and out of the All Stars aggregation. This CD set covers 11 years of All Stars concerts, finishing with Armstrong’s previously unreleased 1958 Newport set (complete with some of the most wonderful profanity to find its way on a recording).

Although it’s a label-imposed phenomenon, this probably is a reasonable ending point; Louis’s subsequent recordings were given by the avaricious Glaser to such labels as Verve, Roulette, Audio Fidelity, and MGM. Although the unlikely 1963 hit “Hello, Dolly” put Louis back on the map, his studio recordings suffered from tasteless attempts to recreate that.

Lobster Pot

Provincetown, Mass. | 18 July 2014 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The Art of the Pantry

From the Food Shelf Dept.: Restaurant reviews are finite things as places change or close or simply change their menus and prices. Which won’t stop me from reprinting them here, but this time I’m exhuming a helpful piece about the staples to keep on hand.

                                                                                       

WE’LL BUY A LEG OF LAMB for Easter dinner. We’ll craft a dessert from fresh strawberries as the new Florida crops keep heading north. But those are dishes made with a menu in mind. It’s when dinnertime sneaks up on you unannounced that you need to be ready with a staple-stocked pantry, which, for the purpose of this piece, I’m expanding beyond merely dry storage.

Along with my own fussy requirements, I consulted the lists in my favorite all-around cookbook, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (Macmillan), as well as the unobtrusively healthy A New Way to Cook by Sally Schneider (Artisan).

“Flour, cornmeal, and the like,” writes Bittman, and Schneider expands upon that, specifying unbleached all-purpose flour and stone-ground cornmeal for polenta. I would add that it doesn’t hurt to have whole wheat and cake flour as well, and with the last-named on hand, Schneider’s recommendation of a bar of semi-sweet chocolate and some Dutch-process cocoa powder might find their way into a worthy dessert.

Auxiliary to that are baking soda, non-aluminum baking powder, honey (support your local apiarist) and sugar: white, dark brown, confectioner’s and molasses. If you do a lot of baking, or even for pancakes and waffles, put some vanilla beans in an air-tight container with a heap of sugar and you won’t need vanilla extract.

Prades and Prejudice

From the CD Shelf Dept.: Music and Arts has since issued a follow-up volume to this terrific collection of vintage Casals Fesitval recordings. The review below originally ran on the now-defunct website andante.com.

                                                                                          

THEY’RE HISTORIC, AND WITHOUT A TRACE of the historically informed. A cornucopia of Romantic-era chamber classics featuring many of the 20th-century’s greatest musicians in combinations made impossible at the time of recording by record company contact exclusivity.

Best of all, they’re live. They date from an era when a more consistent degree of risk-taking was common in the concert hall, producing an excitement lost in the re-takes of the recording studio. An excitement that’s also all the rarer in today’s play-it-safe musical world.

Casals and company can’t be accused of playing it safe in the performances on this 13-disc set, performances culled from Prades Festival concerts between 1953 and 1960. Although about half of the material has appeared on earlier CD and LP issues, the rest is previously unreleased – and none of it, as far as I’ve been able to determine, duplicates any of the material released on LP by Columbia in the 1960s, despite an overlap of repertory and artists.

Founded in 1950, the annual summer festival (in what was then Casals’ home town) was conceived to honor the 200th anniversary of Bach’s death, although it really was the successful effort by several of Casals’ musical associates to coax him out of a long musical exile. Casals not only agreed to participate but also opened six of the programs with a Bach Cello Suite.

Survivals of Sex Slavery

Guest Blogger Dept.: This excerpt is drawn from the preface, characteristically lengthy, that George Bernard Shaw wrote for his 1908 play Getting Married. The play was a satirical look at the marriage laws then in effect, with particular attention to the difficulty of divorce, a difficulty Shaw considered to be yet another exploitation of the working class. It’s probably worth nothing that the playwright himself was married for 45 years, to a woman who wished for no children and therefore never had sex with her husband.

                                                                                          

George Bernard Shaw

IF WE ADOPT the common romantic assumption that the object of marriage is bliss, then the very strongest reason for dissolving a marriage is that it shall be disagreeable to one or other or both of the parties. If we accept the view that the object of marriage is to provide for the production and rearing of children, then childlessness should be a conclusive reason for dissolution. As neither of these causes entitles married persons to divorce it is at once clear that our marriage law is not founded on either assumption.

What it is really founded on is the morality of the tenth commandment, which English women will one day succeed in obliterating from the walls of our churches by refusing to enter any building where they are publicly classed with a man’s house, his ox, and his ass, as his purchased chattels. In this morality female adultery is malversation by the woman and theft by the man, whilst male adultery with an unmarried woman is not an offence at all. But though this is not only the theory of our marriage laws, but the practical morality of many of us, it is no longer an avowed morality, nor does its persistence depend on marriage; for the abolition of marriage would, other things remaining unchanged, leave women more effectually enslaved than they now are.

Jazz Bard

What's On Stage? Dept.: No self-respecting theater company sets Shakespeare's work anywhere near the time and place in and at which it was intended—but Shakespeare & Co.'s Midsummer Night's Dream does surprisingly well in its unlikely locale, as my review extols.

                                                                                                       

IT’S PARTY TIME in New Orleans–but wasn’t it always during that city’s fabled era as the wellspring of jazz? As a motley set of white-clad instrumentalists strikes up a rousing “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me” on banjoleles and washboard, Johnny Lee Davenport and Jonathan Epstein trade off verses, soon engaging the entire onstage cast. Behind them are French Quarter lamps and filigree. But once the dialogue starts, we’re in the place of Shakespeare, and the many mentions of Athens probably don’t refer to the tiny northern-Louisiana town.

Photo by Kevin Sprague

For once again we’re witnessing the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta; once again a quartet of headstrong lovers will find unexpected magic in a drowsy glen; once again a troupe of villagers will put on a laughably terrible show within this show. It’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a Shakespeare & Company favorite, as reimagined by artistic director Tony Simotes.

And if he needed the New Orleans conceit to sneak music into the piece, more power to him. The music was fun, and the ramshackle script had no trouble accommodating it.
Using Peter Brook’s idea of doubling the royalty in forest and town, Rocco Sisto played both Theseus and fairy king Oberon, with Merritt Jansen as Hippolyta and Titania.

Old School Hotel Restaurant

What’s for Dinner? Dept.: This week’s review is a revisit (after two decades) to Saltsman’s Hotel in Ephratah, NY. (You can read about my earlier visits here.)

                                                                                                              

SO LITTLE OF OUR AREA’S rich history peeks through everyday life that we feel more divorced than ever from precedent and tradition, which makes it all the more startling to find a place like Saltsman’s Hotel, which operates in its own time and space.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The building dates from 1813, an era when you might have to make the long trip from Little Falls to Amsterdam and would need a place to stop for the night. Saltsman’s endured even after the motorcar took over the landscape, and a register page from 1925 lists most of the room occupants as hailing from Gloversville, Johnstown, Little Falls and Canajoharie—but there are entries from New York City, Chicago and Madison, Wis.

Nobody now is sure when those rooms stopped being available. When Jim and Tammie Subik bought the place in 1979, it was reckoned that the last guests were accommodated in the ’40s. But they have held fast to the tradition of food service that five generations of the Saltsman family maintained, even to the extent of using some of the old recipes.

Lorin Maazel

Celebrating his memory with a kick-ass performance of Mozart.

Bee Inspected

11 July 2014 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Back in Time

From the Hotel Vault Dept.: This week’s Metroland features my review of Saltsman’s Hotel, a restaurant in Ephratah, NY. I’ll post it here this weekend; meanwhile, here are accounts of my two earlier visits.

                                                                                                   

YOU WON'T FIND OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS at Saltsman's – rooms haven’t been available since the 1940s – but the menu still boasts many of the recipes used by the Saltsman family. Several generations of them owned and ran the hotel, which was built in 1813 and has been in continuous operation; Jim Subik bought the place in 1979 and maintains the old-fashioned traditions.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

One of which is an anticipated advertisement that appears at this time each spring. In the Gloversville paper it appears as a single, capitalized word – MILKWEED – surrounded by a shaded box. That means it’s the season for picking the baby milkweed plants which then become a featured vegetable at the hotel.

Let’s get the milkweed over with first thing. No, you’re not dealing with the pods readily associated with the plant – only small, leafy shoots have developed at this point. It has an asparagus-like aroma and a flavor reminiscent of spinach. At least when the kitchen at Saltsman’s gets through with it.

Attentive preparation is required to rid the stalks and leaves of bitterness, and the result is an impressive side dish, held plateside by your server as you dig in for whatever quantity you’re prepared to handle.

There was a little hesitance at my table, but portion sizes also are a factor. A first-time visitor will be surprised by that and a number of Saltsman’s characteristics. Here’s how a dinner visit works:

Road Show

More Out of the Hat Dept.: Before it settled into its current incarnation as “Road Show,” Stephen Sondheim’s most recent musical (we’re still waiting for the David Ives collaboration) was titled “Wise Guys” and then “Bounce,” but it celebrated the Mizner brothers, Wilson and Addison, an idea the composer-lyrist had in mind for decades. It just had a successful run in Chicago – where “Bounce” debuted over a decade ago, and which produced an album that I reviewed in 2004.

                                                                          

STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S MOST BROADWAY-SOUNDING SHOW in 40 years won’t be coming to Broadway any time soon. After many years of workshop productions, Bounce premiered in Chicago last summer and then moved to Washington, D.C., where reviews were tentative enough to pull the plug.

But it was recorded there, giving us a 74-minute trip through a score that has all the hallmarks of latter-day Sondheim wrapped in a peppy, upbeat score that harkens back to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Wilson and Addison Mizner were entrepreneurs whose ventures – especially Wilson’s – soon turned into cons, culminating in their participation in the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Originally conceived as a sort of vaudeville show, Bounce (book by John Weidman) gives an episodic look at the brothers’ exploits and their tumultuous relationship.

Some vaudeville flavor remains, especially in the title song (reminiscent of “Everybody’s Got the Right” from Assassins, a song sung at a carnival), but behind it is a carefully crafted score that re-works and develops musical elements to go with an evolution of lyrical ideas, tracing the concept of finding and seizing opportunities in life.

To Be or Not to Be

Guest Blogger Dept.: As a child, I discovered a volume among my parents’ collection titled The Family Album of Favorite Poems, most of which was incredibly boring – it ran to nearly 600 pages, with room for such turgid classics as “The Old Oaken Bucket” and “Dover Beach.” But a section of comic verse opened me to the possibilities of wordplay and rhyme. I memorized many of them, and have posted many of them here, including verse by Guy Wetmore Carryl, Harry Graham, and others. But here’s an anonymous one that remains charming in its straightforward silliness.

                                                                                                   

I SOMETIMES THINK I’d rather crow
And be a rooster than to roost
And be a crow. But I dunno.

A rooster he can roost also,
Which don’t seem fair when crows
     can’t crow.
Which may help some. Still I dunno.

Crows should be glad of one thing,
     though;
Nobody thinks of eating crow,
While roosters they are good enough
For anyone unless they’re tough.

There are lots of tough old roosters,
     though,
And anyway a crow can’t crow,
So maybe roosters stand more show.
It looks that way. But I dunno.

– Anonymous

Bergamasca

Lily Whiteman (right) playing rhythm lute, with Fiona Thistle at the just-ended lute camp -- a gathering put together by the Lute Society of America at Case Western University. This is from the Participant's Concert on June 27, 2014. Lily and Fiona were the youngest of the attendees.

A Good Taste

Back in the Sack Dept.: Nearly thirty years ago, an Albany hotel created a winetasting event that set a standard for that kind of event, and it persisted there for over a dozen years, much to the credit of then-innkeeper Gary Smith. After Gary left, it stuttered on for a while longer before evaporating. Here’s a preview piece I wrote for the 1991 edition.

                                                                                          

“IT'S THE ONLY WINE EVENT in the country that I attend.” That’s winemaker Hermann J. Wiemer speaking, who offers as testimony to the event that he hasn’t missed it during its five years. “I’m pleased with the way New York is represented, and I know a lot of California participants feel the same way.”

Hermann J. Wiemer

The Desmond Americana hosts the mid-winter festival that brings winemakers from around the country for a long weekend of seminars, tastings, displays and food. This year it takes place Feb. 7-9 and boasts an unprecedented 90 wineries in attendance.

“In almost every case, that means a winemaker will be there,” says Remo Pizzichemi, “to talk about the product in a way nobody else can.” As food and beverage director for the hotel, Remo has the massive job of coordinating the event on both sides of the kitchen door. Along with his passion for wine is an eye for detail that strives to make every aspect of the event run smoothly. He is especially proud of the showing of New York’s winemakers, a dozen of which will be attending.

Forking Around

What’s for Lunch? Dept.: This week’s restaurant review drives past the tony joints that dot the Church Street area of Lenox, Mass., to settle in for lunch at Spoon.

                                                                                                 

“WE DON’T FORK AROUND,” reads the cutline for one of the graphics for Spoon, a charming little breakfast-lunch place in a neighborhood known for ambitious eateries. Thus it’s easily overlooked—but not when you’re lunching with a quinoa fanatic.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

My daughter discovered Spoon through a smartphone search as we finished an assignment that put us in Lenox. It was a beautiful Berkshires day; as we eased along Church Street, we remembered how foolish it can be seeking a parking space here at this time of year. At which point we found one.

Spoon opened three years ago, the dream of siblings Danielle and Jason Dragonetti, who not only mastered the art of nose-balancing a spoon while children but went on to collect enough photographs of others performing this stunt to decorate a wall of their restaurant. Danielle has been working in restaurants since she was 14; Jason bounced between computers and food service, settling on the latter and graduating from Johnson and Wales.

The space underwent four months of renovation, in keeping with the new owners’ mission of keeping everything about their restaurant organic, humane and, when possible, recycled. Thus, counters and tabletops come from old doors and other repurposed slabs; the floor is made of mulberry leaves.

Rustica

4th of July

Do You Like Whisky?

Working in Coffeeshops, Dating Dept.: Perhaps it’s the warm weather, but my coffeeshop visits have placed me in frequent proximity with folks in search of romance. Recently it was a fellow studying his Match.com screen, fussing over a message for a good hour or so. All I could see of it was the line “I’ve never been as fascinated by anyone’s profile as I am by yours,” or words to that effect, which immediately had me longing to warn the poor woman.

Today it’s an adjacent couple going through a first-date Q&A, and I’m startled to note that it’s almost a one-way deal. That is, she asks many questions but answers few – and he’s only to happy to prattle on.

But I was impressed to hear him cut, I suppose, to the chase by soon asking her, “Do you like whisky?”

“Actually,” she answered, “I like scotch.”

“Oh!” he said. “That’s even better,” leaving me to wonder what, exactly, they believe whisky to be.

“I like scotch,” she repeated. “But I like gin better.”

“Gin. Yeah. It’s, like ... on a day like this, sitting outside under an umbrella ... I could drink beer all day.”

To which she asked, “What beer do you like best?”

He paused. “I’m, like – I feel under all this pressure to name some really cool beer. And I don’t want to ... this time of year, you know, you can drink seven, eight, nine of them.”

I’m Gonna Be ’Round My Vegetables

From the Back of the Fridge Dept.: Here’s a snapshot of the Albany-area restaurant scene – and my typically underenlightened attitude – from 1996, when I looked at the options for vegetarian dining. Eighteen years later, I would defy you to find an eatery where you can’t score decent meat-free fare.

                                                                                                  

ACCORDING TO A 1995 Food and Drug Administration report, people are increasingly turning to vegetarian diets--or at least to regular vegetarian meals--for a variety of reasons. Whether for religious, political or health reasons, it’s become a full- or part-time option for as many as 20 percent of the dining-out population.

Leaving only the challenge of finding good vegetarian fare.

I’ve flirted with vegetarianism (and comely vegetarians) often enough to understand that the attitude varies from restaurant to restaurant. Obviously, some ethnic restaurants are made to order for vegetarian fare. Asian menus accommodate meatless eating nicely, as do the many Indian restaurants springing up in the area.

And there are the Italian restaurants. “Our menu is just a list of suggestions,” says Carmine Sprio, whose new restaurant, Carmine’s, is wowing them at the Blockbuster Video plaza, 818 Central Ave., Albany. “Anything that’s on the menu can be changed. And we’re happy to hear any ideas you have.”

Italian restaurants traditionally are good vegetarian havens, what with the easy availability of pasta and meatless marinara sauce. The challenge can be to get beyond that, and Sprio and his chefs are happy to oblige.

Two Worlds of Medicine

From the E.R. Dept.: The health center described below has changed its name – it’s now the Stram Center for Integrative Medicine – and has opened a branch in Bennington. But here’s a piece I wrote nine years ago that still serves, I hope, as a good introduction.

                                                                                        

RONALD STRAM IS A HEALER who is also a doctor. That’s an odd phenomenon to note, but it signifies the gulf between conventional medicine and the less traditional – or at least less familiar – approaches now being offered, approaches still scorned by skeptics and denied insurance coverage.

Dr. Ronald Stram

Two years ago, Dr. Stram opened Delmar’s Center for Integrative Health and Healing with a number of associates offering treatments including acupuncture, naturopathy, Chinese herbal medicine, Reiki and much more. At the same time, he is a board-certified physician with 13 years of experience in this area. Currently, he is Director of Emergency Medicine at Albany Memorial Hospital, a career that predated his interest in integrative medicine. How does he reconcile what seem to be two vastly different worlds?

“The promise is the same.” Stram is a pleasant, soft-spoken man more inclined to ask questions than to answer them. “We’re here to take care of patients. At the Center, I’m able to offer a wide array complementary services, and I believe some of them even should be offered in conventional medicine.

“As it is, I’ve tried to bring some of what we do at the Center to my work at Albany Memorial. There we’ve gone from a department where people were forced to feel that it was a privilege to be taken care of to a place where we believe it’s a privilege to take care of people. Our patient satisfaction rate there was at 50 percent when I started; it’s been 95 percent for the past year and a half.”