papeetepatrick

Yes, and other very fine ways of looking at the 'Artwork' as having its existence beyond the human artist himself are to be found in Adorno's work, who expresses it especially well, as in 'Negative Dialectics.'

Possibly, but I tend to agree with much of what AnthonyNYC said about what you can also hear in the work itself. I think I can hear it and see it in the film of 'Rosenkavalier.' We can try all we will to keep the 'different spheres' separate, but we often cannot do it. I am glad for this discussion, because I now realize that I much prefer Kiri TeKanawa's Marschallin: She not only has a far more beautiful voice and finer technique, I find her whole persona to be far more beautiful and radiant. Schwarzkopf for me is an extremely unimportant artist and has always been, even if I can see why she is important to others. I am glad to have seen her Marschallin, but in thinking about it as this thread has developed, I see that it leaves me cold and that I find her superficial and repellent. Leni Riefenstahl, also a Nazi, is, on the other hand, an important artist for me--her propaganda film 'The Triumph of the Will', while not only often cited as 'the greatest propaganda film ever made', is an important document about Hitler that we would not have otherwise.

Absolutely not. I think that is a decadent point of view. To deny in this instance was to try to rewrite history and 'get away with what was', and there is no reason to think that it 'no longer is' except for the fact the Nazis were defeated and Ms. Schwarzkopf is dead. One should still be able to appreciate her work completely, but there is no point in thinking that Ms. Schwarzkopf, even if not guilty of a 'crime' in denial, was anything less than fully dishonest and was probably fatuous as well, as she has even less remorse, from what I've seen thus far, than Leni Riefenstahl, and even Heidegger finally spoke to 'Der Spiegel' about the death camps. Ms. Schwarzkopf's declamation of 'Vissi d'Arte' proves her to be a con artist with a heavy layer of kitsch that's supposed to redeem her personal mediocrity. Her interest was in excusing her complicity, not that she thought it was truly innocent. I have actually met a surprising number of Germans who feel less guilty than the official line of their government would lead you to believe. Many Germans (and German Swiss and Swedes) are quite free with anti-Semitic remarks, although they know that it is not going to work again as policy. I have known a few personally who have praised Hitler's achievements with the Autobahn and said well, yes, some things did happen that 'are not so nice', but I am German.

I think that's true, especially of the Marschallin. The arrogance makes this even more fantastically supercilious than could have been otherwise. Life works like that though. That was the price she paid. I find this performance hypnotic more than moving, but I think it does work as result of the less admirable qualities you named, if the reality is looked at head on and without any flinching. The opera I find extremely superficial and sterilized because de-sexed: they never manage to get Octavian to seem male at all, so it's this ridiculous stretch you have to make for the sake of Strauss writing this kind of flashy music. In 'Arabella', the 'pants-role' is within the story itself, and there I haven't any difficulty with it, because the characters know it themselves, whereas 'Rosenkavalier' makes the audience do all the work of imagining that this is an affair between a man and a woman. I think it comes across as something vaguely 'latent Lesbian,' so, since the music is so gorgeous, I would much rather just listen to it and forget about the 'action,' such as it is (not much of it in my book.) Ms. Schwarzkopf pulls off this kind of sterilization beautifully. I actually think Leni Riefenstahl was a more honest Nazi. She had made 'Triumph of the Will', of course, so she could hardly pretend not to know something about what Nazism comprised in its darkest areas, but even though she wouldn't talk all that much about it later, she did say that she never turned against it, and that is at least better than 'Vissi d'Arte..' Liked your thoughtful comment though. I still like Ms. Schwarzkopf's work, and all sorts of other reprensible artists' work too (although not only those, I'm happy to say.)

I agree, and not to mention tacky and using the Puccini version for it. I don't even know if she sang Tosca, but either way 'I lived for art' is never fully convincing, as it does not serve as an excuse (even if it 'worked' to deflect, etc.)

The things one learns on Ballet Talk! I had thought that quote was about Los Angeles. Thanks to Major Mel for setting me straight. I thought so too for several years, and it is still often used for Los Angeles, although I think it applies not at all any more. Los Angeles has a 'there' like nobody's business, it's just shaped strangely. If you don't study the geography, though, it can still feel like that. Over the years, I think tourists' refusal to study guidebooks carefully has accounted for the delightful fact that Los Angeles has very few conspicuous tourists, unless you go to the Universal City Tours, etc. and Disneyland. Tourist buses like you see here by the dozens every time you walk out are unknown, and even Beverly Hills has only those little 4-person Starline Tours (at least that's all I've seen from 10 trips there.)

Mel--thanks so much. I still would have thought the Pasadena people would have wanted to get this together, since the LAOpera is superb (I saw their 'Vanessa' in 2004 and 'Parsifal' in 2005), as is the LA Philharmonic, which I heard do some gorgeous Elgar a few years ago, as well as the Bernstein piece with Joshua Bell. NYTimes recently wrote about the innovative new music programming Salonen has been so involved with. In 2004, I also saw a wonderful 'School for Scandal' at the Mark Taper Forum. I'd imagine they will finally pull this together, although the history you related is very strange. But conspicuous consumption in culture is pretty strong there, and they first started 'catching up' with many fine arts museums and have even reopened the old Malibu part of the Getty, which I'm sure you know (I've even sometimes thought they built the downtown skyscrapers in the reverse order because it wasn't becoming for a big city not to have a proper downtown business district). So that the ballet problems are strangely isolated. I also think what Paul says about the LATimes pressures could have produced a Segal and a tiresome article like that. One of the old Chandlers or Valley Hunt Club people needs to get on the ballet issue and take the bull by the horns.

But there cannot really be defining and contributing only works before or after in an age that can no longer produce new works of towering importance. It is still what liebling said, that there has to be new genius choreography as strong as what came before but thus far it isn't happening. Otherwise, the Relevance Industry would not be so intrusive and could be more fully ignored. And it cannot be just because I and other posters would like it to be, whether from the Martins's mouth or the Segal's mouth. There has to be proof in terms of new choreography masterpieces, exactly as in the other arts. I don't see how there is any alternative. Anyway, Segal is a dimbulb talking about theater; the point would be to talk about what has happened to Broadway, which is a wasteland of commodity production for busloads of tourists; there's barely even a nod or even acknowledgement to serious art anymore. And what Leonid says about new audiences for opera seria is meaningful, but past works are still not enough. There can't be a period in which there is nothing of genius produced in a major field at least somewhere. There were long periods in England in which there was nothing important musically happening, but then it would recur. But during those dry periods, France, Italy and Germany all continued non-stop development; and that continuity has made them greater musical nations, most likely, although not on an individual level, and there's been lots of great English music in the 20th century anyway.

This goes without saying, but it does have to done while keeping ballet a 'high art.' It would be better dead and buried than become a 'lower-middle art', etc.

Mel (and others)--I'd like to know something about the LA Ballet's problems you referred to. I had thought they were a fairly important company and the current website has Colleen Neary as Artistic Director. I never saw them, and was probably only familiar with them from that Pas de Deux video, but from that it looked as though Damien Woetzel had gotten his start with them. Probably others too, although the others on that tape from the LABallet itself were not quite as impressive. Thanks (links about this fine.)

Some important information. I knew about the general trends, but not specifically what was happening by now to LA Times. Not at all surprising, and very depressing. Some mergers in the last few months and 'near-misses' of even managing to sell (I believe this was with Conde Nast, but can't find the details at the moment) show what is inexorable in the decline of print journalism. At the time of the 2004 firings at V. Voice, they said they would be 'putting more emphasis on their online edition.' It's unimaginable that this could be reversed, and all journals, including NYTimes, are being gradually completed absorbed by cyberspace. The old hands that refer to the 'Lilliputians'--bloggers, etc.--will only be able to joke about this a little while longer. Much research is even going into making e-books as 'satisfying' as the real thing, which was never mentioned at all, say, in 2002. It's also true that the old ideals of uncompromised journalism are not possible anymore when you start out, no matter what the character of the journalist, if only because he would be quickly replaced if he didn't satisfy what was wanted. Agree totally, and find it hard to imagine it could change in a world which is in a state of emergency at all times.

That's what I'd agree with, and I haven't any reason to think there could be such a choreographer or not. It definitely seems that there couldn't if there isn't. So there's the matter of burden of proof on ballet, so that even sleazy writers can be proved right if they are not proved wrong. The current culture does not seem to me to really require that people 'look at what is in front of them.' You can write all sorts of false things and get paid for it. The choreographer would possibly have to be even greater than the geniuses of the past to make such flatulent critics stand at attention, and we'll know if that miracle happens. As for pointe dancing that deals with 'deep rooted political issues that face us today', I don't think it either can or should. Those issues are better dealt with forms that have no trace of the archaic, and there isn't any way that ballet can be stripped of all those and still be singular. It could, however, possibly be brought up-to-date in the same way that complex music can, but I'm not at all sure that it will be.

"Tenure" is not respected at the Village Voice, if one is talking about the paper's great writers. Since 2004, Richard Goldstein, James Ridgeway, Sydney Schanberg and Ward Harkavy (although he had less 'tenure') have all been fired, among others. They probably still need Deborah Jowitt, as the dance scene (ballet plus all the rest) still has an audience enough for it to be covered, but they'd fire her if they felt she was useless. The paper is a mere ghost of what it was even 2 years ago, and basically useless except for good listings. The LA Times is probably going the same route, with Jonah Goldberg replacing the veteran Scheer. Sure, Segal is pressured by the current culture just like everyone else, but I don't have any sympathy for it. Maureen Dowd had the guts to write about how Judith Miller was a liability to the Times even before the NYTimes's publisher decided to go ahead and fire her, and that's the kind of thing that deserves respect (in whatever field.) Segal writes like a trendy, that's an understandable careerist posture but not very admirable. 'Flatulent nostalgia', which he so pompously and conspicuously employs, is particularly low in the hands of this sort of 'adapting creature.'

Me too! I was trying to force my mind back and I was definitely seeing the cape more 'ship's sail-like' than 'dress with long train' because it did billow out and to the sides. I knew that there were other dancers still on stage, but couldn't remember exactly how they were formed with Farrell. And that photo--how miraculous to get to see it again! I was going to say to Farrell Fan that I thought the dancing was among the most rapturous I ever saw her do, but that it was in this performance that I found her natural beauty also especially breathtaking. The picture is solid evidence of that.

Martin Heidegger and Leni Reifenstahl were also extremely gifted people who were well-connected Nazis. It's important to know about in all these cases, but not always to be more obsessive about than 'active Soviet party bullies', as you aptly term them. Arletty had a Nazi lover and was imprisoned after 'Children of Paradise,' and the list goes on. It's impossible not to admire Marlene Dietrich a little more than Leni Riefenstahl, even if she didn't get an in-depth analysis and dissection by Susan Sontag. Fonteyn had those qualities of will, etc., but I don't think you mean the 'dark qualities' in the same sense. The philosopher Althusser killed his wife Helene in one of his bouts of depression; that has not made his analytical work less important even though it was a horrible crime. Yes, and I do agree that her Marschallin is peerless in that film, even though 'Der Rosenkavalier' is my least favourite of all famous operas. However, I don't otherwise know her work as well as several of you do.

Even if there were the eight Romeos, I wouldn't have known it, but maybe so. What I remember was this shroud that I think was drawn around Farrell somehow, but it's all nebulous looking back. I seem to remember it with her standing or kneeling and the shroud like a long train behind her that I hadn't expected, but that doesn't sound like a bier. I can't get past an image of her still looking out toward the audience, but my memory may be failing me--but somehow I think she was. I could be remembering her photograph on the back of the booklet they gave us at the Beacon, it was on glossy paper, but I don't still have it. (Please correct this image, anyone, I'd like to remember it properly; by now, I primarily remember it as a sensation, with only Farrell and the shroud as tangible.)

I loved the ending tableau of Mejia's 'Romeo and Juliet' for Suzanne Farrell, although I can't describe it exactly. But it's always the inexorable way it folds itself into place that has stayed as one of the 2 or 3 images that suggests itself to my mind when I remember that one performance I saw in 1980.

Of course he is being given the opportunity. For one thing, it's not as if he could be denied it. But it is quite legitimate not to think that the pitch is a very clever one. If it's successful and we merely complained that it was 'tacky', then he can have the last laugh. Anyway, one example of going to NYCB because of a 'Look at those bodies' subway ad is not a very extensive statistic. On the other hand, what Mel says about 'musicians' and 'stagehands' may well be operative. It's probably a Byzantine mess of clashing self-interest(s). Yes, it's impossible, that's why being desperate about something inferior to what went previously does not gain everyone's sympathy. One kind of compromise after another is expected because inevitable (or so it seems), but after awhile it just doesn't seem that serious since a comparable substitute for the Good Ole Days (unfortunately, that phrase is definitely true in the case of NYCB) does not seem to be in the offing. In a sense, sure--at least the matter of injuries. But it doesn't really strike me as though it can be effective toward sales improvement, so that it does boil down to Martins's own tastes, in that he chooses the PR and advertising agency people, or chooses the people who choose the PR people; either that, or he's only the figurehead-spokesman in these matters, and we wouldn't be told this if that's the case. But even if posters have no real power, it doesn't mean we have to pretend we like philistinism just because it's inevitable. And if we have no real power, our ability to appall may be irrelevant.

Every hand-wringer knows this. Maybe it's just eyes jaded enough to try something lame. When it comes to 'For the Fun of It', I even hope it doesn't work. That much pandering is not necessary. Mmmm...so he's been doing 'Relevance' numbers for 9 years...'relevance' talk is almost always a tell-tale sign of cultural malaise. Quite so, even though it might be a bit Twilight Zone.

Oh, that's just horrible. 'Mozart's Greatest Hits' made all this inevitable though. Now that I think about it, 'Just for Fun' is sickening even if it was all square dances, union jacks, stars and stripes and tin soldiers. Now, if they'd make a ballet called 'Longines Symphonette', well maybe; but what next, 'Steps for the Golden Hours?' for yet another evening of longed-for nostalgia?

'Cell-Phone-Ring Okay Night' with audience interacting with 'New Martins Ballet'. 'Channel 13 and NYCB Pledge Drive Combo Night,' moderated by Donna Drewes and Tom Stewart.

I agree, but I don't imagine it will have much effect at all. If they are desperate, this is probably a way to lose some older sophisticated audience, but not 'sell-out' and vulgar enough to get people who might come if they thought they were going to get more popularized stuff a la ABT. Even if NYCB got a modest boost (from whatever technique), the old days of not having to be flashy are probably over (and this they would not be able to ever do as well as ABT, because they don't have the years of aiming toward that.)

Bart--that's amusing about Guy Noir. I think Keillor is everywhere now. In 2002, I saw him and his people at Town Hall taping one of the shows; this was made very worthwhile by the singing of the great Odetta and also my first time to see Kristin Chenowith. Yes, I think I was thinking about a more truly sinister 'real noir', not camp. 'Farewell, My Lovely' and 'the High Window' and 'The Little Sister' especially come to mind--but Chandler, perhaps more than any other novelist, made of Los Angeles a truly romantic city, and pointe dancers don't seem at all unnatural in something like this. It could be either story ballet or abstract, I'd think. Carbro--adore 'loner eyes,' my first time to hear this term. I'm going to employ the mirror to see if I can exude them too...

Peter Schaufuss reminds me of Robert Mitchum, primarily in attitude (the personal sort) but also something in the face, especially the nose. However, with Mitchum this attitude looks more natural and graceful (he's in the more appropriate medium for it, I'd think), and maybe even a bit more musical. Does make me think that some of the noir classics, as Chandler, are dreamy and romantic enough for ballet--like taking 'Slaughter on 10th Avenue' a few revolutions further and darker.

Are you thinking of the spidery, tiny-limbed bodies more than the faces? I can see the body similarity (especially if you juxtapose Mazzo from Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Hepburn in the swimsuit in 'Two for the Road') but not anything in the faces, as Hepburn had a face full of light and natural glamour that enhanced the already unusually striking prettiness; my (admittedly fewer) views of Mazzo are memories of a much simpler face.