Wednesday, August 24, 2016

The Age of Vulgarity

A friend from Zagreb forwarded me a blog written by a famous Croatian author and blogger, known for her astute, even if somewhat one-sided social commentaries, but more famous in and out of Croatia for her extremely vulgar language and primitive style. She is popular among the ordinary as well as educated people, who praise her expression as honest, straightforward and accessible. Yet, my friend sent this writer's latest blog as an example of how low the society has sunk when such crude scribbling attracts the widest following, while decent magazines and newspapers fold up one after another.

When we were growing up, one of the must-have books in every middle-class Croatian family was the one widely known as Bonton, regardless of what its real title was. From that book we learned how to behave at dinner table or in the office, how to dress for casual or formal occasions and in general how to be polite. Proper manners were an expression of respect for people around us. The bonton (originating from the French le bon ton) instructed that under no circumstances can you yawn in public, use rude language in a conversation, boast about your success and possessions, or insult other people. It advised that you should not shout to another person across the table or across the street, or laugh in a way that makes other people wince. Arriving to a theater dressed in casual clothes was unthinkable. In other words, bonton required a degree of control over your speech and behavior, and if you slipped, you were embarrassed and apologetic. Even more finesse was required in written expression.



Slowly and imperceptibly the bonton disappeared from our lives and if anyone still has the book, it's a rare antiquity. It is hard to tell when exactly the "modern" Croatian literature began introducing some of the street language into writing. At first the crudity was sparsely used for the sake of "authenticity". But writers soon began competing in their striving for "authenticity" and the trend has ballooned to such proportions that today no piece of fiction can earn serious regard unless it contains descriptions of bodily functions in the most disgusting terms and imagery that makes you vomit unless you have a very tough stomach. Since literature is supposed to reflect real life, readers have embraced it as normal, realistic and colorful. If they haven't, they would not admit it at gunpoint for fear of being labeled as prudish, backward or (godforbid) uncultured. An egregious example of such literature in Croatia is Miljenko Jergović's award-winning novel Dvori od oraha (The Walnut House), which opens up with a scene in which a sick old woman screeches in a foul language, wallows in her own excrement and causes mayhem in her home - a description of which needs to be read in the original for the full impact. Jergović has been enthroned as Croatia's top contemporary novelist, according to some critics destined for the Nobel Prize in literature. His rival Ivan Aralica responded with a novel eloquently titled Fukara (a vulgar term for low-class, semi-criminal population segment), with much less success. I haven't read the book, but can only assume that he was not able to beat Jergović in vulgarity.



Don't get me wrong; I am not criticizing real-life imagery in literature, or the use of explicit language. I am balking at the application of the ugliest, derogatory terms, used only for their shock value.  Like cayenne pepper, vulgarity can be spicy in small doses. Too much of it kills the flavor. In daily communication dirty words and terms intended to cause disgust are used rarely and most often anonymously (like in reader comments to political articles). Peppering fiction liberally with filthy  language implies that such discourse is widespread and common, which is completely untrue in most societies.

The spread of vulgarity is not a Croatian phenomenon, I hasten to assure my friend in Zagreb, who is an arbiter of elegance and good taste. Just look at our presidential candidates, and the public response to them! The naked "statues" of Donald Trump that recently showed up in several U.S. cities are the epitome of poor taste. They were meant to humiliate Trump, but they really humiliate those who came up with the idea, those who gleefully leered at the ugliness, and those who spread the images all over the social media. Trump does not need to be humiliated more than he has already humiliated himself, multiple times, before the statues were out, by calling his rival "crooked" Hillary, liar and co-founder of a terrorist group. What man uses such foul words to degrade a woman? He could have conveyed the same thoughts in a civilized idiom. Men still have too much power over women to be permitted to dispense with manners when dealing with them. But knowing what language would have the most impact on voters he seeks to attract, Trump opted to act low-class.

The kind of communication that was once reserved for gang members, pimps and riff raff is now mainstream and acceptable. It's interesting that in the country where certain words are completely banned lest they should offend someone; in the country that's polemicizing about the correctness of a football team's name, it is perfectly OK to sling mud at political opponents and other enemies, while decent manners are expendable.

I work in a place where people yawn with their mouth wide open and so loudly that you can hear them from one end of the office to the other (about the width of a street block), they shout to one another from several cubicles apart over the heads of co-workers who are trying to focus on their task, and they can pierce your ears at any given moment with screeching or howling laughter. The dress code is so unconventional that the clothes are often just one step away from the pajamas.

None of this is considered to be rude. Rudeness is if you dare to point out that such behavior bothers you. Some time ago, I took the Metro home from a theater performance. While I was reading the playbill and contemplating various interpretations I had just seen, a group of teenage girls entered the train and dispersed around to the remaining free seats. They yelled to one another across the carriage and over the passengers' heads and (naturally) no one complained. Neither did I until one girl sitting behind me shouted right into my ear. I turned around and asked quietly: "Are you hard of hearing?" There were several seconds of "dead air" - deafening silence - while the shocked girl wondered if she heard me right. The others, noting her distress from the distance shouted: "What sheee said?" When the outraged girl explained, a pandemonium ensued that would be hard to describe. The girls, who happened to be black, took my remark to be an insult to their race. Their anger knew no bounds. Furious screams - "We ain't slaves no more" and "I hate white people" - remain indelible in my memory.  The upheaval did not stop until the screamers had to exit. Sorry girls, but it was your noise that bothered me, not the color of your skin.





The decline of decorum and absence of shame in public domain today know no bounds. I am still trying to discern why a group of Olympic medalists would want to vandalize toilets in a hosting country. And why a judo player would refuse to shake hands with his opponent. And why a married politician, caught texting pictures of his genitals to various women, would want to run for office again.

Vulgarity was understandably attractive when it was limited to certain circles and represented "forbidden fruit" to mainstream society.  In small doses it added zest to art, literature and casual conversation. But now that it has reached a point where it threatens to occupy the Oval Office, what's forbidden about it? I am keeping my fingers crossed that the day is near when elegance in word and manner becomes the new tantalizing apple that everyone wants to pluck.
*****

Friday, August 12, 2016

All You Need to Know About Hacking

As the FBI is investigating a possible damage to the Democratic Party following what is widely believed to be a Russian hacking attempt on the the Democratic National Committee’s computers, I am investigating an unusual "interest" in my blog  -  in Russia. Several times in the past year or so, the statistics page on my blog showed a disproportionate number of "views" from Russia, at one point 700 in a week.  At first I thought: wow, these people really like culture, because that's mostly what I write about. But after the DNC hacking scandal, I paid a little more attention, and noticed that the most targeted blogs were the most popular ones, not the latest ones. So I suspected hacking. Really, why would anyone in Russia be interested in my review of the Santa Fe summer opera program from two years ago? Or even in my opinion on Philip Glass?  I do not write about Russia or any topic that might be of particular interest to the Russians.  So the question is what could they be looking for?
Greg Virgin, President & CEO of Redjack,
Network Security Company
I got some light on the issue from local network security expert Greg Virgin (anyone surprised he looks so young?) who analyzed my blog and found, among other things, that I was getting hits from Iraq, which never showed up in my traffic-sources page, and that "22% of the US connections are legitimate, the rest are illegitimate."

Greg explained that "illegitimate" doesn’t mean it's hacking, but that it is not legitimate search engine activity. "People spamming your site. You couldn’t imagine what your inbox would look like if you didn’t have the built-in spam blocking you get from most mail providers."

Hmmm.... so hacking is what we need to worry about, spamming not so much.  More answers from Virgin: 


1. Why do people hack ? 
The popular phrase coined more than 15 years ago is “for fun and profit.”

On the “good” side, there is a community of people who do it just for fun, another for research and development and “white hats” who do it so they can report vulnerabilities to individuals and organizations before they are exploited.

Then you have your “black hat” hackers who use hacking in criminal endeavors. This is usually who people are talking about when they discuss hackers. This group takes quite a few forms, from organized crime, nation states, organizations like Anonymous, and people working alone. They tend to make their $ off of extortion and theft of data. Most common is corporate espionage and identity theft.

2. What are some of the most egregious examples of successful hacking?
I am very concerned wit the fraud campaigns aimed at our elderly population. Both the fraud and the population are growing. I have met an FBI agent who does nothing but chase criminals around the world who are doing this to our parents and grandparents.

Typically these are spam campaigns that play off of personal information and the victim’s lack of understanding of technology. An email is sent, usually based on information openly harvested from the Internet, claiming to be a family member needing help, requesting a visit to a site or a payment. These are incredibly successful campaigns and aren’t getting enough attention.

I don’t have a lot of data to cite because the data isn’t being published too widely. I trust my sources though.

3. Who are the hackers?
Well, there is a big community of white hat “ethical hackers” out there doing research and following the rules. Then you’ve got your “gray hats” doing the same thing the white hats are doing only they are openly publishing people’s private vulnerabilities publicly or taking control of a jeep because they think it’s funny.

Then you’ve got your individuals who are, most likely, trying to steal credit card numbers or site credentials and sell them. Or otherwise profit from them.

Then you’ve got your organized groups:

“Hactivists” - Groups like Anonymous trying to affect social change (which is often very misguided)
Organized crime groups - there are some famous ones in Eastern Europe
Intelligence agencies - US, Russia, China are very prominent right now

4. What countries have the most hackers and why?
I don’t think we can say who has the most hackers. Historically, attacks are launched from China, Russia, Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as US Universities. This is because they are large and powerful networks built on government funds without a whole lot of attention to security or hygiene.

5. Are various Facebook games part of hacking? I am talking about various quizzes, such as Which country should you live in, What were you in your previous life, What nationality you look like, and similar.

Those are more about ad revenues than anything else. Historically, you don’t want to be clicking around pornographic sites without really good security. There are other “shady” parts of the Internet where you can get your browser hacked. For the most part, our paranoia about sharing personal information with sites like those are actually overblown. Sites that mine your personal information for profit, like Google, aren’t directly exploiting you. I’m still against a lot of that activity though.

Everyone should remove flash from their browser and use Firefox or Chrome.

6. How can you tell if your Facebook, Google, e-mail, Twitter or any other account is hacked?
That’s really tough. Typically someone finds out for us. Check your accounts for unusual activity I guess...

7. What can you do to prevent it?
Sign up for 2-factor authentication on every site you login to, and maybe stop using the ones that don’t support it.  See https://twofactorauth.org

If you get a text message confirmation when you try to sign into your Facebook from a computer you don’t usually use, you’re doing it right.

Greg Virgin is the founder and president of Redjack, a network security company providing analyses and solutions for protecting your internet space, based in Silver Spring, Maryland. More at   http://www.redjack.com


At Las Vegas annual hacking conference (August 4-7) hundreds of vendors hawked products to those worried about being hacked


While I am still digesting the basic information, the news on hacking developments are cropping up by the hour:

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/oh-good-new-hack-can-unlock-100-million-volkswagens/

http://www.businessinsider.com/hacking-conferences-paranoia-2016-8

I am trying not to get paranoid or I won't be able to do Christmas shopping online.

Monday, July 25, 2016

We Live In a Connected World

If you find yourself despairing over daily reports of mass shootings, bombing attacks, mass migration, global warming and other disasters - take a deep breath and relax. The world is not as bad as it seems even though it is hard to believe. Obama last week reminded us, as he usually does in his calm and reassuring manner, that we have never lived in a world that's more peaceful, prosperous and connected than today. Scoff all you want, but hard facts and statistics prove him right.

Last Friday, I went to see a movie knowing it would be terrible as all summer movies are. But after a lovely dinner and a couple of creative cocktails at True Food in Northern Virginia's Mosaic District, it was still too hot to drive home, so my friend and I headed for a late night movie at Angelika Pop Up  (why does it have such a weird name?). Per my friend's  suggestion (I had none since one summer movie is as bad as another for me) the pick was Absolutely Fabulous, an absolutely hideous British movie - a depressing comedy about two aging women. I knew it was too much to hope that it might contain dry British humor of a bygone era. Today, movies are made to appeal to audiences 
worldwide and humor is notoriously hard to translate. Hence no subtlety. What goes for "funny" today is uncontrolled burlesque with an unending chain of slapstick gags in unrealistic settings, overblown confusion, preposterous plots and nightmarish situations. Joanna Lumley, who was unforgettable in a cameo performance in Me Before You, was too much of a good thing in Mandie Fletcher's AbFab.

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in 'Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.'
While this was to be expected from a movie comedy, it was more than a little disappointing to get a repeat experience the very next evening at Wolf Trap. The revival of Florian Gassmann's L'opera seria at the Barns turned the 18th century opera into a modern-day burlesque, i.e. something overblown and tiresome. Gassmann and his libretist Ranieri de' Calzabigi made a parody of Metastasian opera, with a score that pokes fun at the conventions of the genre: flowery passages, high drama, exaggerated emotions. But the Wolf Trap Opera's creative team led by Matthew Ozawa turned what was supposed to be light satire into a wild rollercoaster ride, which not everyone enjoyed.

The plot is relatively familiar (we've seen it in the much more famous Ariadne auf Naxos): a theater company is staging a fictional opera (a serious one) titled L'Oranzebe, featuring a conquering hero, a captured princess, and a rival princess. But it has a large enough number of characters to make a never-before-seen opera hard to follow. There are stereotype prima donnas, fighting for the producer's attention and their mothers rooting for their respective daughters. There is an equally puffed-up tenor and there is a composer, a librettist, a prompter and a manager - all with ridiculous names.  The insecure composer is Sospiro (Sigh); the light-headed librettist is Delirio (that one does not need a translation); the bankrupt impresario is Fallito (Failed); the leading tenor is Ritornello (a Baroque music feature); and the three sopranos are Stonatrilla (Out-of-Tune), Smorfiosa (Simpering), and Porporina (Purple-faced).


Composer, tenor and diva in Wolf Trap's production of L'opera seria
The first two acts are set in modern costume and deal with developments leading to the opening night. Act III is the opera within the opera, presented in an over-the-top Baroque style - dresses with wide hoops (making me realize how well those panniers hid oversized hips and unshapely legs; a man could have a nasty surprise on his wedding night), huge powdered wigs, plumed hats and fans as well as the oriental garb and a cardboard elephant on the "conquered" side.

The "performance" is interrupted by loud booing and heckling from the disgruntled audience – played by members of the production strategically planted around the auditorium. When a pandemonium erupts and the opera singers flee, the dancing master pacifies the audience with a balet perfromance. On the sidelines, performers and producers bicker and gossip until Sospiro barges in with the news that the manager is bankrupt and no one will get paid.

The Wolf Trap Opera is to be commended for the innovative programs, originality of productions and fresh voices offered every summer. In Saturday's performance all the singers were appealing although my personal favorites were Alasdair Kent as Ritornello, Amy Owens as Porporina and Christian Zaremba as Passagallo.  An especially remarkable novelty for me was the first Middle Eastern name I've ever seen in a local opera production: Mohammed Badawi portraying Young Indian Prince.

L'opera seria had all of the Wolf Trap company's signature traits, and it was mostly fun to watch. But in the end, the overblown parody became predictably tiresome. The humor would have been much more effective with fewer well placed gags than a multitude of forced ones. Gassmann's opera has been described as "gently satirical, but never cynical" and as having "a warmth that speaks to us." Ozawa took the opportunity to ridicule operatic drama to the extreme. His production reflects what many Americans (and others) today feel about opera - that it is too far removed from reality and silly. One could hope that people in the profession would feel differently. But I've heard today's sopranos say they don't understand Aida's decision to die with her lover in a tomb or Butterfly's to give up her child and commit suicide. The general attitude is: why don't they move on? Not to mention the ridicule heaped on the plot of Il trovatore, especially the mother throwing the wrong child in the fire. Small wonder the best interpretations of these masterpieces remain in the past when singers identified with their roles and believed in them. 

But as always, there is hope. The Middle East is soon to get its first opera written in Arabic and on Middle Eastern themes. Maroun Rahi, composer, conductor and founder of Opera Lebanon decided to offer the local audience something more original than Carmen or La boheme and he teamed up with librettist Antoine Maalouf to create an opera written specifically for the Arabic language. Rahi says it will be a turning point in the Arabic culture.
John Owens for VOA, Antar and Abla

The work, Antar and Abla, is based on an ancient Arabic poem about love, honor and treachery - all good opera material. Local performers are likely to identify with their roles better than with characters in a western opera. Rahi hopes the first of its kind opera will eventually reach major international stages. In this new connected world his wish will likely get fulfilled.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

On Faith, Brexit and Designer Babies

Last week was awful in terms of the news: conflict, conflict everywhere and not a drop of light at the end of the tunnel.  As if mass shootings, terror attacks and wars were not enough, politicians are clashing on every single issue and the general public picks up the cue. The Brits are still fighting over whether they should stay in the EU or not, the young now claiming their long life ahead was determined by geezers with one leg in the grave. Amid all the mayhem reports, a refreshing headline grabbed my attention the other day: "Baby-making could jump from the bedroom to the lab." Wow!




I've heard of genetic modification and tampering with embryos to create a baby with desired traits. But this is not about harvesting eggs and working on them, it is about creating a baby from any cell in the body; a skin cell for example. In the near future, according to the report, cells will be turned into eggs and sperm in a lab to produce hundreds of embryos. Those will be tested to see what genetic traits they carry, and parents will be able to choose which one they want hatched into a baby. People who otherwise could not have their own children will be able to have them made from non-reproductive cells. From the multitude of embryos they will also be able to pick the ones that do not carry a hereditary disease. And if they have a lot of money to spend they can have the embryo further engineered to produce a baby with the desired eye and hair color, the size of the nose, the height, etc.

These days, children who get stuck with silly names chosen by their parents, like North West or Apple and Pear, can change them when they grow up. Altering one's physical and character traits may be a little harder. Still, in the future, we may have more Caitlyn Jenners. Gone are the days when the family awaited the arrival of a baby with baited breath to see if it is a girl or a boy. There will be no surprises - pleasant or otherwise - any more.

Whoa!  I got carried away.  For a moment I forgot my own video packages on drought and famine in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 40 million people in the region face hunger and even a larger number in India. A family moving from the parched Somaliland into the scorched parts of Ethiopia in search of food and water will be happy if the child is delivered alive, forget the hair color.

Then there is faith. A person who believes that a reward for killing in the name of God secures a place in heaven, with charming maidens serving refreshments  (as allegedly the Orlando shooter believed), is hardly likely to believe in creative baby making. Such a person is killing and ready to be killed to return things to what he imagines they may have been in some other time and place.


I am reading a book about Dracula - the real one, not the Hollywood creation. A fascinating and repulsive character at the same time: overly fond of impaling even for his own era, he also seems to have engaged in cutting off noses, ears, heads, women's breasts and genitals. It was said that Vlad III, nicknamed the Impaler, sometimes had children boiled in hot oil and made parents eat them, and did other stuff too gruesome to mention. But as we know, similar things happened during the war in the Balkans just a couple of decades ago, and are still happening at the hands of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

We live in a world in which technology and innovation are literally skyrocketing, but too many people still face  hunger.  There is poverty in the United States, "the richest country in the world." More than 45 million people worldwide live in "modern" slavery. Globalization was supposed to even out some of the differences and bring people closer together, but appears to have created an even wider abyss between fellow human beings - a chasm not different from the one separating the medieval Wallachian prince and his brother Radu the Handsome, a favorite of Sultan Mehmed II.  The brothers fought each other, one with atrocities, the other with Turkish support.

Those caught in the middle of the tensions are confused and angry.  Sometimes they feel helpless, like the young Brits who say that the elderly imposed an unwanted future on them. Other times they arm themselves with assaults weapons, like some Americans.  Readers' comments to media articles on any topic reek of racism, misogyny and hatred. Culture is no exception. Just check YouTube video clips from operas. If you happen to like a singer or performance someone else dislikes, you better keep your opinion to yourself unless you have high tolerance for insults.

So commentators, professional or amateurish, who hasten to praise the Brexit as a "momentous event" akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall, those who predict that other EU countries will follow suit, and those who hope that the U.S. under Donald Trump will close its borders, are missing the point. Britain was split almost in half on the remain-leave referendum and it seems that some members of the "winning" camp got cold feet the very morning after the victory.  More than a million are now demanding a second referendum. Whichever way the vote might have gone, it would not have reduced the tensions in Britain. Neither will the country fall to pieces because it stepped out of the bloc. "Nigdar ni bilo da ni nekak bilo"...as an old Croatian wisdom goes.

In the 1960s, the slogan "Make Love, Not War" began its tour around the world, and the Hippy era saw the Westerners enthralled with oriental culture and spirituality. The commercialization of yoga and meditation in the West is a lasting reminder of that time. The world "love" has disappeared from the intercultural discourse. Today, we are talking of "tolerance" and we are protesting "against hatred" at best. Some of the most religious of us believe that a faith can be "defended" by war and isolation, and that love has nothing to do with it. I am no proponent of a return to any "glorious" era of the past, but I do hope that a future generation of the "Brave New World," the one that will create babies in the lab, comes up with a new make-love movement, one less steeped in drugs and more in sharing.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Washington, Las Vegas and Our Presidential Candidates

During a recent visit to southern France, many locals asked where I and my friend were from. When she said she was from Las Vegas, people would invariably get excited and wanted to have long discussions about her city while no one cared about my hometown - the capital of the United States and the western world. This now reminds me of the situation with Donald Trump: everyone wants to discuss him, but there is little genuine interest in either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Perusing European newspapers online these days one finds the US news sections flooded with stories about Trump. His every utterance and every move is recorded and discussed in detail, and if Sanders or Clinton are mentioned, it is mostly in relation to Trump. Like: Sanders agreed to debate with Trump after Clinton refused. It's a good thing President Obama went to Hiroshima, to provide a little diversion although even he could not come out entirely Trump-free. He must have been asked a lot of questions about the Republican presidential contender to warrant the statement "world leaders are rattled by him."

But what about Americans? Trump has not changed much in the past few months. Neither has his rhetoric improved. Yet from a candidate that was initially considered nothing more than a clown in the presidential campaign circus, he has become a serious threat to Hillary Clinton, a Democrat and seasoned politician who seemed to have the presidency in her pocket.

Pundits offer explanations such as Congress fatigue, fear of terrorism, loss of manufacturing jobs, Trump's TV popularity, his (dubious) business achievements, straight talk etc. I don't buy any of that. I think Trump's formula for success is the same one that gave power to Yugoslavia's Tito, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Lenin, Stalin, Putin and, yes, even Hitler. They were the kind of leaders that could persuade masses, especially uneducated masses, that they had the strength to protect them from whatever. If there was no threat to the nation, one was invented.

As school kids in the communist Yugoslavia we were taught the locution: Yugoslavia is surrounded by troubles (BRIGAMA). The Croatian and Serbian word for "troubles" was an acronym made from the initials of the countries bordering Yugoslavia (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Greece, Austria, Hungary, ie. Madjarska and Albania). So from the earliest age, we were made to believe that our country was on the verge of an attack. Tito ruled uncontested for more than 30 years but after he died, the country he had built fell apart. Hitler's Germany went up in smoke, the Soviet Union disintegrated and the kind of Serbia Milosevic had in mind died before it was born.

Even though history proved Stalin to be a mass murderer equal to Hitler or worse, he enjoyed rising popularity after the Soviet Union collapsed and before Putin stepped in to take the role of a new "strong" leader. Some people still mourn Tito's Yugoslavia, and Hitler continues to fascinate the world albeit in a negative way.

About a decade or so ago, while I was driving my son to school, a local station was re-broadcasting the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate on foreign policy. I pointed out to my son how sophisticated the discussion was in comparison with the contemporary presidential debates. I particularly considered Bush junior a poor speaker at the time. Now I could point out how sophisticated his debates were in comparison with the ones we've had this past year. Trump especially is a terrible speaker with hardly any complete sentence in his diatribes, and every word of phrase he deems "strong" repeated at least two or three times. 



Example from his Rolling Thunder speech Sunday: "Make America great again! Very simple. Make America great again! So, in riding over, there are hundreds of thousands of people all along the highways, and they can’t get in! In other words, you’re very good at real estate. You got in! Congratulations! Congratulations. " His vocabulary is very limited and the language he uses to describe his rivals - "crooked Hillary" and "lying Ted Cruz"- is beyond the pale. And yet it does not seem to matter at home or abroad.

The amount of attention, including negative attention, Trump gets in the news media gives him status and importance. In the eyes of many people that translates into power. Every nation wants a "powerful" leader, but the United States, to maintain its status as the world premier superpower must have one. Being cruel and obnoxious is more acceptable than being apologetic if it is serves to project the image of power.  

I am reminded of a classic Serbian tale by Radoje Domanović of a people looking for a leader to take them to the promised land. They think that a silent stranger walking with a staff must be the wisest so they pick him. They follow him through thorns and wasteland as he seems to avoid a strait road. When he falls into a chasm, they jump after him. Many die on the way. When months later three remaining families confront the leader, they learn that he is a blind man.

Although the story does not apply to the United States, it illustrates how important an image is for a leader.

With the statue of Abraham Lincoln looking down, Trump delivered his usual crude oration on Sunday, with Rolling Thunder bikers cheering him on. A Vietnam War veteran was quoted as saying “He’s an asshole, and that’s what we need.” Another one said “We need to retake America, because we’ve lost it.” Wow! I must have been asleep. I never noticed we've lost our country. But I noticed that we've lost class. It almost seems as if no classy person would want to run for president any more.  Certainly no one like George Washington who as a teenager copied by hand 110 rules of civility that he followed all his life.  The current crop of presidential candidates seems oblivious to them. Thus wrote Washington:

 -  Speak not injurious words in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occasion.
 -  Undertake not what you cannot perform but be careful to keep your promise.
 -  Speak not evil of the absent for it is unjust.

But does anyone apply these rules in campaign speeches? In the past, leaders strived to sound educated, today they want to identify with the rude and the illiterate.  Maybe that's how they see the majority of voters. Europeans are commenting on Facebook: "America, you might call this an election, but the rest of the world is viewing it as your IQ test. And it's not looking good."

I have always believed (and been rebuked for saying it) that a nation has the leader it deserves. Especially in true democracies where the head of state is freely elected. This is not to say that every individual gets the leader he or she deserves. I tend to agree with de Tocqueville in that "a majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual." Come January, a new U.S. president will be sworn in, one that many Americans will not have wanted: a president elected by the majority and imposed on everyone.

The rest of the world will have to deal with our president too. And not everyone will be annoyed if it is Trump. Judging by the amount of attention he gets in the foreign media, he is more attractive to a lot of people overseas than either Clinton or Sanders, sort of like Las Vegas is more seductive than Washington.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Wagner: The End of Gods

Wagner's two notable heroes, Siegfried and Parsifal, are both naive, straightforward and uneducated. But Siegfried, who seems more intelligent of the two, ends up duped and vanquished, while the dim-witted Parsifal learns to recognize the evil and resist it. Thus he earns the honor of joining the ranks of selected knights that guard the Holy Grail and, according to Wagner, sires another hero, Lohengrin. Siegfried perishes without glory or issue as a result of betrayal and his own errors.

If Siegfried's demise reminds you of Greek tragedy, there is a good reason for it. Other than the name Nibelung in the title, Wagner's tetralogy has little to do with medieval German poem Das Nibelunglied, and what it does have is contained in Götterdämmerung. Wagner's other sources include ancient Norse sagas, German mythology, classical fairy tales and, yes, Greek drama. His ability to compress and modify elements from divergent sources into a more or less coherent story continues to dazzle with its brilliance. The Nibelunglied's Siegfried was neither a product of an incestuous union, nor a lover of his aunt. He subdued and abducted
Brünhilde for his prospective brother in law Gunther.  There are several older sagas that differ in their accounts of Siegfried (or Sigurd), but in Das Nibelunglied, Siegfried loved and married Krimhild, Götterdämmerung's Gutrune.

Wagner's Siegfried is physically strong, beautiful and intrepid. He is intelligent enough to figure out that Mime is not his father, he is able to forge a sword, something a much more experienced Mime cannot, and he knows where to inflict the most effective blow to kill Fafner. All of those skills have made him cocky and overconfident, but have not prepared him to deal with treachery. As a boy, Siegfried would have taken advice from Forest Bird, but as an adult he laughs off the warning from Rhein maidens that could have saved his life. His braggadocio is perhaps his biggest flaw and he pays for it dearly.

 
Brünhilde's case is a little more complex. Generally considered The Ring's larger-than-life heroine  - the savior of the world - she makes her share of mistakes before doing the right thing. Siegfried's betrayal seems unforgivable, but to plot with Hagen to kill him in revenge? That's bad manners even in the pre-historic era. In the end, she returns the cursed ring to its rightful owners, but on careful analysis it was Wotan's plan for her (remember Wotan's dialogue with Erda in Siegfried). Brünhilde's downfall began when she first refused to give up the ring, a token of love from Siegfried. The moment she held on to it, the curse kicked in: Siegfried accepted a doctored "refreshment" from Gutrune and fell prey to Hagen's plot. If Brünhilde is a hero, she is that because of the tragedies that befell her, rather than any grand deeds on her part. That seems to be the case with most Ring heroes - their appeal is in their failures more than in their accomplishments.

Götterdämmerung, the Norns
The last installment of The Ring cycle on Friday was a glorious end of the gods. Director Francesca Zambello, achieved the right balance between dream and reality. The Norns in the opening scene worked with electric cables instead of yarns, while they discussed the past, present and future, providing helpful information for those who missed the first three operas. A cable (aka rope of destiny) breaking at one point portends bad future. All three singers (Lindsay Ammann, Jamie Barton and Marcy Stonikas) were excellent and I hope we are spared yet another review labeling Wagner's narratives as "excruciatingly" long. Zambello has done a superb job of making the Norns scene somber, but lively. I love that prologue even when there is nothing on the stage, because it unveils another nuance of the story every time, but on Friday just examining details on the stage along with the music made it fly by.

In the next scene, we are back at the Valkyre's rock last seen in Siegfried. Catherine Foster and Daniel Brenna reprized the roles of Brünhilde and Siegfried. They seemed to sing with vigor, but it was hard to hear them over the orchestra.

Siegfried's Rhein journey is accompanied by somewhat abstract projections of flowing water, which is all that was needed. The Gibichung Hall was austere and elegant in black-and-white, and shades in between.
Eric Halverson's Hagen was older than expected, but had a voice that no orchestra could overpower. His take on Gunther's conniving step brother was as good as one could wish, but completely different from Gidon Saks's portrayal in the WNO's 2009 concert performance. Saks was a more brooding and moody Hagen, who could be seductive, insinuating and commanding by turns - the most sexy Hagen I have ever seen. Halverson projected power and self confidence, and was more of a bully.
Götterdämmerung, Hunting Scene

Brenna's Siegfried changed from an inexperienced young man, a boy really, to a self-assured grown up which Siegfried had become through his relationship with Brünhilde. The former demi-godess taught him all she knew, she said, but that clearly did not include how to recognize deceit. Having lived mostly in isolation, Siegfried has poor social skills and makes his first sortie into the real world completely unprepared. He trusts the lying Gibichungs, but not the sincere river maidens. His memory is selective: he remembers that he has gained the ring by killing the dragon, but forgets all about Brünhilde. What a confused young man! Brenna was good in Siegfried, but affirmed himself definitively in the crucial death scene of Götterdämmerung. 

Foster was not my favorite Brünhilde. She may have done everything right but, as far as I am concerned,  failed to electrify with her presence. The weakest scene of the evening for me was the meeting between Brünhilde and Waltraute. Foster was more of a revengeful daughter than a woman in love, and Jamie Barton was neither a fierce Valkyre, nor a desperate daughter.

As Gutrune, Melissa Citro was simply lovely. Her seduction of Siegfried was a charming combination of tease and restraint, her desperation over his death genuine, her remorse at having been part of a ploy that killed him convincing.

Götterdämmerung, Hagen and Gutrune

The male chorus was excellent throughout. Conductor Philippe Auguin was impressive yet again, though he turned up the volume too high in more places than I would have liked.

Rhein maidens wading through the river full of trash was Zambello's environmental message, creative and effective. Less creative and somewhat kitschy was the closing scene in which a young girl comes to plant a tree next to the now cleansed river, as a symbol of new and better world coming after the departure of corrupt gods. 

I couldn't quite understand the meaning of barbed wires and watch towers projected in black-and-white in the background before the hunting scene.  Good reason to see the opera again.

The great thing about Wagner's Ring is that it fits into almost any time and place. It lends itself to diverse concepts, settings and interpretations more than any other opera I can think of, and every production reveals another layer worth exploring. 

Wotan can be a male chauvinist or a henpecked husband. He did seek wisdom from women - the Norns, Erda - but for advice on legal loopholes he turns to a male, Loge. Having once made a wrong choice, could he have stopped the downright spiraling and get back on the right path? 

And who is the real hero of The RingIs it Siegmund who refused glory in the name of love, or is it the fearless Siegfried? Brünhilde the Valkyre, or Brünhilde the woman? There is no definitive answer to any of these questions, which allows everyone to find his or her own. Perhaps that's a secret ingredient of Wagner's lasting appeal.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Siegfried - A Hero of Our Time

If Siegfried is your favorite Ring opera, as it is mine, getting to see a new production can be a mixed blessing.  Depending on the tenor portraying the title hero, the performance can offer four hours of pure bliss or just an average musical evening. WNO's rendition of the third part of Wagner's Nibelung Ring on Wednesday not only had charismatic Siegfried - it was outstanding in every way.

When we first meet Sigfried, he is a teenage orphan, adopted by Nibelung dwarf Mime who is grooming him for a fight with Fafner (giant-cum-dragon) over the Rhine treasure.  Like his brother Alberich and like ruling god Wotan, Mime covets the gold ring and headcover Tarnhelm, for their special powers. The evil dwarf hopes that Siegfried will get the gold for him just like Wotan hoped Siegfried's father would get it for him. Neither the dwarf nor the god can fight for the treasure themselves, one because he is too weak, the other because he is bound by a contract, which forbids him to fight the giant.

Mime trying to forge a sword, Act I, Siegfried
Wotan therefore needs a hero who would get the ring for him without implicating the gods. The hero must be a human and an enemy of gods. Siegmund may have been all of that, but Wotan's plan to use his estranged son, fell through when his wife Fricka convinced him (for her own reasons) that providing Siegmund with the god's invincible sword, no matter how indirectly, would still make him an accomplice.

There are countless interpretations of Wagner's story and intent, but this much is clear from the narrative. People who doze off during The Ring's lengthy recitatives may miss important details and subsequently watch the highlights without enough context. Among the multitude of questions that one hears these days is why is Wotan looking for a strong male hero when a female one ( his daughter Brünhilde) is standing right before him. Wotan explains it extensively in Act II, Scene 2 of Die Walküre and knowing the gist of that narrative helps understand the whole cycle. In Siegfried, I would suggest paying careful attention to Wotan's dialogue with Erda because it contains important clues to understanding The Ring's last opera, Götterdämmerung.


This is not to say that you can't simply sit back and enjoy the music. Daniel Brenna's Siegfried on Wednesday was captivating. He looked and sounded the age he is supposed to be - presumably late teens - so much so that I could almost hear him saying "whatever," or "you are hovering," and many other things my son used to say to me when he was a teenager.  He also made me think of many young U.S. servicemen shipped off to Iraq and Afghanistan, not quite knowing what awaits there. Brenna sang with a clear bell-like voice that sounded fresh till the very end, including the grueling Act III, after he had already been singing more than two hours and Brünhilde only began.

Daniel Brenna is a youthful and charismatic Siegfried
Catherine Foster's Brünhilde was a pleasure to hear and if you did not know she had hurt her ankle, you would not know it. She made it look like she was somewhat insecure on her legs because she was still waking up from her 18-year-long nap.

Alan Held showed us yet another side of Wotan - an aging god still holding on to power, but aware it won't be for long. Lindsay Ammann as Erda, was convincing as a wise Earth goddess who has gotten tired of the World and wants to retire for good. Her resignation is a last blow to Wotan, one that convinces him to accept the demise of the gods. Again, pay attention to what is said between them!

David Cangelosi as Mime provided the most entertainment for the evening, pausing with his shenanigans long enough and in right places to remind us of his evil intentions. Gordon Hawkins as his brother Alberich was straightforward in expressing anger and frustration at being duped. They made a good pair.

I was looking forward to Soloman Howard's Fafner and he was worth the wait. Howard has a deep, alluring bass and as a dying giant, he elicited compassion. Singing from inside a huge armored machine, which sensibly replaces the dragon in this production, gave his voice a sinister tint.

Jacqueline Echols was a chirpy Forest Bird, presented as a bookish young girl, intent on mentoring Siegfried, who is illiterate at least in some ways.  She connected well with Brenna.

The greatest hero of Wednesday night's performance was conductor Philippe Auguin. He spun some of the most beguiling sounds to be had from Wagner's score, and I'd never heard the WNO orchestra play so well.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

First Day: Die Walküre

Wagner stipulated that his tetralogy is to be performed in three days and one preliminary evening. In this scheme of things, the first of the four operas, Das Rheingold, is a prologue. I don't quite get the logic of it, but nevertheless, this somehow puts Die Walküre in the first place. Indeed, it is the most popular and best known of the four Ring operas. Perhaps that's why it opened with more fanfare (literally) on Monday than the "prologue" two days ago.

Ring's "First Day" opens with fanfare on Alpenhorns
After seeing Christine Goerke in Florencia an el Amazonas a few years ago, I said she was my new favorite soprano. So when it was announced that she would replace the indisposed Catherine Foster as Brünhilde at least for the evening, I was curious but admittedly a little suspicious, despite her reputation as a Wagnerian. Florencia is one thing and Brünhilde quite another, and my taste rarely conforms with reviewers' opinions.

Well, Goerke dispelled any doubt I might have had when she hurtled onto the stage, seemingly from a riding session, for a meeting with her father. She was in excellent voice, sang effortlessly throughout, and her presence was electrifying after a somewhat disappointing Siegmund/Sieglinde duo (Christopher Ventris and Meagan Miller). It is a pity that Goerke's expressive voice was drowned by the orchestra in some of the most sensitive moments of her encounter with Siegmund.


Another star of the evening for me was Alan Held as Wotan. From a ruthless god in Das Rheingold he transitioned into a father torn between love and duty. His torment after killing out-of-wedlock son Siegmund is so genuine that I felt a lump swelling in my throat and I am far from sentimental. He was equally poignant in his farewell to Brünhilde. When I first saw Held's Wotan, he turned from the charming young seducer of Das Rheingold into a more mature man/god of Die Walk
üre and finally into an old tramp in Siegfried. This time around he displayed a more profound understanding of Wotan's character and his dilemmas. 

As heralded in Das Rheingold, Francesca Zambello's "American Ring" has undergone a lot of refinement since I last saw it. The popular ride of the Valkyres, with warrior women parachuting onto the stage, was spectacular and a clear favorite with the audience. I liked the way the uniformed women lined up before Wotan as if he were their military commander, not father.
Real German shepherds were running across the stage to sniff out the runaway twins. And Wotan lit real fire around his disobedient daughter. That last scene was not only spectacular but a little frightening too.

Closing scene from Die Walküre was encored in my kitchen 
Some of the things that bothered my the first time around were still there and now I know why. When Placido Domingo sang Siegmund in the earlier production, I remember thinking: well, hasn't he aged, look at how his shoulders are stooped! But when I saw the same hump on a much younger Christopher Ventris on Monday, I had a better view from a seat closer to the stage, and saw that the problem was in the coat, not Domingo's back. The coat has a pleat in the upper back that opens when the singer bends, making him look like a hunchback. Hasn't the designer noticed that with all the bending between Siegmund and Sieglinde?

A propos bending, I used to think that Anja Kampe (WNO's 2007 Sieglinde) was unable to assume more than two different postures on the stage: one with her arms wrapped around her waist, the other with her arms spread out; both while leaning heavily forward. I was therefore surprised to see her as a seductive and quite creative Tosca two years ago in Berlin. Miller's Sieglinde on Monday showed a wider range of motion and expression than Kampe's, but bending forward was her main shtick as well, suggesting it has more to do with die Regie than the interpreter.

New patrons probably won't notice any of this as they get carried away by the drama unfolding on the stage. Zambello's concept of Americanizing The Ring worked very well in Die Walküre as it did in Das Rheingold, and how could it not with our CEO's acting like gods, many of our young people serving in the military, numerous children being abandoned by parents and women still being punished for being assertive. The first scene of Act I could be taking place in the Appalachia, or in any remote, gun-toting community that abides by its own laws and honor code. The encounter between Wotan and Fricka could have been a scene from a
convincing new version of Citizen Cane.

In answer to the traditionalists who reject Wotan in a three-piece suit, here's how Sir Denis Forman paraphrases Wotan in A Night at the Opera: "I won the world by making some pretty dodgy deals with certain doubtful operators" and "I can't attack Fafner because the deal I did with him specifically excludes aggression." Forman was born in 1917 and the book is from 1994. We are in 2016 if I am not mistaken.

Wagner's impact is powerful - I was only too aware of it when the smell from my kitchen  back home reminded me that I had forgotten to turn off the stove before leaving for the opera. During the five-hour absence, what was supposed to be a home made beef soup turned into a pile of charcoals at the bottom of the pot.  My apprehension about the stage fire was actually a premonition.