IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN

The Lighter Side...

2011-10-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that updates have been seldom of late. This is due, partly, to a shift of focus to my main blog, The New York Feuilleton.

Here's a bit of humor from two very dissimilar items that I came across today.

First off, here's a middle school paper on Justin Bieber that was discovered on a shared hard drive at a Berlin school and forwarded to me by one of the school's employees.

"Justin Bieber is a bad singer and was a hobo…and still should be. He relies on his magical hamburger, Chicken Joe. He thinks his “fans” scream because they love him but they actually scream in horror.

Justin Bieber is so crazy he made a song called “Baby” for his baby doll called Sissy Hotdog.

The one person who wrote this is just jealous… "

Second off, a luridly poetic CASUAL ENCOUNTERS craigslisting. I'm 80% certain that it's a joke, but who cares! It's still damn hilarious. The title of the post is "Love is a dog from Hell"

"HELLO HELLO

I am searching a girl. For walking around under moon beams, smelling the perfume of night flowers. Discover

the mystery who is hiding in the empire of darkness. Dance Dance until our feet become magma. I want someone

to deeply watch the chaos with me, the plasma TV of supernova explosion. OH OPHELIA WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ?

YOUR PRINCE IS HERE. And he is standing in his grey-desert suit, with faded roses in his left hand. OH, COME AND

SEE THE DARK GLORY IN MY EYE. Would you be my neuroleptic princess ? The velvet rolling up my heart ?

Come drink my mythological verb.

PS : Of course, you will have to be beautiful and rich."

Hope that this has enlivened your day. Feel free to forward any similar tidbits.

The Night Kitchen Staff

Berlin Opera x 3

2011-07-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

- from the July issue of OPERA NEWS magazine

Die Walküre

BERLIN
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
4/17/11

The big news from Berlin Staatsoper's presentation of Guy Cassiers's Die Walküre, which had its premiere in December at La Scala, was the role debut of Rene Pape as Wotan. In the weeks leading up to the Staatsoper transplant, which took place during the company's Festival Weeks, some critics voiced concern about whether Pape's voice was too dark or deep for the role. There was no need to worry. After his fiercely angular Act II confrontation with Fricka, Pape made his scenes of summary and repetition dramatically compelling through careful intonation and subtle shadings — a testament to his voice's dramatic flexibility. One could hardly wait him for him to take the stage again in Act III.

Pape's farewell to Brünnhilde was muscular yet yielding, reminiscent of his anguished "Ella giammai m'amò" as Filippo in Don Carlo (a role that he will reprise in Berlin next month). It was miles away from James Morris's paternal lull, or Theo Adams's wild fury. Pape's portrayal was filled more with weariness, bitterness sorrow and tenderness. Throughout the long goodbye, he sang crisply and carefully, with dark, creamy textures and nuanced phrasings.

But Pape was only the brightest jewel in this gem-studded Ring, which featured a few holdovers from the Scala performances. Simon O'Neill is no stranger to the role of Siegmund, but he sounded particularly warm and noble in the intimate confines of the Schiller Theater, the Staatsoper's temporary home during a four-year-long renovation. Aside from a few weak cries of "Nothung," he was sensational — riveting throughout this demanding role. Anja Kampe was impassioned yet in full control as his sister-bride, Sieglinde. Berlin cheered the German soprano's convincing, no-holds-barred account.

Iréne Theorin was the evening's Brünnhilde. She was loud, flamboyant and electric but also capable of subtlety and even mystery, as in her apparition to Siegmund in the forest. The Danish soprano has sung Brünnhilde everywhere from Copenhagen to Tokyo. Her performance was so satisfying all around that she could be forgiven a few shrill moments at the start of Act III, where her flying sisters were all in top form.

Ekaterina Gubanova (who also appeared in fall's Rheingold) was unshakable in her righteous fury as Fricka, singing with precise and cutting tones. For this Russian soprano who is best known for bel canto — and who did not start to tackle Wagner until 2005, with Peter Sellars's Paris Tristan — this performance could mark a new direction in her career.

Rounding out the principle cast, Mikhail Petrenko was an unusually lyrical Hunding (a role that the Russian bass has sung at the Met) and uncovered his character's sympathetic side.

Cassiers's Walküre was a qualified success in Berlin, unlike the fully magnificent Rheingold he presented at the house in September. The videos (by Enrico Bagnoli) that were projected onto a variety of surfaces, including a spinning sphere, trees and the entrance to Hunding's house, were hit-or-miss. The abstract effects were more compelling, while the more concrete images (Pape's gigantic bobbing head, fire effects that might have come from a Heavy Metal fan website circa 1997) were often ridiculous and distracting. In Act III, floating and swimming bodies were beamed onto a translucent screen, behind which two dancers performed a simple, acrobatic duet suspended from the rafters.

Valhalla was heaped high with enormous statues of horses, which harmonized with the Flemish relief that is the main set detail of this Ring. Much of the acting was somewhat abrupt and artless — qualities that, oddly enough, seemed to be a directorial choice. Cassiers, who leads the Antwerp Toneelhuis, is usually more careful about guiding his cast.

Daniel Barenboim whipped up the orchestra to a positive frenzy. He snuck onto the podium before Act I and tore breathlessly into the frantically vibrating prelude. The rest of the evening was just as dramatically incisive and quick-blooded, with many moments of exhilaration. The Staatskapelle showed commitment, focus and stamina, even if there were a few weak spots in the horns.

Salome

BERLIN
Komische Oper Berlin
4/10/11

To strip or not to strip? That is the question that faces any director who chooses to tackle Richard Strauss's Salome. In the case of the Komische Oper Berlin, a house that regularly showcases naked limbs in its most emblematic productions, the answer seemed a no-brainer. The surprise, then, was that Thilo Reinhardt's new production (seen Apr. 10), which opened in mid-April, did not feature any nudity whatsoever! Nor, for that matter, was there a solo dance of any kind. Instead, Salome led Herodes through a rotating funhouse of orgiastic and sacrilegious delights that played like the demon spawn of Ken Russell, Monty Python and David Lynch. It was easily the most ecstatically choreographed and daffiest ten minutes I've ever had at the opera. Moreover, it was fresh and compelling, like the rest of this exciting production. Reinhardt, a German director who has previously been represented at the KOB through his popular productions of Les Contes d'Hoffmann and The Queen of Spades, provided a staging that was intelligent, focused and, with the exception of the trippy Dance of the Seven Veils, rather simple and undistracting. The set, by Paul Zoller, resembled an enormous pop-up book, with King Herodes's palace leaning expressionistically in the background. There were other storybook touches, including retractable red carpeting to indicate blood, which are certain to draw comparisons between this Salome and Achim Freyer's abstract and colorful production of the opera over at Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Despite the relatively uncomplicated staging, this is arguably the biggest challenge that the KOB has taken on in a highly ambitious season that opened in September with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. For a house that began life as a home for singspiels and operettas, the arrival of Salome was something less than a given. Even today, when standard operatic fare has overtaken musicals in frequency, the house rarely attempts Wagner or Strauss. For a house of this size, Strauss's massive orchestra was shockingly loud and often drowned out the singers.

Just two weeks earlier, Simon Rattle led an electric concert performance of Salome with the Berliner Philharmoniker, which emphasized the score's dazzling ornamentation and invention without sacrificing dramatic momentum. At the KOB, by contrast, much of the rich profusion of detail was swallowed up. Alexander Vedernikov, former music director of the Bolshoi Theater, presided over a swift, bold performance that, understandably for an orchestra so unaccustomed to performing Strauss, was only partially convincing. The orchestra played with impressive unity, even though the spectrum of effects was limited and the many textures could certainly have been clearer. Most critically, though, the musicians were fairly insensitive to the singers, who were often scrambling to keep up or struggling to make themselves heard. This was especially the case with some of the more conversational vocal writing, such as Herodes's lengthy negotiations with Salome.

The evening's Herod, Andreas Conrad, a former ensemble member, tore through his lines with a breathless rapidity that may have been dramatically persuasive but was musically disappointing. Mezzo Christiane Oertel was one of all-around strongest singers of the evening as Herodias, although her notes sometimes took on a strident edge. House tenor Thomas Eberstein did admirable double duty as Narraboth and the Fourth Jew, a comical situation necessitated by a last-minute withdrawal. Latvian bass Egils Silins was a sexualized and wryly mocking Jochanaan, in this production clad in Che Guevara-style beret and dungarees, his body covered in Kabalistic tattoos. His singing was impressively furious and menacing, yet controlled, even while he was being straddled by Salome.

And then there was the evening's Salome, the ravishing Morenike Fadayomi (one of two Salomes singing in this production; the other is Annette Seiltgen) in a highly satisfying performance. Fadayomi is an ensemble member at the Staatstheater in Braunschweig, where she appears in other heavy roles such as Tosca, Leonora and Katerina in Lady Macbeth of Mzensk. With her impressively full range, she landed sensational high notes and purred blood-curdling low ones. Despite the erratically oversexed portrayal favored by director Reinhardt, she sculpted her phrases with sensitivity and pursuasiveness. It was a pity that the orchestra often overwhelmed even her. This Salome will be seen here eight more time before season's end in July, which should give everyone enough time to work out a better balance between stage and pit.

Wozzeck

BERLIN
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
4/21/11

The Berlin Staatsoper's spring festival days kicked off with a striking new production of Wozzeck, Alban Berg's Expressionist masterpiece, first given by the same company in 1925 (seen Apr. 21). Expectations ran high for the Staatsoper debut of Andrea Breth, the house director of Vienna's Burgtheater, whose elegant, menacing vision was one of the most persuasive productions I've seen in a long while. The sparse set (by Martin Zehetgruber) was a pavilion seen in various configurations and segments arranged to resemble prison cells, the frames of a comic strip, a rotating carnival or a madhouse. The few props were well chosen and effective in their starkness: dead rabbits being skinned by Andres, a radioactively green pea soup that the doctor spilled over Wozzeck's head. There were moments of crude sexuality and wantonness, with more implied than actually shown. Olaf Freese's sickly lighting enhanced the grim goings-on. All in all, this sleek production was a perfect fit for a work that's lost none of its power or daring. Claustrophobic, Kafkaesque and brutal, it was so suited to the music that the stagecraft almost became invisible. It was as if Breth had discovered the perfect tuning fork to resonate with every note of Berg's opera — not to mention an impressive cast to bring its dramatis personae to vivid life.

In the title role was Roman Trekel, a house baritone whose singing over the past few seasons has been uneven. There was no need to worry here, however, as Trekel proved to be superbly prepared and committed. His interpretation of the role was fairly traditional, although rarely have I seen such a bitter and rage-filled performance that was equally impressive vocally. In the past, Trekel has been somewhat clipped in the emotional range of his heavier roles. Here, he let loose with stunning despair, fear and anguish, attacking this famously difficult role with precision and gravity, while unexpectedly finding sweetness in the aching of a man splitting in half. His character's distress was palpable throughout his performance, even as he managed to sing accurately with his crepuscular and quivering tones.

His Marie matched Trekel in commitment if not, sadly, in execution. German mezzo-turned-soprano Nadja Michael is a highly impressive singing actress with a remarkably large vocal range. Here she used it to great effect, although her diction was distractingly imprecise and bizarre. Otherwise, her performance could have benefited from a general toning down. This is not to say that she sang shrilly: she just sounded somewhat unhinged vocally. She was at her best in her understated reading from the Bible at the beginning of Act III.

Wozzeck's tormentors, the Captain and the Doctor, were effective both individually and as a team. Singing the former was Graham Clark (who has sung the role often at the Met) in a deliciously manipulative and jeering performance marked by grotesque high-pitched taunting. Pavlo Hunka's sinister, ghoulish Doctor seemed like a Grosz painting come to life.

Tenor John Daszak, seen last season as Edmund in Komische Oper's new production of Lear, was a confidant, surly Drum Major, a role he performed in a muscle suit — a touch that was both clever and a trifle distracting. House tenor Florian Hoffmann, who recently starred in the company's new Rake's Progress made the most of his small role as Andres.

Fresh from conducting the company's new Walküre, Daniel Barenboim shifted gears impressively for the infernal variety of Berg's fifteen musical scenes. A holdover from the Wagner, however, was the propulsive forward charge and speed of the performance, which he slowed down during the musical interludes. Barenboim's approach is less obsessed with instrumental detail than Levine's is. It was in the music's more frenzied moments that one felt the acoustical limitations of the Schiller Theater, the Staatsoper's temporary home for the next four seasons. The orchestra never drowned out the singers, but a one could certainly imagine a balance that was kinder both to the singers and to the myriad orchestral effects and inventions. Aside from that, it was hard to argue with a dramatic momentum and drive that left one breathless. Even better news: Berth and Barenboim will join up again to tackle Lulu during the 2011–2012 season.

A. J. GOLDMANN

Tristan und Rusalka

2011-06-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

Here, just in from Opera News, are my reviews of the recent productions of Tristan und Isolde and Rusalka, from the Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper Berlin respectively.

After worthy new productions of Die Meistersinger at Komische Oper and Die Walküre at Staatsoper, the Berlin opera season's ambitious Wagner plans hit a snag with the March 13 premiere of Tristan und Isolde at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Director Graham Vick delivered a static, unfocused and ridiculous production, with the action confined to the living room of a modest suburban house. Paul Brown's nondescript, Ikea-inspired set was swiveled in various directions to distinguish between the three intended locations. The logic behind the characters' actions was difficult to penetrate. Tristan sat despondently on a sofa for most of Act I. Kurwenal entered wearing an apron. Melot awkwardly rearranged furniture in Act II. In Act III, he was killed coming out of the kitchen. Most perplexingly though, toward the end of the anguished final act, Tristan, now an old man, wandered offstage before Isolde reached him. The naked bodies that appeared periodically just added to the general confusion and detracted from the emotional power of the performances.

The title roles were taken by DOB regulars Peter Seiffert and Petra-Maria Schnitzer. The pair had surprisingly little onstage chemistry, despite being a real-life couple. Schnitzer, who was taking on the role for the first time, cut a serviceable if somewhat light figure as Isolde. Her voice carried her well through the evening, and she sang with full, open tones that turned marvelously creamy in the love duet. Aside from a couple of shrill high notes of greeting to Tristan during his Act II entrance, Schnitzer seemed to be playing it safe: she demonstrated a finesse that came at the expense of emotional complexity and vocal shading.

Despite some less than persuasive acting (especially during the Act I climax, in which the lovers took the potion intravenously), Seiffert, a practiced Tristan, was astonishing, vocally and dramatically convincing all the way through the evening. He rode the crest of the love duet admirably (thanks, as well, to Schnitzer and a hushed orchestra) and showed up for the murderous Act III in top form. Here, Seiffert landed his punishing high notes with brilliance, urgency and accuracy.

Eike Wilm Schulte was an unusually bright-voiced Kurwenal who made the role his own with a gripping and precise account marked early on by some idiosyncratic staccato. Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson was miscast as King Marke, sounding less a wounded monarch than a sorry old man. Perhaps this was Sigmundsson's idea of understatement, but a Marke without nobility makes little sense. Sigmundsson certainly improved in Act III, but he never fully vanquished the tired, despondent tones that marred his performance. Jane Irwin, as Brangäne, was off-form for much of the evening, especially during her warning cries, "Habet Acht!" which rang out flatly.

In the pit, Donald Runnicles led the superbly prepared orchestra in a propulsive and sensitive reading of the marathon score, occasionally overwhelming the singers. The prelude was full-blooded, with a plush, velvety sound to the strings, although the horn blasts could have been more prominent. Among the more pleasant effects were the soft texture of the ebbing strings and winds during the love duet and the understated mournfulness of the English horn solo in Act III.

Glimpses of the future were sighted at Komische Oper Berlin in late February, when incoming intendant Barrie Kosky took the house under the sea for his new production of Dvořák's Rusalka (seen Feb. 20). If Kosky's staging of Dvořák's melancholy fairy-tale opera was any indication, the house's future seems to be rather consistent with its present — not at all surprising, considering the popularity that Kosky has enjoyed during the tenure of the reigning Intendent Andreas Homoki. Rusalka is the sixth opera that Kosky, a versatile Australian director with a flair for batty regietheater concoctions, has directed at the house since 2003's Le Grand Macabre. His most recent outing here was last season's Rigoletto, a Houdini-inspired staging that was notably airless and menacing. It was a relief, then, to see that his take on Rusalka was both more restrained and more coherent.

The strangest part of Kosky's staging was also the one easiest to overlook — a mock-up of a miniature theater served as a slightly cramped space for the production to unfurl. The stage remained quite bare for most of the evening, save for a few tables and benches. Only in Act III was the whiteness of the set put to use, when a digital mock-up of the stage was projected onto the space, creating a slightly dizzying Disney Haunted House-type effect.

Kosky emphasized the story's inherent tragedy and the inevitable futility of Rusalka's mission. Though the plot was presented in a farce-like, even slapstick manner, the violence made one chuckle and wince at the same time. One such moment was Rusalka's transformation into a full-fledged woman. Here, the heroine was literally filleted by Ježibaba, who sliced open Rusalka's tail with a large knife and jerkily pulled out her vertebra. Indeed, fish were a generally prevalent theme of this production; Kosky littered the stage with aquatic specimens to both comedic and poignant effect. The Gamekeeper and Turnspit's scene in Act II contained many remote-controlled fish and eels flipping and flopping, soon to be hacked open and gutted. In the opera's finale, Rusalka hooked herself to a fishing rod left in the dead prince's arms, which provided an eerie and melancholy closing tableau.

Kosky's staging was consistent with the predominant style of KOB (physically dynamic regietheater), but there was more news to report in the singing department. In the title role was the Norwegian soprano Ina Kringelborn, a recently appointed ensemble member who did stellar work as Eva in September's premiere of Meistersinger. She lent the role of the water nymph a sweet urgency that encompassed rapture and despair. She often turned plaintive and sang with slightly dark shadings. Her range was impressive and blessedly free of breaks. Her delivery of the famous song to the moon was highly dramatic yet controlled — a stupendous legato-based performance noted for its controlled, steady phrasing, which Kringelborn ornamented with passing notes that galloped.

Timothy Richards, an old hand at the house, was disappointing as the Prince. His voice was too weighty for the role, and while he sang ardently, he often sounded leaden and even tired, despite a few brilliant high notes. He seemed to have trouble staying on top of the music, a shortcoming magnified by his stellar costars. Top male honors went to two other ensemble members, bass Dimitry Ivanschenko as Vodník (the Water Gnome) and tenor Peter Renz as the comical Gamekeeper.

As for the women, the striking Ursula Hesse von den Steinen made for a sultry Foreign Princess. She seduced the prince with her menacing and quivering voice. Agnes Zwierko was petrifying as the sorceress Ježibaba and struck bloodcurdling tones with dramatic conviction that bordered on the hammy, an impression heightened by this production. (In one scene, she killed a black cat and squeezed the blood out of its neck for Rusalka to drink.)

Patrick Lange, KOB's young chief director, led his orchestra in a sensitive performance that conveyed the work's dramatic sweep and brought out the score's delicate harmonies through careful dynamic variation. Dvořák's shimmering and most through-composed opera was sullied only by occasional sloppiness in the horns.

No Journalism After Auschwitz

2011-06-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Originally published in the New York Jewish Week

Mixed Media: Never Forget What Was Never Reported

Ari L. Goldman

Auschwitz, Poland — The philosopher Theodor Adorno famously said, “After Auschwitz, there can be no poetry.” While visiting the site of the notorious death camp last week, I could see the truth of Adorno’s words. There is no beauty in the barracks, the barbed wire and the crematoria. I saw no poetry in the mounds of hair and glasses and shoes on display.

But I did reach one other conclusion on my visit: “After Auschwitz, there must be journalism.” After all, the greatest stain on the practice of journalism in the 20th century was its failure to adequately tell the story of the Nazi crimes against the Jews. The mere telling of that story might have stopped — or at least slowed — the Nazi murder machine.

I was in Eastern Europe leading a group of journalism students on an exploration of the press during the Shoah. The goal of the program was to apply the ethical lessons of that time to contemporary situations, be they genocide, totalitarian regimes or corruption.

The program, administered by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, is called Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, known in short as FASPE. Journalists, of course, were not the only professionals who failed. There are also FASPE programs for law and medical students and for seminarians of all faiths.

The Rwanda government, military and the press incited and supported the murders, but the killings were often carried out in a random fashion by marauding mobs wielding machetes. What struck my Rwandan student, Eugene Kwibuka, while at Auschwitz, was the systematic apparatus of death that the Nazis established: the roundups, the deportations, the selections, the gassing, the burning and the harvesting of usable items, like gold teeth and hair.Only three of the 12 students in the journalism program were Jewish. Among the others were two students from India and two from Africa, all of whom had covered strife between ethnic and religious groups. One of the Africans was from Rwanda, which experienced a genocide of its own in the 1990s, when warring tribes killed 800,000 people.

He noted that victims were treated not like human beings, but like a “product.” “They were washed, killed and destroyed without a trace,” Kwibuka said. “A brutal process.”

Before coming to Auschwitz, our group visited Berlin where among the stops was the House of the Wannsee Conference, where, on Jan. 20, 1942, 15 top Nazis met to finalize plans for the murder of all of Europe’s 11 million Jews. Wannsee House is now an education and documentation center, and we met with one of its splendid educators, Wolf Kaiser.

Kaiser told us that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of his most strategic appointments was of Joseph Goebbels as minister for propaganda. Goebbels snuffed out any independent press that existed and put what remained in the service of the regime. In 1932, there were 4,700 newspapers in Germany; by 1944, as the regime was collapsing, fewer than 1,000 existed. None of them were telling the truth, either about the Jews or about the Nazi defeats on the military fields.

The failures of the American press to tell the story of the Shoah have been richly documented by two scholars: Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University and Laurel Leff of Northeastern University. The one exception to the failure of the American press was the work of the Jewish press, which told the story of the Holocaust even though no one in power seemed to listen. Evidence of this is abundantly clear with the recent opening of the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which are available online atwww.archive.jta.org.

Inevitably the discussion among my journalism students turned to the use of social media today, such as Facebook and Twitter, and how repressive regimes in Egypt and Tunisia were brought to their knees by what amounted to “citizen journalists” and their smartphones. The flip side of these social media tools, my students were quick to point out, are that they have the potential to distract us from what is important by burying us in gossip. We don’t always focus on genocides taking place in Africa or Asia today because we are too busy updating our Facebook pages.

David Goldman, a lawyer who is a friend but not a relative of mine, is the founder and driving force behind FASPE. He does not necessarily expect to stop despots or totalitarian regimes through the program, but he does hope to instill in participants an ethical sense that will shape their professional careers. “If we see terrible wrongs, it is our job as professionals to do something about that,” he said.

FASPE will be again be taking students from medical, law, theology and journalism schools next summer. To get more information go to www.mjhnyc.org/faspe. To see the work of the journalism students, go to ww.faspe.info/journalism2011.

What the Demjanjuk Verdict Means for Germany

2011-06-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

On May 12, a Munich court handed down a verdict of guilty to John Demjanjuk for accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews at Sobibor extermination camp, thereby ending three decades of legal proceedings to bring the former camp guard to justice.

The Demjanjuk case brings to mind “Deaths-Head Revisited,” the classic Twilight Zone episode where a former Nazi is put on trial by the ghosts of the inmates he tortured and killed at Dachau. Like the SS captain in the episode, Demjanjuk successfully managed to conceal his wartime past for decades. For Demjanjuk, who just turned 91 and may not end up serving any more prison time, the real punishment has consisted in being endlessly confronted and tortured by his past for nearly a third of his life.

Let us be very clear. The Munich trial, which began in November 2009 was never about Jews. It was always about Germany.

In late October 2010, I went to Munich to report on the trial for the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward. I was sent because the trial seemed to be winding down and the trial dates became scarcer and scarcer as Demjanjuk’s ailments (or alleged ailments) multiplied. At the time, I wrote: “One feels a palpable sense disconnect between the laudable goal of bringing a Nazi criminal to justice, and the humdrum grind of a long trial that sputters and slouches to an uncertain endpoint.”

Certainly, the defendant’s age and frailty were much commented-on. Pictures of Demjanjuk ailing and in bed gained him some sympathy from the press. But as Norman Moscowitz, a former lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations reminded me at the trial, “There’s no statue of limitations for murder.”

One can also refer to Philip Roth’s characterization of Demjanjuk in his novel, Operation Shylock: “[Demjanuk] proves only that to be both a loving grandfather and a mass murderer is not all that difficult.”

The Holocaust is the largest crime of the 20^th Century. And while modern-day Germany confronts its grim past on a daily basis like no other country (try to name other countries that have monuments to national crimes), the prosecution of Nazi criminals here over the past sixty years has been deeply flawed. The judges and lawyers in the Munich trial came of age in a Germany that grappled with its darkest chapter through research, debate and historical inquiry. These are the same qualities that have spurred Germany to its many research and commemoration projects.

In Berlin, where I live, everywhere you tread the streets are scattered with gold stones, the “Stolpersteine” (stumbling blocks) that remember the Jews who lived here before the war. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, occupies the very center of this once-divided city. Next week, the documentation center on the grounds of former Gestapo headquarters will host an international conference on the Eichmann Trial.

It is right that Jewish groups and leaders applaud the Munich court’s decision, but this trial is far more important for Germany, who took the unprecedented step in 2009 of extraditing Demjanjuk from the United States to stand trial for serving as a guard at Sobibor.

The Munich trial represented a remarkable shift. The prosecution was based on a theory that could have lead to thousands of convictions over the past six decades: in the lack of evidence of a specific crime, the prosecutors argued that if Demjanjuk was at a death camp, he participated in the killings.

At the trial, I spoke with relatives of Sobibor victims, who under German law, were allowed to join the prosecution as co-plaintiffs. They all told me the same thing. This trial isn’t about revenge. It is about justice. One of them, a Dutchman named Robert Fransman, even told me that he didn’t care a stitch about a sentence, just the conviction.

In 1993, when the Israeli Supreme Court overturned its 1988 conviction of John Demjanjuk as the notorious Treblinka guard “Ivan the Terrible” after hitherto unseen evidence from Soviet files had come to light, the judges ruled, “The matter is closed — but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge.”

In Munich, too, justice has been imperfect, incomplete, human. 66 years after the end of the Holocaust, John Demjanjuk is finally convicted and sentenced. We can certainly see this as too little too late. But we can also take comfort in the fact that Germany is taking steps to ensure that not all the murders will die peacefully in their beds.

Wim Wenders on Using 3D Technology

2011-05-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

(Published in the May /June travel issue of SOMA)

Among the world’s greatest filmmakers, Wim Wenders has persistently resisted easy categorization. One of the leading representatives of New German Cinema in the 1970s, he also has to his credit a $20 million sci-fi flop (Until the End of the World), an ill-fated collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola (Hammett) and a series of music documentaries, including his loving portrait of Cuban musicians, Buena Vista Social Club.

Now with nearly 30 feature and non-fiction films to his credit, Wenders has become one of the first European filmmakers to wield 3D digital technology with Pina, his loving portrait of the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in June 2009. The documentary débuted at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and was released stateside by Sundance on April 22nd.

An exuberant, lavishly-produced celebration of Bausch’s work, the film features dancers from her Tanztheater Wuppertal performing scenes from the ensemble’s best-known pieces, including “Café Müller,” “The Rite of Spring” and “Vollmond.” The stereoscopic technology is cleverly married to a fantastical mise en scène that pirouettes off Bausch’s stage and onto the streets, forests and public transportation of Wuppertal and its environs.

Wenders and Bausch had been discussing the possibility of collaborating on a film for roughly 20 years. Both were frustrated, however, by the limitations of two-dimensional cinema, specifically the medium’s inability to create a proper sense of space and depth. “I felt like there was a wall between her art and the essence of it and what it did in every live performance to every viewer I ever met, how it touched us and how it concerned us, that everyone’s soul was open,” Wenders explains during the Berlin Festival over coffee at the Adlon Hotel. “I didn’t think film could do it and my craft couldn’t do it.”

Wenders’ eureka moment came at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where a short 3D film by U2 was screened as part of one of the band’s concerts. “That little film was a sheer revelation for me and I hadn’t expected it. I did not expect technology to open that door,” the director continues. “I almost did not see the film, but I saw the potential of it.”

But technology had a long way to come to allow for the natural space that Wenders wanted to capture. “I wanted a sort of 3D that would disappear and make itself invisible and would just allow us entrance to space itself, which of course was the medium of Pina’s dancers. And so I had high hopes for this technology but it was a use of this technology that was so far unknown,” explains Wenders, expressing his admiration for James Cameron’s Avatar, while admitting that the live-action elements of the film pale in comparison to the animated ones.

“In order to face real life there was no example, there was not much done before and that was right away the biggest challenge because as much as the technology opened the door to space, it had no access to movement,” the director reflects.

Filming in 3D presented its opportunities and challenges. “We had to do our very best through these unknown two eyes [of the 3D camera] to make this emotion stay and reappear on the screen. In a way, the screen became nonexistent because in 3D the screen is gone and you see through it and it becomes a huge window and, of course, that was a new territory—this window into Pina’s work,” says the director, adding that he was guided by a sense of responsibility to Bausch: “I had to answer to myself that question with every shot: was it good enough? This is in its core a documentary and a documentary has a mission. It has the aim of showing something that you like and that you care about as beautiful as possible.”

Wenders says that making the film also helped Bausch’s ensemble process the reality of their founder’s death and move on to the next stage. “They are carrying this heritage and that they are Pina’s work now, because it doesn’t exist outside of this company,” the director says. “Her legacy is her 40 plays. And this company is doing all these plays and they have accepted that they are carrying this treasure and that nobody else can carry it. The film was a crucial step for them to take that responsibility,” he explains.
Wenders feels that there is a happy marriage between 3D and dance, and he is obviously satisfied with the film he stresses that he made for Bausch. To the larger question of whether 3D is merely a fad or something more lasting, Wenders thinks the technology is here to stay. He hopes, however, that directors will use this new tool prudently. “I think the stories will need a certain affinity to it and not every story needs to be told in 3D. I can only say that if I see most of the films today, it doesn’t make sense,” he says sharply.

Where he sees the greatest hope for the medium is not in animation or fantasy blockbusters, but in documentary films. “The core of it is that it gives you a different access also to reality, not just to fantasy, but to reality. I think the glorious application in the future will be a new realm of documentaries,” he elaborates, suggesting that filmmakers will use 3D to transport audiences to faraway places and experiences. Think of it as virtual travel.

This seems to be a view also held by Wenders’ countryman (and fellow New German Cinema veteran) Werner Herzog, who was also brandishing 3D technology at this year’s Berlin Festival with his Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, a cave in southern France which contains what are believed to be the oldest paintings and drawings in the world. Wenders has yet to see the film. He missed festival screenings because he was “busy partying” after the Pina premiere.

Mahlerfest Leipzig!

2011-05-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

(originally published at gramophone.co.uk)

One of the greatest pleasures of Gustav Mahler’s ten symphonies is how malleable they are, how wide a range of interpretive possibilities they open to the orchestras and conductors who dare to tackle them.

We’ve come a long way indeed from critic Paul Rosenfeld’s memorable 1922 characterisation of Mahler’s symphonies as “monuments of anguished aborted life, like indeed to torture-masses devised by the imagination of a ferocious medieval god for the punishment of transgressors against him".

Just as the composer’s 150th Birthday last July set off a worldwide Mahler frenzy, the 100th anniversary of his death, on May 18, has sparked a new wave of concerts.

In Berlin, Claudio Abbado paid a visit to his old band, the Berliner Philharmoniker, for a performance of Das Lied von der Erde (with soloists Jonas Kaufman and Anne Sofie von Otter); the Konzerthausorchester invited Michael Gielen for an inspiring performance of the First, followed swiftly by the Fourth, conducted by Peter Ruzicka; and tomorrow evening, Daniel Barenboim will lead the Berlin Staatskapelle in the elegiac Ninth.

However, in a true rarity, the German capital couldn’t hold a candle to its smaller neighbour to the east, Leipzig, which is pulling out all the stops for its International Mahler Festival, which began on the eve of anniversary and runs until the 29th.

This complete overview of Mahler’s symphonies features a delirious array of top-notch orchestras (including three that Mahler himself led in performances of his own work) and an impressive assortment of supplementary lectures, artist interviews, film screenings and exhibitions. It is without a doubt the grandest gesture yet during these back-to-back anniversary seasons. Then again, that Leipzig should enjoy such an honour doesn’t seem entirely unfair; this eminently musical city did indeed play a crucial role in Mahler’s development as a composer.

Mahler himself was only 26 when he arrived in Leipzig in 1886 to serve as second Kapellmeister at the opera. Although his duties were focused squarely on the podium (he led a whopping 188 performances during his two-year stint here), it was in Leipzig that Mahler turned earnestly to symphonic composition. “It was in fact when he came to Leipzig that Mahler started to discover the symphonic universe of his own with the First Symphony,” explained Riccardo Chailly in his office at the Gewandhaus before the opening of the festival on May 17.

It was also in Leipzig that the composer deepened his exploration of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the collection of poems that inspired much of his first four symphonies. During this period Mahler also became involved in completing Carl Maria von Weber’s unfinished opera Die Drei Pintos.
For Chailly the festival, curated by the Gewandhaus, is the fulfillment of a dream he has had ever since becoming the Gewandhausorchester’s musical director in 2005: “Since that time I really wished this Mahler festival to happen for the centenary of the death of Gustav Mahler but in particular to make known to the world that the roots of the Gewandhausorchester are linked directly with Mahler because of those years when he was here as a Second Kapellmeister”. Chailly enumerated some qualities his musicians brought to their reading of Mahler. “The sound, the colour of the Gewandhaus is one of the oldest. There is darkness but transparency at the same time, which is a unique, late romantic sound, which is perfectly born for these scores.”

These aspects certainly informed the Gewandhausorchester’s finely honed and heart-stopping performance of the Second. In the final movements, soloists Chrisiane Oelze and Sarah Connolly – both last-minute replacements – sang with accuracy and feeling, and were joined by the expertly prepared forces of the Berlin Radio Choir and MDR Radio Choir.

Chailly seemed justifiably proud of the programme he had helped put together. “We have the most representative orchestras in the world which can prove how Mahler can also change relationships to his music according to on the sound identity of an orchestra, sound culture, sound tradition of an orchestra. And I think we’ve selected the most significant orchestras,” he claimed.

Looking at the line-up, it was hard to disagree: in addition to the appearances from the Gewandhaus Orchestera, the festival also welcomed the Staatskapelle Dresden and Esa-Pekka Salonen in the Third, the Bavarian Radio SO with Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the Seventh, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic in the Fifth, the MDR SO led by Jun Märkl in the Tenth, the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev in the First, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Fabio Luisi in Das Lied von der Erde.

And that was just the first week.

Yet to come are appearances by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and David Zinman (the Sixth), the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Harding (the Fourth), and the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniele Gatti (the Ninth). To cap the festival, Chailly and his band will reclaim the stage for three performances of the gargantuan Eighth.

“I’m very proud because in less than two weeks you can have all this, and the comparison is a healthy competition to everybody,” Chailly added with a smile.

International Mahler Festival Leipzig runs until May 29

Reflections on the Japanese Catastrophe

2011-05-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

SHIRA DICKER

One week ago, it was just becoming clear that the massive earthquake in Japan was but the first of many calamities. Indeed, over the past seven days, the Japanese people have been subjected to disaster, death, displacement and danger on an unprecedented scale.

It is unoriginal and even perilous to term the devastation in Japan biblical but that is the description that comes closest. The suffering is so widespread, extreme and holistic that it appears wrought by a wrathful God.

Unlike accounts in the Bible, however, there is no indication of an egregious sin committed by the Japanese people to provoke such vengeance, no prophet of doom who provided a warning or chastised the population to repent. Whether one concludes that God is involved or not, the disaster in Japan occasions questions about God's existence (or inaction) in the face of such complete devastation.

To paraphrase Rabbi Harold Kushner, it is entirely appropriate to ask why such a bad thing happened to good people. Indeed, Rabbi Kushner's comments are included in a rather nice feature that CNN's belief blog put together on this topic. It is available here.

My personal theology places God at a remove from such events but I would be lying if I did not admit to an attempt to intuit God's motive or presence in all of this. Certainly, such questions are evoked by contemplation of the Shoah or other acts of man's inhumanity. Walking home from shul yesterday, I found myself committing a moral and intellectual misdeed: comparing the suffering of the Japanese with that of the victims of Hitler's Final Solution.

Though I take arms against the penchant to compare calamities, thereby robbing each of its uniqueness, I could not banish the thought that last week in Japan, Nature became a Nazi, hellbent on wiping out an entire nation through various acts of breathtaking cruelty. Perhaps thinking "Nazi"when contemplating inhumanity is a reflexively Jewish act, or maybe the word has just become shorthand for ultimate evil.

Inevitably, though, instead of feeling the sting of God's absence in the face of murderous acts of human nature or Mother Nature, I imagine God's grief over His/Her inability to intervene in earthly events.

But if nature turned against this damaged planet of ours, focusing her fury on Japan, that still only accounts for two disasters -- the earthquake and tsunamis. The third disaster, nuclear, is entirely man-made.

It is the nuclear nightmare, more than Mother Nature's meltdown, that will haunt Japan for decades to come.

And speaking of nightmares, I have been quite unable to sleep over this past week. With HOBB away, I have taken to sleeping with my laptop next to me, waking up several times during the night to check the news. I am riveted by the scope and depth of this disaster. I am haunted by the images, the faces and the staggering facts. One day it is the children's plight that moves me to tears, the next day, it is that of the elderly. The sheer destruction that has taken place within this country is so enormous that I weep for that as well, for all that is lost, broken and shattered. Brokenness itself is something to grieve.

Watching events unfold in Japan, the world at large seems shaken on some fundamental level.

Though local, this is an event of global and historical significance.

And personal significance as well, for not very long ago, less than three years to be exact, I was the mother of the bar mitzvah boy with the Japanese-infused ceremony, complete with beautiful Konichiwa banners, fans and parasols -- and of course, sushi. On a sultry June morning in 2008, I sat proudly at Congregation Ramath Orah listening to my youngest son talk about shared values in Jewish and Japanese tradition. Please find the text reproduced below.

On the pages of this blog, my youngest child is known as Little Babe. The Japanese theme came out of a several-year-long obsession he had with Japanese culture, food, language and history that began with the cartoon show, Pokemon. The interest in Pokemon cartoons extended to its characters and cards, then morphed into a similar obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh. From anime Little Babe graduated into manga, the Japanese graphic novels. Shortly, our apartment became overrun with these volumes. After a year, Little Babe stopped buying manga in translation and began teaching himself Japanese from the original editions. That, in turn, led to the purchase of dictionaries, both paper and digital, various CD-based language programs and eventually, the hiring of a tutor. Little Babe spent his spare time and money in Japanese markets and shops such as Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ and Kinokuniya in Manhattan.

It was a pleasure planning a bar mitzvah that catered to my son's Japanese passion. At the time, I put up a special blog, which is available here. In response to the Japan disaster, Little Babe is currently spearheading an effort to produce a fundraising concert in New York. A gifted musician, he will perform and will be inviting other teen groups to share the stage. The date is currently April 10th, the venue TBA. I will post more information as it becomes available. In this effort, he is working in cooperation with the remarkable SAR High School in Riverdale as well as the Joint Distribution Committee.

Please write to me if you want to get involved in any way.

As promised, here is a portion of Little Babe's bar mitzvah speech, which provides inspiration and one more reason, beyond the humanitarian, for Jews to jump to the support of the Japanese victims of this many-pronged disaster:

domo aregato no sannyuu made watashino bara mitsuva

ברוכים הבאים לבר מצוה שלי

In other words...thank you all for coming to my bar mitzvah.

You may have noticed by now that I'm interested in Japanese culture. I even wanted to wear a kimono while leining but for some reason my parents weren't into it.

I see symbols of Japan everywhere I look. Perhaps it was meant to be that my middle name is Shachar, or dawn, which commemorates how I was born at dawn, and is also reminiscent of Japan, the land of the rising sun.

You may not realize it but there are many things that Japanese and the Jews have in common. For one, they both have a feline national symbol. We of course have the Lion of Judah which adorns our own ark and stained glass windows here at Ramath Orah as well as many arks in other synagogues.

The Japanese have the monokie niko, the lucky cat, symbolizing wealth, happiness, prosperity and business. Japan and Israel comprise the bookend borders of the Asian continent, with Israel at the southwesternmost point in Asia, and Japan to the Northeast.

But perhaps most fundamentally, the value of honor, or kavod, that is so deeply ingrained in both value systems. This value is expressed in both cultures through the custom of removing one's shoes before entering certain areas.

Take my parsha (Torah portion) for example. I started out the parsha reading about Aharon lighting the menora. Try to visualize how glorious he looked while performing this service in the Temple. He was adorned with eight different kinds of the fanciest clothes, including a robe, an apron, a tunic, and a big fluffy hat. These clothes were quite colorful, with royal blue, bright red, and pure white. Every part of him was up and covered. Every part that is, except for his feet.

You would think Hashem (G-d) would have commanded the Kohen Gadol (high priest) to wear shoes of the fanciest kind, in fitting with the rest of his outfit.

But we know from elsewhere in Tanakh that G-d considered it more respectful to remove one's shoes in his presence. When Moshe was at the burning bush he was ordered to do so, as was Joshua in the presence of the angel. Indeed, the rabbis tell us that every Jew was commanded to remove their shoes before entering the Temple mount. The Talmud learns this requirement from the verse in Isaiah, where the prophet scolds the Jewish people, quoting G-d Himself as saying "Who asked this of you that you trample my courtyard?"

Why, you may ask, did G-d find it disrespectful to wear shoes in His presence?

I think we can learn the answer from our Japanese friends. From what I've read in manga, the reason the Japanese insist on shoe removal upon entering a home is because keeping your shoes on shows you're in a hurry to leave, just as keeping your coat on is rude even in our culture. Taking these things off shows kavod, respect, in that you're telling your host "I like it here in your home and I want to stay a while" I think G-d is telling us the same through the prophet Isaiah. Since the Temple Mount is where His presence, or shekhina, rests, the Mount is His home, so to speak. In hebrew we call it "Har Habayit", literally the mountain of G-d's house. Not surprisingly, G-d found it rude to appear as if you were in a rush to leave His home.

So we see there are some shared values between us and our far eastern friends. What accounts for this? If we assume that all spiritual truth originated with Abraham, how did some of this truth find its way to the far east? One theory is based on the narrative found in Genesis 25.

There, it tells us something that is not so well known: that Abraham took another wife named Ketura after Sarah had died, and they had six sons. We don't hear anything about these sons at all except the fact that Abraham "gave them gifts, and sent them eastward to the land of the east", or in Hebrew, he sent them "kedma el eretz kedem. "The rabbis tell us that the Torah does not waste words, so why does it repeat like this, "eastward to the east"?

One interpretation is that Abraham sent them literally to the FAR east, and that the "gifts" he gave them were the spiritual gifts of kaballah.

And so the Zohar says these children carried the spiritual spark of Abraham with them even though they would later forget where this spark came from. Avraham was told by G-d that he would be a "father of many nations" (Av hamon goyim), and we can see that his spiritual legacy lives on in many peoples. This idea, that everyone shares spiritual bonds in common, is a value my family has always stressed.

I hope to continue to embody this value in my own life, as I continue to explore Japanese, American, and of course my own Jewish heritage.

Wanda Landowska Honored in Eisenach

2011-05-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

(originally published in the Forward)

Berlin — When Virgil Thomson saw Wanda Landowska perform at New York’s Town Hall in 1942, he wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune, “She plays the harpsichord better than anybody else ever plays anything.” The same year, The New Yorker’s Robert Simon added: “When I’ve heard Mme. Landowska play harpsichord music, the same music has never seemed as convincing when I heard it afterward on a piano. Her playing is the last word on a composition.”

Landowska, the Polish-Jewish musician and educator sometimes called the “rediscoverer of the harpsichord,” is the subject of a loving new exhibit at the Bach House, in Eisenach.

Landowska’s biography is an exemplary narrative of late 19th-century European assimilation and cultural excellence. Raised as the precocious daughter of well-to-do Polish-Jewish parents, Landowksa left the country of her birth to further her musical studies in Berlin, and soon thereafter launched a brilliant career as both performer and educator of the harpsichord in France. With the approach of the Nazis, she fled to America. She started over in Lakeville, Conn., where she spent her remaining years performing, recording and teaching a new generation of harpsichord players.

The Eisenach exhibit provides an opportunity for reflection on Landowska’s performance philosophy. Did her musical ideas evolve out of a Jewish mentality that embraces both orthodoxy and rebellion? After all, the twin desires to conserve and reform were also goals of Felix Mendelssohn, who, in 1829 Berlin, was the first in more than a century to perform Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” Like Mendelssohn, Landowska fought the public of her day for acceptance of her Bach, played on an instrument that was unfamiliar to her contemporaries. In this, she was both a traditionalist looking back to earlier musical modes and practices and a radical who challenged prevailing interpretation and practice.

The Eisenach exhibit marks the 100th anniversary of Landowska’s 1911 “musical battle” between the piano and the harpsichord in the central German city of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth. This battle convinced many that the harpsichord was not merely an archaic and musically inadequate ancestor of the piano. According to a contemporary Parisian reviewer cited in the exhibition text: “The endless ovations for Mme. Wanda Landowska, against whom not just one but two pianists had competed… had proved to her that musical right, if I may put it like this, was on her side.” Part of Landowska’s musical heritage is that such “battles” are no longer necessary. Indeed, the now-commonplace notion of “authentic performance practice” owes her an enormous debt of gratitude.

The exhibit appropriately discusses Le Temple de la Musique Ancienne in Saint-Leu-de-la-Forêt, which is 20 miles outside Paris and was Landowska’s early music mecca from 1927 until 1940. Landowska worked closely with the architect to design the concert hall and garden to her specifications. Visitors who came to pay court to the great artist and attend concerts included musical luminaries Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc and Vladimir Horowitz, as well as literary ones, such as Paul Valéry and Edith Wharton.

Convinced that the Nazi threat was temporary, Landowska left France with only two suitcases, leaving behind her renowned collection of historic and modern keyboard instruments. The majority of the contents of more than 50 crates confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 have never resurfaced. American harpsichordist Skip Sempé calls this plunder “the first and the most important cultural theft in France that victimized both a Jewish musician of worldwide influence and a distinguished resident of France.”
At 80 years old, Rafael Puyana, who studied with her in Lakeville after the war, is Landowska’s last remaining professional student. In an interview with the Forward, Puyana — who currently resides in Paris — explained how he was inspired to learn the harpsichord (an instrument that didn’t even exist in his native Colombia) after hearing a bootleg recording of Landowska playing Bach’s French Suites. He remembers her as an “extremely patient” yet demanding teacher. “I’m a very lucky person — I was a pupil of two of the greatest musical minds of our time,” he confided to the Forward. The other one was the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger. Part of Landowksa’s genius, Puyana explained, was that she proved that the harpsichord was not cold, but rather the “most convincing and sensual instrument in the world.”

The Bach House is exhibiting its 1927 Pleyel harpsichord, similar to the ones favored by Landowska. In fact, the French-made instruments were designed to Landowska’s specifications. The harpsichordist required an instrument that could replicate the once brilliant sound of the centuries-old keyboards (kept mostly for show in museums), as well as one that was durable enough to withstand the demands of a regular touring schedule. Demonstrations are given every hour. Visitors can also hear samples of Landowska’s landmark recordings of “The Goldberg Variations” and “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and discover the fresh energy she brought to her interpretations.

Her passion and sense of discovery come through despite age and imperfect recording quality. Landowska’s recorded legacy — her career spanned the history of early 20th-century recording technology — is perhaps the greatest proof that she was not, as is often claimed, dogmatic and doctrinally rigid. Much of the blame for this seemingly misguided view comes from her famously snide remark to the great Spanish cellist Pablo Casals: “You play Bach your way, and I’ll play Bach his way.”

In a recorded interview featured at the Bach House, Ton Koopman, the celebrated contemporary maestro of early music — and a harpsichordist — cautions against taking Landowska’s well-known assertion at face value. “She was a musician [who] belongs to her time. And to be honest, every epoch has its own Bach. We shouldn’t think that our Bach in our age is the definitive Bach,” the Dutch musician explains.

“It is understandable that I had to fight for this instrument because it is so different from the piano,” Landowska explains in a 1953 NBC television program, “Wanda Landowska at Home.” In this wonderful piece of vintage TV reportage, the elderly musician gives a demonstration of her beloved Pleyel and discusses her life. “To find Bach’s instrument, his true instrument, was my obsession,” she explains. Moments later, though, she balks at the suggestion that she is a perfectionist: “Perfection is something very cold. A human being cannot be perfect.”

Landowska was a performer and teacher who found beauty, solace and meaning in the world of her beloved harpsichord. In the TV program, she was asked if she could still believe in the goodness of people after the catastrophe that drove her from Europe. Her answer was quick and decisive: “How could the world be without hope if we have this music?”

Berlin Staatsoper & Deutsche Oper - 2011 / 2012

2011-04-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Berlin's two rival opera houses in the West, the Berlin Staatsoper im Schiller Theater and the Deutsche Oper Berlin both announced their 2011 /2012 seasons last week. While both houses have impressive lineups, I must confess I'm more excited by the Staatsoper's offerings, which includes a whopping 9 new productions, including DON GIOVANNI, LULU, FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD, THE BARTERED BRIDE and Luigi Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore.
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Premiere

Al gran sole carico d'amore

Ingo Metzmacher | Katie Mitchell | Vicki Mortimer

Premiere

Aus einem Totenhaus

Simon Rattle | Patrice Chéreau | Richard Peduzzi | Caroline de Vivaise

Premiere

Die verkaufte Braut

Karl-Heinz Steffens | Balász Kovalik | Csaba Antal | Bettina Walter

Premiere

Dionysos

Ingo Metzmacher | Pierre Audi | Jonathan Meese | Jorge Jara

Premiere | Guest performance

Don Giovanni

Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Daniel Barenboim | Robert Carsen | Philippe Girandeau | Michael Levine | Brigitte Reiffenstuel

Premiere

Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno

Marc Minkowski | Jürgen Flimm | Catharina Lühr | Erich Wonder | Florence von Gerkan

Premiere

Lulu

Daniel Barenboim | Andrea Breth | Erich Wonder | Moidele Bickel

Premiere

Orpheus in der Unterwelt

Premiere

Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo

René Jacobs | Achim Freyer

-------

Highlights from the Deutsche Oper's offerings include a new DON CARLO, JENUFA AND LOHENGRIN.

Premiere

Don Carlo | Giuseppe Verdi

Premiere
Konzertant

La Favorita | Gaetano Donizetti

Berliner Premiere

Tancredi | Gioacchino Rossini

Premiere

Jenufa | Leos Janacek

Premiere

Lohengrin | Richard Wagner

Premiere
Konzertant

I due Foscari | Giuseppe Verdi

Composer Alexander Goehr Feted in Berlin

2011-02-04T06:42:00.002-08:00

From the Forward.com blog, The Arty Semite.

By A.J. Goldmann

For over half a century, Alexander Goehr has been one of England’s most important composers, an avant-garde musician whose varied (and often challenging) body of work has been championed by luminaries including Pierre Boulez, Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline de Pré.

Goehr’s manuscripts have recently been acquired by the music archive of Berlin’s Akademie der Künste. On January 26, Ultraschall, Berlin’s festival for new music (which ran this year from January 21 to 30) feted him with a composer portrait.

Goehr was born in 1932 into a remarkably musical Jewish Berlin family. His father, the conductor Walter Goehr, championed the music of Monteverdi and Messiaen and also wrote the score to David Lean’s “Great Expectations” and conducted for several of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films. Both Walter and his brother, Rudolph, a composer of popular music in Paris, took master classes in Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Alexander’s mother, Laelia, was a classically trained pianist. (The family’s accomplishments continue with Goehr’s daughter Lydia, a philosophy professor at Columbia University, who writes extensively about philosophy and music.)
Goehr was only a few months old when his family moved to London, where his father became musical director of the Gramophone Company (which later became EMI). In 1952, he founded the New Music Manchester Group with Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwhistle and John Ogdon. “We were rather arrogant students pretending to be the Second Viennese School,” Goehr said at last week’s event. He also recalled a long ago conversation with Aaron Copland about aging. “A composer has it hard when he’s old,” Copland told Goehr during a stroll around Lincoln Center. “He either tries to copy [the new style], in which case he becomes ridiculous, or he tries to correct it, in which case his work becomes irrelevant.”
Such an appraisal, however, is hardly appropriate for the ever-dynamic 78-year-old Goehr. The mini-retrospective program showed the composer at various stages in his career, from “Warngedichte” (1967), a series of eight songs for soprano and piano set to poems by Goehr’s friend and frequent collaborator, the Viennese émigré Erich Fried, to “Das Gesetz der Quadrille” (1979), another song cycle, this time based on fragments by Franz Kafka. The program also included more recent works like the “Piano Quintet” (2000) and “Since Brass Nor Stone…” (2008), a Shakespeare-inspired fantasy for string quartet and percussion, both heard here in their German premieres.
The evening also included a screening of a vintage BBC program about Goehr’s first opera, “Arden muss sterben” (“Arden Must Die”), about a mayor of Faversham who was murdered in 1551 by his wife and her lover. With a libretto (and preachy epilogue) by Fried, the opera takes on the aspect of a Brechtian morality play. The work, a commission from the Hamburg State Opera, was interpreted at its 1966 premiere as an indictment of Germany society after the Holocaust, a suggestion that the composer denies to this day.

Watch the BBC documentary ‘Arden Must Die’:

Composer Alexander Goehr Feted in Berlin

2011-02-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

Snow Queen in Berlin

2011-02-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

BERLIN
Komische Oper Berlin
10/24/10

October was a grim month for opera in Berlin, filled with evil dwarfs (Das Rheingold), debauched Dons (Don Giovanni) and pseudo-intellectual hogwash (Metanoia). But escape was at hand with Komische Oper Berlin's October 24 world premiere of Pierangelo Valtinoni's children's opera The Snow Queen, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The production was a sheer delight — less so for the quality of the music than for the colorful staging by Anisha Bondy and the exuberance of the cast.

A commission from KOB, The Snow Queen has an Italian-language libretto by Paolo Madron, yet it was offered here in German, keeping with the house's tradition of presenting foreign-language works in translation. Valtinoni's previous children's opera, Pinocchio, has been a repertory staple since it had its premiere here in 2006.

Valtinoni's tuneful yet pedestrian score for Snow Queen was closer in spirit to the Great White Way than to La Scala, with jazzy ostinatos frequently popping out, repeated motifs that resembled Sweeney Todd and a conversational approach to vocal writing that brought to mind Bernstein's Candide. The heavy amplification added to this impression. The most genuinely operatic moments came during Act I's wintertime carnival, which took a page from Puccini's evocation of wintertime mirth and intoxication at the Café Momus. Even here, the principal attraction was not the score but the impressive stagecraft (including an onstage Ferris wheel) and the dozens of children with cotton candy, scurrying about in outlandishly goofy costumes. Aside from this frantic choral ensemble, the orchestral interludes seemed, on the whole, more sophisticated and accomplished that the vocal writing. Valtinoni mixed elements of lyric opera and film-score writing: the meeting at the prince and princess's palace was introduced by a fanfare whose heavy percussion added a suitably mock-heroic quality. Valtinoni effectively evoked Gerda's nocturnal ride through the forest with urgent, darting strings and eerie bowing. The musicians, led by French maestro Aurélien Bello, seemed to enjoy playing this spirited and none-too-demanding music.

The main cast was made up of many KOB regulars and a surprising number of children who were given important solos. Given the episodic nature of the libretto, few characters were continuous throughout the evening, with some singers assuming multiple roles. Soprano Anna Borchers, recently seen here in La Périchole and Der Vetter aus Dingsda, carried the evening with her charming, spirited performance as Gerda.

Another standout was the gruff, slapstick Reindeer of house bass Carsten Sabrowski (who just sang Konrad Nachtigall in the new Meistersinger and is known here for Leporello and Figaro), looking a bit like Meatloaf with antlers. Mirko Janiska, who usually sings Mozart and Rossini baritone roles, twitched and stuttered his way through as Mr. Crow. House mezzo Elizabeth Starzinger channeled Roald Dahl menace as the Flower Girl and more classical fairytale manner as the Lady from Lapland. The tenor Matthias Siddhartha Otto, a member of the opera studio here, sang Kay with bright and somewhat frantic tones. Young soprano Sophia Duwansee was a sweet-voiced yet forceful Robber Daughter. Somewhat anticlimactically, the Snow Queen herself never makes an appearance in the piece. On this occasion, her few ghostly lines were sung offstage by Anastasia Melnik.

Bondy — a young Berlin director who is no relation to Luc Bondy — worked with an uncommonly large production team to deliver a maximalist production that was overstuffed yet elegant and swung very adroitly between silliness and seriousness.

Berlin Competition Selection Complete

2011-01-19T04:08:00.000-08:00

The Competition Line-Up of the 61st Berlin International Film Festival is now complete. According to a press release posted this morning on the Berlinale website, this year's installment of the festival, which runs from February 10 - 20, 2011, will feature 22 films, 16 of which will be competing for the gold and silver bears.

Among the offerings are new films from Béla Tarr, The Coen Brothers, Miranda July, Wim Wenders, Joshua Marston, Jonathan Sagall and Ralph Fiennes.

The Competition-productions are from Argentina, Austria, Germany, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Luxemburg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and USA.

COMPETITION PROGRAM

A Torinói Ló (The Turin Horse) Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland

By Béla Tarr (Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies)

With János Derzsi, Erika Bók, Mihály Kormos

World premiere

Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (Almanya) Germany

By Yasemin Samdereli – debut film

With Vedat Erincin, Fahri Yardin, Aylin Tezel, Lilay Huser, Demet Gül

World premiere / Out of Competition

El premio (The Prize) Mexico/France/Poland/Germany

By Paula Markovitch – debut film

With Paula Galinelli Hertzog, Sharon Herrera, Laura Agorreca, Viviana Suraniti, Uriel Lasillo

World premiere

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Nader And Simin, A Separation) Iran

By Asghar Farhadi (About Elly, Fireworks Wednesday)

With Leila Hatami, Peyman Moadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi

International premiere

Les contes de la nuit (Tales Of The Night) France

By Michel Ocelot

World premiere – animated film in 3D

Les femmes du 6ème étage (Service Entrance) France

By Philippe Le Guay (Le coût de la vie)

With Fabrice Lucchini, Sandrine Kiberlain, Carmen Maura, Natalia Verbeke International premiere / Out of Competition

Margin Call USA

By JC Chandor – debut film

With Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore , Paul Bettany, Zach Quinto

International premiere

Mein bester Feind (My Best Enemy) Austria/Luxemburg

By Wolfgang Murnberger (The Bone Man)

With Moritz Bleibtreu, Georg Friedrich, Ursula Strauss, Uwe Bohm, Marthe Keller, Udo Samel

World premiere / Out of Competition

Saranghanda, Saranghaji Anneunda (Come Rain Come Shine)

Republic of Korea

By Lee Yoon-ki (Love Talk, This Charming Girl)

With Lim Soo-jung, Hyun Bin

World premiere

Schlafkrankheit (Sleeping Sickness) Germany/France/Netherlands

By Ulrich Köhler (Windows on Monday, Bungalow)

With Pierre Bokma, Jean-Christophe Folly, Jenny Schily, Hippolyte Girardot

World premiere

The Forgiveness Of Blood USA

By Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace)

With Tristan Halilaj, Sindi Laçej, Refet Abazi, Ilire Vinca Çelaj, Çun Lajçi

World premiere

Un Mundo Misterioso (A Mysterious World) Argentina/Germany/Uruguay

By Rodrigo Moreno (The Custodian)

With Esteban Bigliardi, Cecilia Rainero, Rosario Bléfari

World premiere

Unknown Germany/Great Britain/France

By Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan)

With Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz

International premiere / Out of Competition

V Subbotu (Innocent Saturday) Russia/Germany/Ukraine

By Alexander Mindadze (Otryv/ Soar)

With Anton Shagin, Svetlana Smirnova-Martsinkievich, Stanislav Rjadinsky, Vjacheslav Petkun, Sergej Gromov

World premiere

Competition films announced in the press release on December 15, 2010:

Bizim Büyük Çaresizliğimiz (Our Grand Despair) by Seyfi Teoman, Turkey/Germany/Netherlands, world premiere

Coriolanus by Ralph Fiennes, Great Britain, world premiere

Odem (Lipstikka) by Jonathan Sagall, Israel/Great Britain, world premiere

Pina by Wim Wenders, Germany/France, world premiere / out of competition – dance film in 3D

The Future by Miranda July, Germany/USA, international premiere

True Grit by Joel and Ethan Coen, USA, international premiere / out of competition

Wer wenn nicht wir (If Not Us, Who) by Andres Veiel, Germany, world premiere

Yelling To The Sky by Victoria Mahoney, USA, world premiere

Two special screenings will also be presented at the Berlinale Palast; Offside, by the convicted Iranian director Jafar Panahi, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 festival. It will be screened on February 11, the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.

The second special screening is the European premiere of Werner Herzog’s 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which will join two other 3D films as part of the Official Program. .

Berlin Fall 2010 Opera Review

2011-01-14T04:17:00.000-08:00

Discussed: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (KOB), Don Giovanni (DOB), Metanoia and Das Rheingold (Staatsoper im Schillertheater)

Originally published in Opera News

In late September, a very ambitious opera season kicked off in Berlin with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Komische Oper Berlin. As the first of twenty-two new productions (including four Wagner operas) to be seen this season in the city, it was certainly an auspicious sign for the coming months.

Directed by intendant Andreas Homoki, Meistersinger was easily the most ambitious project the Komische has attempted in a long time. (The old production by Harry Kupfer hasn't been seen in ages.) Not only is Meistersinger a good two hours longer than the house's standard fare, but the KOB went to great lengths to recruit fine singers from their arsenal (and beyond) for the sizable principal cast.

Homoki gave us a stripped-down, sparse, fairly Brechtian staging that was, for the first two acts, drained entirely of color. Only in the final act did the boxy buildings that glided across the stage like gigantic Monopoly houses and hotels become injected with plush, cotton-candy hues, producing an abstract storybook Nuremberg. The sudden infusion of color zapped much more energy and vitality into the opera's searing finale, which sprang to life with more pizzazz and excitement than had been in evidence over the preceding four hours.

Tómas Tómasson, as Hans Sachs, got the evening's loudest ovation. But this reviewer found the Icelandic baritone, who made a sensational impression in last season's Lear, rather staid and workmanlike as Sachs. He certainly had stamina and volume enough to sustain this weighty assignment, and at times he even made a dazzling impression in individual scenes (such as an uncommonly fiery "Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn!"). On the whole, however, Tómasson seemed content to make it through the role as painlessly as possible. He also, quite simply, did not bring appropriate gravitas to the role. Speaking to this final point, it certainly didn't help matters that Homoki had him made up like central-casting proletariat.

Similarly, the Beckmesser, Tom Erik Lie — an ensemble member at Komische Opera — was hampered by a dopey Mephistophelian get-up and acting choices that exaggerated his character's every neurotic quirk. Despite this, Lie was in excellent voice throughout the evening and successfully balanced Beckmesser's arrogance, suspicion and (even) heartache. It isn't necessarily rare to find pathos in Wagner's caricature of an over-intellectual, derivative (possibly Jewish) critic, but Lie took this a step further by presenting a Beckmesser who was less sniveling and whining — and on-the-whole more mellifluous — than the norm.

One of the brightest stars on view was Marco Jenzsch, a truly heroic and believable Walther von Stolzing. His good looks certainly helped him transform a character who often comes across as a lovable dope into a magnetic and compelling man. One could argue that Jenzsch doesn't have a true heldentenor voice, and that his instrument is somewhat too light, too buoyant and a bit thin at the top. Still, his lilting, sweetly agile voice, with its brilliant shadings, proved both endearing and enchanting. I have never heard the Preislied sung so movingly. The more vulnerable qualities of his singing and his finely honed vocal acting allowed one to imagine that a conductor would do well to cast him as Mime. (Jenzsch will in fact be seen as Loge in the Staatsoper's new Rheingold later this season.)

His Eva was the sublime Norwegian soprano Ina Kringelborn, who sang her entire role with sweet urgency. A newly appointed KOB ensemble member, Kringelborn, who will also star in a new Rusalka this season, believably enacted Eva's successive states of ardor, fear, defeat and ultimate joy with a delicately agile voice that showed little signs of strain by evening's end. Other standouts included the KOB's Günter Papendell, a commanding and stately Fritz Kothner, and energetic house tenor Thomas Eberstein as David.

The Komische Oper chorus, usually one of the house's weaker elements, was augmented by additional voices for this production, and they delivered beautifully. In the pit, the house's chief conductor, twenty-nine-year-old Patrick Lange, showed great energy and focus during this marathon work. It was a pity that the orchestra wasn't entirely able to give him what he was looking for — although, truth be told, the house's increasingly problematic acoustics may have been partly to blame. Lange is fiery and youthful, yet he still possesses a somewhat traditional temperament. He will make his conducting debut later this season at the Vienna State Opera. Don't be surprised if some other house snatches him up before long.

Roland Schwab's new production of Don Giovanni, which had its premiere at Deutsche Oper Berlin in mid-October, was not so terrible as some other recent X-rated Dons I've seen — I'm thinking specifically of the infamous Calixto Bieito production at ENO — though it bore a resemblance to many of them (seen Oct. 16). After an understated beginning, in which the main dramaturgical idea seemed to be a silent chorus of men who pantomimed Govanni's and Leporello's actions, the stage was swept up in a gruesome and confusing bacchanal for the Act I finale that featured bare flesh, acrobatics and what appeared to be a pubescent somnambulist.

Although the production's frequent excesses — its dips into trashiness and crass idiocy — were all too obvious, this Don had an undeniable air of excitement and made use of some well-harnessed stagecraft in the telling of the story. This was nowhere more the case than in the descent to hell, during which, amid much stage-wizardry and fog, the set for the Don's Act I party — a rotating inferno of debauchery — came once more into focus. This was arguably the production's best idea: the Don was swallowed by a hell of his own making.

The singing under Roberto Abbado's direction was of uncommon caliber. In the title role, Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, making his DOB debut, offered genuinely seductive menace in an assured, nuanced performance — brazen and commanding when flying into a rage, wielding delicate legato while wooing. His Leporello, the young Italian bass Alex Esposito, deserved an Olympic medal for his hyper-athleticism, which added much to his vocally accomplished performance. He could be gruff and a trifle raspy at times, but who would not be after turning somersaults and walking on his hands and knees and other such shenanigans. The evening's Ottavio was DOB ensemble member Yosep Kang, who despite a few shaky notes early on, gave a much-needed backbone to this often wimpy-seeming character. This production chose not to include "Il mio tesoro," so "Dalla sua pace" was Kang's key moment to shine, and shine he did, with an ardent, urgent rendition peppered with well-appointed ornamentations. Krzysztof Szumanski was a stubborn, slightly dopey Masetto, Ante Jerkunica a chilling Commendatore.

Top honors on the distaff side went to Marina Rebeka's brilliant Donna Anna. She threw in some unexpected ornamentation for good measure and slipped only when she let her voice grow too big, which cost her some accuracy. Mezzo Ruxandra Donose had the appropriate technique and timbre for Elvira, along with laser-precision accuracy. One only wished that her penetrating voice were a bit more agile. Martina Welschenbach (another DOB ensemble member) made a stunningly bright, seductive Zerlina.

Abbado led a surprisingly understated performance, which certainly had the effect of focusing one's attention more fully on the singers. At the same time, many of the music's most beautiful details were lost. The major chord transformation (announced in the horns) that accompanies Ottavio and Anna's Act II entrances was totally obscured. Still, there seemed less justification for the boos Abbado received during the curtain call than for the overwhelming boos for Schwab and his production team. Don Giovanni is one of the most sublime works ever written. Why do directors — especially in Europe — continually insist on sullying this masterpiece with demented interpretations? How much longer must we suffer Dons who are nothing but thugs, a stage littered with garbage and naked bodies? Help!

It is not often that one opens a playbill to find the following caveat from the production team: "We don't really know what has come into existence here."

But such a warning was issued in early October, when Staatsoper Unter den Linden opened an unusually ambitious season with the world premiere of Jens Joneleit's one-act opera Metanoia in its temporary home for the next three seasons, The Schiller Theater in Western Berlin (seen Oct. 3). Freely adapted by René Pollesch, one of Germany's most respected dramaturges, from Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy," the production was to have been led by the theatrical enfant terrible Christoph Schlingensief, who died in July.

In the absence of Schlingensief, and with only six weeks of rehearsal to get the new work in shape, the Staatsoper cobbled together a malformed, semi-staged production that featured nods to the late director, such as a quasi-industrial design that included scaffolding, gigantic oversized sculptures of bodily organs and projections of blood-and-sex-soaked films by Schlingensief. In all, it seemed that the floundering production team (a collaborative group that numbered twenty artists involved with most every element of the production) was trying its damnedest to assure the audience — as the program wished — a pleasant time, but not too pleasant a time.

Indeed, one might have been able to forgive, or at least overlook, the sloppy stagecraft (respect for the deceased director certainly seemed to keep the audience's more vociferously critical element in check during the curtain calls) had there been much to recommend this new score from one of Germany's most unusual composers.

Instead, this short work (the first world premiere seen at the Staatsoper since Hans Werner Henze's Phaedre,which kicked off the 2007–08 season) was tepid, underwhelming and exasperatingly pretentious. It might have been Joneleit's intent to channel Scelsi and that composer's exquisite and haunting explorations of the depths contained in a single tone, but far from expansive and otherwordly, Joneleit's music sputtered and self-destructed at most every turn. The Stockhausean chaos — fleeting notes, heavy percussion, bullet-like repeated notes in the horns — at the beginning held some promise. But the grim orchestral outbursts of thick, savage chords that initially were so gripping became drab and ineffectual from overexposure. The vocal writing that overlay it was by turns dully traditional or exaggeratedly manic. There was no place here for lyricism.

Pollesch's insistently plotless libretto, a mish-mash of Nietzsche and pop song lyrics, came across as pompous and laughable, precisely because it aspired to profundity. One example: in the opera's coda, actor Martin Wuttke (wearing, by the way, a toga) recited a monologue that included the following mantra: "The answer is blowing in Darwin."

The five soloists all did admirable work, wearing somewhat Baroque-meets-Gothic outfits. Heading the cast was Staatsoper favorite Annette Dasch, who sang Joneleit's unmemorable vocal writing with zest and refinement. The "character tenor" Graham Clark was big on volume and stamina, but his voice often turned gravelly. Then again, maybe this was the point. Who knows? Only midway through did I realize that the disturbing rubberized bodysuits made the chorus look like Teletubbies.

Daniel Barenboim conducted with swift conviction, and the members of the Staatskapelle (like the performers onstage) seemed to give their all to a work that simply wasn't all that worthy to begin with. The few chills I experienced that evening derived from the sophisticated and surprisingly restrained electronic components of the score, realized by the EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO of SWR radio station.

A week after a disappointing season-opener with Jons Joneleit's new opera Metanoia, the Staatsoper unter den Linden got back on its feet with a bold Das Rheingold, the first installment in a new Ring cycle staging from Belgian director Guy Cassiers (seen Oct. 17), conducted by Daniel Barenboim. This Ring, a coproduction between the Staatsoper and La Scala (where this staging was first seen this past May) will be forged over the next two seasons. If this Rheingold was any indication, the cycle should glisten and glow most satisfyingly.

Cassiers, who leads the Antwerp Toneelhuis, Flanders's largest municipal theater, gave us a sparse yet versatile set (the work of the director, along with Enrico Bagnoli) that features shallow pools for the Rhinemaidens to splash about in, a brick wall and a reproduction of Belgian sculptor Jef Lambeaux's bas-relief "The Human Passion," onto which were projected a variety of videos, images and shadows. The moment when the giants threaten to cart Freia off was described by a shadow play from behind the set, in which the human-sized Freia interacted with the giants' elongated shadows.

Much of the staging concept was developed by the Toneelhuis, a theater company known for blending elements of drama, music, video and dance. Given the theater's insistently multimedia approach, it seemed appropriate for these artists to tackle Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk. Much of the video was simultaneously filmed and projected during the performance, yet technology never threatened to overwhelm the production. And I have rarely seen dance so well deployed in the service of the story. The expressive dancers of the Eastman Company (the resident dance company at the Toneelhuis, under the leadership of choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) leapt, slithered and contorted themselves to become the undulating Rhine, the Tarnhelm's sorcery or Alberich's throne.

The production's success derived in large measure from the abilities of a dynamic, mostly German cast, who seemed to be especially encouraged to inject their personalities into the roles. One consequence of this was that Wagner's mythological menagerie became flesh-and-blood creatures, less burdened by cumbersome costumes than by their own whims and foibles.

Stephan Rügamer's Loge was one of the evening's greatest delights. He played the fire-god with Puck-like agility, mischief, enthusiasm and humor, while Johannes Martin Kränzle found both pathos and menace in Alberich. Rügamer's laughing voice was full of creamy tones, but with a hard edge that asserted itself forcefully and charismatically. Kränzle found harsher tones and grim shadings for his Alberich, who was here conceived as something of Loge's doppelganger. Both singers were capable of finding red-hot passion and refreshing realism in their respective roles. The superb house bass Kwangchul Youn won one of the evening's largest ovations as an imposing, bone-chilling Fasolt, next to whom Timo Riihonen's Fafner seemed pale and timid.

Ekaterina Gubanova's Fricka was probably the most traditional of the bunch. Next to her more daring cast members, her crisp enunciations and clean tone came across as staid and old-fashioned. Anna Samuil was perhaps a bit too forceful as Freia. Anna Larsson was spine-tingling in her brief appearance as Erda. No amount of splashing around seemed to distract the evening's superb Rhinemaidens, led by the riveting Woglinde of Aga Mikolaj.

Marco Jentzsch, who recently triumphed as Walther in Komische Oper's new Meistersinger, made the most of his small role as Froh. Jan Buchwald lent his commanding force to Donner. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke's Mime was suitably anxious and abused, though perhaps a trifle too sniveling.

Sad to say, one of the main cast's biggest problems was Hanno Müller-

Brachmann's Wotan. This was a case of well-intentioned miscasting. Müller-Brachmann, a beloved ensemble member, had many passages of brilliance and careful phrasing, but in terms of an overall interpretation, he did not command the authority and poise required. It wasn't a complete fiasco, but watching his courageous performance, one couldn't help feeling that this highly talented singer was attempting a role that he should not take on at this point in his career. (René Pape will sing the role for the spring performances of Die Walküre).

All of Berlin was delighted to have Daniel Barenboim at the helm of this new production. He led a swift, dramatically charged performance that was not without its idiosyncratic dynamic choices. (The orchestral swell at the end of the prologue, for instance, was curiously muted.) He played with the myriad contrasts and oppositions in both score and libretto. The horns that introduced the Rhine's gold were somewhat rusty, as if to symbolize the rot and decadence that the treasure would bring. Then again, that tarnished tone might have been another slip-up in the brass, who were having a bad night. During the final scene, one of the trombones went absolutely haywire. With luck, the section's kinks will be ironed out in time for Walküre.

FINAL WEEKS: HITLER AND THE GERMANS AT DHM

2011-01-14T04:07:00.000-08:00

Nazis are never far from the news here, but "Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crimes" is Hitler's biggest coup in Berlin since Mel Brooks's "The Producers" lit up the German capital last year. The exhibition at the German Historical Museum has attracted a mountain of domestic and international media attention and brisk business. During its opening weekend alone, 10,000 visitors lined up to learn how Germans embraced this man who led them down a road of madness and mass murder. It is a story told through everyday objects, photographs, videos and a lot of text.

There is a satisfying irony to the fact that the Zeughaus, which currently houses the museum, was the scene of a botched attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1943. The show makes a case that the German people invested Hitler with their hopes and dreams and explores the fascination that the dictator continues to exert on the German public. "With many of the Germans who come here, a grandfather might look around and say, 'We also played this Nazi board game' or 'I too was in the Hitler Youth,'" explained Simone Erpel, one of the exhibit's three curators. "It's not like we're done with this chapter because 65 years have passed. The new generation is asking new questions about this history." The show addresses the question of how Hitler was possible, and how violence on this scale was condoned.

The eight exhibit rooms, covering nearly 11,000 square feet, contain the sort of Nazi paraphernalia that, in any other context, would be illegal in Germany. Yet the curators have excluded items that might have special fetish value. The museum decided, for instance, not to present Hitler's dinner jacket, currently displayed at a military museum in Moscow. "The history changes depending whether you see it in Berlin or Moscow," said Ms. Erpel. "If we were to bring Hitler's coat back to Berlin, it would be some bizarre sort of triumph, like Hitler returning to Berlin."

Instead, you find a collection of letters and brightly colored postcards to Hitler on his 43rd birthday. Nearby is a set of Nazi toy soldiers with a miniature Hitler orating wildly from a podium. A computerized display lets you click through an eighth-grader's assignment titled "Culture Theory," a meticulously presented school report on the glories of Nazism. This 80-page notebook is one of the show's most effective items; in our thinking about Hitler, we rarely consider how young people were indoctrinated with evil.

Hitler's biography itself does not play much of a role in the show, which concentrates on the years 1933 to 1945. Aside from a picture of Hitler at age 10, one of the only bits of background is a collection of busts of "Führer figures," which includes Siegfried, Frederick the Great, Bismarck, Hindenburg and Mussolini.

By stressing the popular support that Hitler enjoyed, at least until 1943, "Hitler and the Germans" is intent on shattering the myth that the Nazis seized power. It describes various Nazi strategies to win the loyalty of ordinary Germans, while stressing how symbiotic the relationship was. Some Nazi methods, such as the occupation of public space through the building of monuments and renaming of streets, are presented with compelling displays.

None of the ideas advanced by the exhibit are especially new or revelatory, admitted the museum's press officer, Rudolf Trabold. "We are dealing with classic themes, but we've made an exhibit for the general public," he said.

It is one thing to understand Hitler's appeal to German society, and quite another thing to hazard an explanation of the crimes the Nazi regime committed in the name of the German people. The exhibit is more concerned with the former than in answering the question of how German society went along with genocidal plans.

At most, the exhibit seems to agree with the British historian Ian Kershaw that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference." At one point, the show claims that the murder of the Jews was "condoned with a mixture of partial approval, moral indifference and growing fears of terrorist measures." Another typical sign tells us that public acts of violence met with "the approval or at least acceptance of the population."

The exhibit also stresses how Nazis embraced technology, which enhanced their appeal and could also work against them. The radio was a powerful disseminator of propaganda, while lightweight and inexpensive 35mm cameras enabled the regime to document its crimes so thoroughly.

The final rooms of the exhibit shift focus to the fascination that Hitler continues to exert. Small though it is, it is the most unique section of an exhibit that often feels like a repackaging of the museum's permanent collection. A welcome, if unexpected, touch is the inclusion of "Downfall" parodies that have become a YouTube phenomenon. The opposite wall is taken up with the 46 issues of Der Spiegel where Hitler has graced the magazine's cover from 1946 to 2009. A bit further down, one finds a case full of confiscated Nazi memorabilia. (Incidentally, this stuff often winds up at flea markets in Berlin, the Nazi insignias hidden beneath little stickers.)

Ms. Erpel feels that this exhibit is fruitful for Holocaust education and coming to terms with the past. "The goal of this exhibit is to make a contribution to the de-demonizing of Hitler," she said, suggesting that we can no longer view Hitler as a ranting lunatic who seduced the German people. She added that the public's fascination with Hitler clearly indicates the central role he still occupies in our thinking about the Nazi period.

"To confront this question seriously, as we have, is an important step on the path of normalizing the shadows of history that still exist today," she said. "My wish as a curator is that such exhibits will no longer be necessary, and that 10 years from now nobody will be interested in seeing a show about Hitler."

(Originally Published in the WSJ of 11/03/2010)

Three Cheers for the Red, Black and Gold

2010-07-12T03:24:00.000-07:00

...This just in from our sister site, the New York Feuilleton

When Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, much was made of the outpouring of national sentiment, the likes of which had not been seen since the Second World War. The German flag found newfound acceptance in everyday life. But this “New Patriotism,” as the press dubbed it at the time, was short lived. Once the games ended, people quickly folded up their banners. Now, four years later, the ubiquity of German flags here is even more staggering, suggesting what a joyous release this is for a country that has kept its tail between its legs for so long.

Nevertheless, I was irked. While the flag of the Federal Republic of Germany was never the banner of the National Socialists, the associative link between German nationalism and the Nazis is hard to break. And so it was amid the rich profusion of black, red and gold paraphernalia that I decided to watch last week’s Germany-Ghana match at an African club in the hopes of avoiding the flag-waving hordes. Imagine my surprise when I beheld African children with German flags painted on their faces and the vast majority of those assembled cheering for Germany. What became clear to me was that the “New Patriotism” is not simply about Germans reclaiming their pride, but to a large extent reflects how immigrant groups identify with their adoptive country.

In Berlin, you might say that the city’s large immigrant population is giving Germans a lesson in self-love. One much-publicized example concerns a Lebanese immigrant who has hung a 60-foot flag above his electronics shop in the immigrant-heavy district of Neukölln. The flag has been the victim of attacks by radical left wing groups in Berlin.

The danger, as some on the German left see it, is that flag-waving will erode Germany’s collective experience of coming to terms with the Nazi past and lead to a sort of cultural and national amnesia. But no one who has spent time in Germany recently can accuse Germany of having a blind spot, or of relaxing its efforts to come to grips with the Nazi past. Two months ago saw the opening of a new documentation center at the former site of Gestapo headquarters. Every day, thousands of people visit the Berlin’s central Holocaust monument and the famed Jewish Museum.

Waving a German flag 65 years after World War Two requires a critical awareness of history and the long shadows its cases. An educated and even skeptical approach is needed. At the same time, the flag can mean things very different to an immigrant or child of immigrants than it does for someone of German heritage. Sports have traditionally been a way for immigrants to rally around their adoptive countries. The many banners that have sprouted in Berlin’s heavily Turkish and Arab neighborhoods might be seen as an effort to counter stereotypes about disloyalty and resistance to integration. In 2006, misplaced analogies were made to the Berlin Olympics of 1936.

Four years later, those analogies are if anything more absurd and out-of-place. With nearly half their players of non-German background, the Germany team represents both the successes of present day, multi-cultural Germany and the challenges it faces.

Two Saturdays ago, I watched the Germany-Argentina match at a sidewalk bar in Neukölln. Germany’s astounding victory was greeted by cheers from every corner. Across the street, a gaggle of young Turkish girls jumped up and down from a terrace and shouted with glee, “Deutschland! Deutschland!” This time around, I will not be surprised if the flags stay up in Neukölln long after the World Cup has ended.

Like a German (JA!)

2010-07-06T03:09:00.001-07:00

In honor of the flag-waving support for the German Mannschaft, I've composed a little satire that pokes fun at the "New Patriotism," a phenomenon unthinkable in Germany before it hosted the World Cup in 2006. Enjoy! I apologize (im voraus) for any vocal, musical or recording imperfections.

Lyrics:
We made it through the Great War
And World War Two
Berlin Wall fell and then
Wiedervereinigung

We were sad, we felt bad
Cuz our dads killed 6 million Jews
Now I'm waving goodbye
To Vergangenheits
Bewähltinung

Like a German (Hey!)
Don't you think it's about time?
Like a Ger-er-er-er-man
Neues Deutschland is feeling fine

Come now give me all your face paint
From your make up bag
Honk your horns day and night
And wave your flags

What a yolk for das Volk
To be damned till the end of time
So now I'm finding my voice
Yes I'm finding my stolz
And it feels just sublime

Like a German (Hey!)
Don't mention national crimes
Like a Ger-er-er-er-man
When I holler, raise your Steins

Ja ja ja ja ja ja ja ja

Let's take back the Heimat
With a Sieg in the football league
Every time they yell Tor
Every time they yell Tor
I'll know what to do...

Like a German (Hey)
This Kampf is certainly mein
Like a Ger-er-er-er-man
Here's a flag for your laundry line

Like a German ohhh-ooohh- ohhh
Painting Schwart-Rot-Gelb
On my Auto
And my Fenster
And my forehead
And my testicle
Ooh...Liebchen...Ja
Stoltze Deutsche Jungs
Kehren Heim!

Komische Oper Season 2010-2011

2010-05-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

Don't know what took the Komische Oper Berlin so long to announce their season. The press office canceled the original Jahrespressekonferenz citing problems with the new website (www.komische-oper-berlin.de), but I have a sneaking suspicion the delay might have had more to do with music director Carl St. Clair, who has announced the he will leave the KOB after the 2009-2010 season, citing "artistic differences" with the house's general manager Andreas Homoki. St. Clair's contract was to run until 2013. So here, finally, is the 2010-2011 schedule that was announced last week:

26. September 2010

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Oper in drei Aufzügen von Richard Wagner

Text vom Komponisten

24. Oktober 2010/Uraufführung

Die Schneekönigin

Märchenoper in zwei Akten von Pierangelo Valtinoni

Libretto von Paolo Madron
Deutsche Textfassung von Frank Harders-Wuthenow und Werner Hintze
Auftragswerk der Komischen Oper Berlin

28. November 2010

Im Weißen Rößl

Singspiel in drei Akten von Ralph Benatzky

Libretto von Hans Müller und Erik Charell
Gesangstexte von Robert Gilbert

20. Februar 2011

Rusalka

Lyrisches Märchen in drei Akten von Antonín Dvořák

Libretto von Jaroslav Kvapil
Deutsche Textfassung von Bettina Bartz und Werner Hintze

10. April 2011

Salome

Musikdrama in einem Aufzug von Richard Strauss

Nach Oscar Wildes gleichnamiger Dichtung

14. Mai 2010

Idomeneo

Dramma per musica in drei Akten von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Libretto von Giambattista Varesco
Deutsche Textfassung von Bettina Bartz und Werner Hintze

26. Juni 2011

Gespräche der Karmelitinnen

Oper in drei Akten von Francis Poulenc

Libretto vom Komponisten nach Georges Bernanos
Deutsche Textfassung von Peter Funk und Wolfgang Binal

Savitri staged in the Berghain techno club

2010-05-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

Holst’s Sanskrit opera succesfully blurs boundaries

Every weekend, Berlin’s most fabulous young things head to Berghain, where the city's most celebrated DJs spin way past dawn. For two nights last week, however, the world renown techno club housed in a former power plant, was the stage for an innovative production of Gustav Holst’s rarely seen opera Savitri.

On May 10 and 11, Simon Halsey, the choir’s director since 2001, presided over the chamber orchestra, choir and soloists who were set among the standing audience. Lars Schiebner’s production intriguingly blurred the boundaries between the opera and club scenes with greater success than other recent attempts to bring classical music into the mainstream. It was far and away a more serious endeavour than a “Sex and the City”-themed production of Così fan tutte that was mounted in another power-plant-turned-techno-club last November.
Holst wrote Savitri in 1916, in the grip of his obsession with Hindu mysticism. The composer taught himself Sanskrit in order to write a libretto based on an episode in the Mahabharata. Scored for three soloists, a female choir and fewer than a dozen instruments, this is a subdued, meditative and haunting work. The vocal writing for the principals hinges on the Wagnerian, while the instrumental and choral elements are free from any similar bombast. The prominent yet wordless chorus seems to represent the veil of Maya, the Hindu belief that all existence is mere illusion.
The Rundfunkchor Berlin, the oldest radio choir in Germany, regularly collaborates with Berlin’s leading musical institutions. The production of Savitri is part of the choir’s series, “Broadening the Scope of Choral Music”, which attempts to expand the appeal of choral music beyond traditional audiences.
At Berghain, the crowd congregated on the main dance floor until gradually shepherded upstairs accompanied by Holst’s “Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda” performed by choristers imbedded in the audience. Light amplification was used for the soloists, whose voices needed to contend with concrete walls as high as a cathedral.
Low-ticket costs, lack of chairs, and fluidity between performers and audience, were only a few of the ways in which Schiebner’s production subverted several assumptions about how we consume serious music. In a city where Regietheater productions so often result in pointless updatings, it was both refreshing and exciting to see a seriously experimental attempt at transforming the classical music experience.
Holst intended for Savitri to be performed “in the open air, or else in a small building." I’d like to think that he would give this production his approval.

New Look for the "New York Feuilleton"

2010-05-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Liebe Leser, Liebe Leserinen,

You are invited to check out the "The New York Feuilleton's" new, cleaner, easier-to-use look.

best,

Your Feuilletonist

Berlin's Chabad Center hosts Jewish Parade and Carnival

2010-05-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Lag Boamer fest at the Chabad-Lubovitch Center Berlin was billed as the first-ever Jewish Parade to be held in post-War Germany, according to a report from the JTA. That statistic strikes me as a bit of unfalsifiable hyperbole.

In any event, Berlin's Jews come out in droves for the music-and-food filled parade and carnival. Gone from this family-friendly event were certain of Lag Baomer's most cherished traditions, including archery and bonfires, making this high-security event a stark contrast to yesterday's May Day celebrations.

Here's a photo gallery of the 2010 Berlin Lag Baomer Festival with select commentary.

A menorah float from the parade idles by the entrance to the Chabad Center

Some of the clowns were disguised as rabbis

During the parade, marchers held up signs describing various mitzvot.

The one pictured above reads, "Love thy neighbor."

Rabbi Yehuda Teichtel, head of Chabad Berlin, addresses the crowd from the bandstand. "We're celebrating the renewal of Jewish life in Berlin."

A crowd of several hundred individuals and families gathered to watch, schmooze and, naturally, smoke

A German bagpiping band lent the afternoon one of its weirder touches

The carnival included copious activities for Berlin's youngest Jews

Visitors enjoyed Kosher chinese food while listening to klezmer music

I'd like to think that the merry-go-round was a veiled reference to Arthur Schnitzler

Like all Jewish-themed events in this city, security was tight

Bozo the Rabbi helps a Jewish man put on his shel yad, the teffilin armband

...and here comes the shel rosh (head strap)

In the absence of archery, there were other ways for young Jews to show their strength

Jews surmounted their differences of fashion to dance together

Deutsche Oper Berlin hosts a different 'Nibelungen'

2010-04-29T03:46:00.000-07:00

From Gramophone.co.uk

Midway through the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s spring cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen, the opera house in Charlottenburg took a break from Wagner on Tuesday to play host to the world premiere screening of the restored version of Fritz Lang’s nearly five-hour-long epic The Nibelungen.

The 1924 film, which has been painstakingly and expensively restored by the FW Murnau Foundation, was screened along with the original score of Gottfried Huppertz (1887-1937) performed by the HR-Sinfonieorchester and conductor Frank Strobel, director of the European Film Philharmonic and one of Germany’s leading film music experts.
One of the most prominent composers for film of the Weimar era, Huppertz wrote in a lush, late-Romantic idiom. With The Nibelungen, he evokes Wagner's take on Teutonic mythology through a highly lyrical and orchestrally expansive score that resists being imitative.

ARTICLE CONTINUES AT GRAMOPHONE.CO.UK

2010 - 2011 season announced for Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper

2010-04-28T02:47:00.000-07:00

Starting next season, the Berlin Staatsoper will move to the Schiller Theater while the house on Unter den Linden undergoes a 240 Million Euro, 4-year-long renovation. The formerly grand Schiller Theater, which lies in the western part of the city (and very close by to the Deutsche Oper) has itself undergone a 25 Million Euro revamping. For the company's first season in exile, they've announced a thrilling and ambitious program, which includes 9 new productions, including the first two installments of Guy Cassier's Ring Cycle (!). Other highlights include the world premiere of Jens Joneleit's "Metanoia" in a production by opera's reigning enfant terrible Christoph Schlingensief, and a new production of Peter Eötvös' "Tri Sestri," adapted from Chekhov. See below for the full line-up!

PREMIERE

ANTIGONA

Oper von Tommaso Traetta

René Jacobs | Vera Nemirova

PREMIERE

CANDIDE

Musik von Leonard Bernstein

Wayne Marshall | Vincent Boussard | Vincent Lemaire | Christian Lacroix

PREMIERE

DAS RHEINGOLD

Oper von Richard Wagner

PREMIERE | FESTTAGE

DIE WALKÜRE

Oper von Richard Wagner

PREMIERE | FESTIVAL INFEKTION!

MATSUKAZE

Oper von Toshio Hosokawa

URAUFFÜHRUNG

METANOIA

- über das denken hinaus

Oper in einem Aufzug frei nach einem Text von René Pollesch
(unter freier Verwendung von Texten aus Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik
von Friedrich Nietzsche)
für fünf Gesangssolisten, gemischten Chor, Orchester und Live-Elektronik

Daniel Barenboim | Christoph Schlingensief | Thomas Goerge | Aino Laberenz

PREMIERE

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS

Oper von Igor Strawinsky

Ingo Metzmacher | Krzysztof Warlikowski | Claude Bardouil | Małgorzata Szcześniak

PREMIERE | FESTIVAL INFEKTION!

TRI SESTRI

Oper von Peter Eötvös

PREMIERE | FESTTAGE

WOZZECK

Oper von Alban Berg

Daniel Barenboim | Andrea Breth | Martin Zehetgruber | Silke Willrett | Marc Weeger

Complete season information can be found at http://www.berlin-staatsoper.de

____________

The Deutsche Oper's plans for next season, while not entirely as thrilling, are still worth getting excited for, with six new productions, starting with Roland Schwab's vision for "Don Giovanni" and ending with Robert Carsen's take on Verdi's "Macbeth." In between, Graham Vick will give the DOB its first new "Tristan" in over 20 years and David Pountney will tackle Berlioz's loose baggy monster, "Les Trojens."

Sa 16.10. | 19.00 h

Premiere

DON GIOVANNI | Wolfgang Amadé Mozart

Su 05.12. | 16.00 h

Premiere

THE TROJANS | Hector Berlioz

Su 23.01. | 18.00 h

Premiere

DIE LIEBE DER DANAE | Richard Strauss

Su 13.03. | 16.00 h

Premiere

TRISTAN AND ISOLDE | Richard Wagner

Su 15.05. | 18.00 h

Premiere

SAMSON AND DALILA | Camille Saint-Saëns

Su 12.06. | 18.00 h

Premiere for Berlin

MACBETH | Giuseppe Verdi

Complete season information can be found at http://www.deutscheoperberlin.de

Jodorowsky & Squat

2010-04-28T02:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a head's up for this week's screening of "The Rainbow Thief" at Liebeig 14. a famed squat in Friedrichshain (Liebigstrasse 14). Every Thursday, the squat hosts a VoKu (=Volksküche =People's Kitchen=yummy, cheap, homemade - and usually vegetarian - food) along with a film screening. April has been devoted to the absurdist Chilean master director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Subsequent weeks have brought the director's best-known works, "El Topo," "The Holy Mountain" and "Santa Sangre." For the retrospective's final installment, they've chosen the little-seen "The Rainbow Thief" from 1990 starring Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole.

More details can be found at Liebig 14 website: liebig14.blogsport.de

Lulu & Cello go to Dinner

2010-04-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

On the eve of what promises to be the largest silent film concert in recent memory, the Deutsche Oper's world premiere of the restored 6-hour-long version of Fritz Lang's expressionistic epic "The Nibelungen," another, more intimate coupling of silent cinema and live music has been brought to our attention.

"Stummfilm Dinner" is an ongoing program that curates together evenings of gourmet cuisine, cinema and live music, held at the Kreuzberg-based restaurant Weilands Wellfoods on Bergmannstraße. For the next installment, on May 8th, chef Friso Wieland will pair a four-course menu that includes mushroom ravioli and Scotch filet medallions with a screening of G.W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box." Louise Brooks's Lulu is one of the screen's sexiest femme fatales. But the evening promises even more stimulation with live musical accompaniment from cellist Laura Parker.

At 45 euros, it's a steal. (7 Euro for film admission alone). And did I mention that there'll be vegetarian alternatives?

More information at http://stummfilm-dinner.de/

Baroque Breakdancing in Berlin

2010-04-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

A.J. Goldmann weighs in on Flying Bach, which was previewed a few days ago in the Kitchen.

From Gramophone.co.uk

Flying Bach at the Neue Nationalgalerie

Fri 23rd April 2010

AJ GOLDMANN

Amid the myriad cross-genre exercises that crop up on the cultural horizon here, few are as successful and thrilling as Flying Bach, an unexpected meeting of baroque music and hip-hop dancing.

Performed in the pavilion of Mies van der Rohe’s striking Neue Nationalgalerie, the 70-minute show sets the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier to choreography by the renowned break dance troupe The Flying Steps. During the course of the evening, Bach’s 24 preludes and fugues are performed alternately on piano, cembalo and an electronic remix.

Since opening on April 13, the show’s run through to the end of the month has quickly sold out. (Additional performances have been added from May 15–17 and returns may be available at the box office).

It’s not surprising, considering how exhilarating this show is.

ARTICLE CONTINUES AT GRAMOPHONE.CO.UK

TIP: Party Like It's 1929!

2010-04-23T03:21:00.000-07:00

Flappers! Absinthe! Gambling! General Debauchery! All this and more is promised by"Bohème Sauvage," a successful series of themed evenings that revive the glamor and decadence of Weimar Berlin and are held at ritzy venues around town. Tomorrow's event will be held at the stately Meistersaal in Kreuzberg. At 18 Euros, it's probably one of the pricier parties in town. Where else, though, can you play roulette while sipping absinthe and listening to a ravishing comedienne?

Here's a description from the event website:

"'Bohème Sauvage' is ...

... more than a party! It’s a dazzling, glamorous and glittering hommage to the era of the Golden Twenties. Especially to the Berlin Bohème of that time, such as artists, actors, writers, journalists and every kind of adventurer. It is also inspired by the Belle Epoque (turn of the century - fin de siècle) Bohème of Paris (see Moulin Rouge, Art Nouveau, Burlesque, Tolouse-Lautrec, Absinth, etc.) and of the American Swinging Thirties (Chicago Mafia, Al Capone, Prohibition, Jazzclubs, Speakeasys, etc.).

All in all, you could say that “Bohème Sauvage” is an event that looks back on the time between 1890 and 1940. It does not try to copy this era; authenticity is not the highest aim. It is about having a splendid and amusing time in a sophisticated way for every one who goes for it / participates. It is made for people who enjoy to express themselves, who like to dress up and wear costumes, who like playing with identities and basically for everyone who is open for experiments and adventures. Every guest can decide for himself how deep he wants to look into the history and culture of the period."

TIP! Fritz Lang's Nibelungen Scored and Restored on Apr. 27

2010-04-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

Head's up for next week's silent film concert of Fritz Lang's 4-hour-long 1924 epic "The Nibelungen," which will be premiered in a fully-restored version at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (which, incidentally is in the midst of two complete cycles of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Coincidence - I think not!)

Here's some additional info from the Deutsche Oper's site:

Fritz Lang’s two-part film adaption of the Middle High German Song Of The Nibelungs belongs to the monumental productions of 1920’s cinematography. Both parts – Siegfried and Kriemhild's Revenge – had their respective premieres in 1924 and were enjoyed by thousands. This milestone of film history is still overwhelming nowadays due to its combination of visual effects, its stylized scenery as well as its opulent fight scenes.

Tip! Holst in Berghain - May 10 & 11

2010-04-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

In its series Broadening the Scope of Choral Music Rundfunkchor Berlin under its chief conductor Simon Halsey will stage Gustav Holst’s opera Savitri at an extraordinary venue: Berlin’s most roaring Techno Club Berghain which was named Best Club worldwide by Britisch Magazine in 2009. Collaborating with a group of contortionists, choreographer Lars Scheibner will cross the borders between music theatre, body artistry and club scene. Performances on 10 and 11 May at Berghain Berlin.

Tip: "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" at the Staatsballet

2010-04-19T04:03:00.000-07:00

This Friday will see the premiere of Tomaz Pandur's new commission for the Staatsballet Berlin. There's quite a buzz surrounding the production, though unfortunately the musical component (music by Gorecki and spoken word by Hannah Schygulla) will be canned.

Press release below:

SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS, the result of a cooperation between Tomaz Pandur and choreographer Ronald Savkovic premieres at Staatsoper Unter den Linden on the 24th of April 2010.

Together with Vladimir Malakhov and dancers of Staatsballett Berlin Tomaz Pandur is encircling the “instance of theatre“, which is how he describes the quintessential quest of his work.

“It seems as if the theatre does not only brave the persistent challenge of time in every moment of its existence and addresses time‘s pressing questions, but also as if the theatre embodies the fascinating secret of time and visualizes it anew with every staging.“

Tomaz Pandur’s visually powerful, mystic and sometimes startling productions, such as his staging of Dante’s “Inferno“for Hamburg‘s Thalia Theater, Janacek’s “Aus dem Totenhaus“ for Oper Bonn or his artistic encounter with Nacho Duato and his esemble, blur the lines drawn between theater, musical theatre and dance.

With SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS, Tomaz Pandur and Staatsballett Berlin also embark on a journey through the landscapes of the Russian soul.

In the light of the becoming and passing of creativity, an emotional, scenic cosmos unfolds.

The atmosphere creates a link to the archaic realm of Russian icon painter Andrej Rjublow.

Tomaz Pandur uses visual impulses extremly and uncompromisingly and incorporates dreams and the subconsciousness of his audience into the performance experience. He creates an atmosphere in which the individual personality of each dancer is accentuated and becomes distinguishable.

The music of the production is mainly based on Henryk Górecki’s 3rd Symphony. This dark setting of a Polish prayer from the 15th century, also known as “symphony of sorrowful songs“, serves as an eponym for the production.

The philosophy behind this unusual project will also be conveyed through words spoken by Hanna Schygulla.

SYMPHONY OF SORROWFUL SONGS

Production by Tomaz Pandur
Choreography by Ronald Savkovic
Music by Henryk Górecki et al.
Libretto by Darko Lukic and Livija Pandur
Production Tomaz Pandur
Choreography Ronald Savkovic

Stage design Numen
Costume design Angelina Atlagic

Dramaturgy Livija Pandur
Narrator Hanna Schygulla (recorded)

Music recorded

Dancers are Vladimir Malakhov as
well as soloists and Corps de ballet of Staatsballetts Berlin

PREMIERE
24th of April 2010, 07.00 p.m.
Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Other performances

28th - 30th April 2010

5th - 11th - 13th - 20th - 21th - 29th Mai 2010

Tip: The Berlin Jewish Film Festival (April 25 - May 9)

2010-04-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

"You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy the Jewish Film Festival Berlin," so goes the curious jingle on the website of the filmfest, which runs this year in its 16th installment from April 25 - May 9. Highlights of this year's 23-film lineup - which will be screened at the centrally-located Kino Arsenal in Potsdamer Platz and the out-of-the-way Filmmuseum Potsdam - include this year's Israel nominee for the foreign Oscar "Ajami," a documentary about André Previn, "A Film Unfinished" about an aborted Nazi propaganda project about the Warsaw Ghetto and the promisingly titled "Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish." Translated, of course. And improved!

More information at www.jffb.de

An Unlikely Jewish Renaissance in Berlin

2010-04-16T03:35:00.001-07:00

The following article comes from yesterday's edition of the Houston Chronicle. There is much more to be said about contemporary Jewish life in Berlin, but this is a good, if somewhat naive, introduction.

By A. JAMES RUDIN

1. Which city, called “Faust's Metropolis,” was famous for its literature, dramas, music, films, art, science and medicine in the early years of the 20th century before it became the capital of a radically evil regime?

2. Which city during the 1930s was home to the well-known religious leaders Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

3. Which city, just three years after nearly being destroyed by Allied forces, was rescued from a Soviet blockade by those same air forces in an airlift that lasted 11 months?

4. Which city had its infamous wall of separation come tumbling down about 20 years ago? (Hint: it wasn't Jericho.)

5. Which city is witnessing the rebirth of a vibrant Jewish community 65 years after history's worst anti-Semite committed suicide in the same city?

The answer to all of the above, of course, is Berlin, the capital of Germany.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

Tip: Achtung Film Festival (April 14 - 21)

2010-04-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

The cumbersomely-titled "Achtung Berlin New Berlin Film Award Festival of the New German Cinemas of Berlin" (that's according to the hopelessly confusing website) kicks off this evening. Over the next week, feature films, documentaries and shorts will enjoy their Berlin premieres at independent cinemas around the city, as the festival enters into its sixth year.

The festival opens tonight with a red-carpet at the International in Friedrichshain and a screening of Zombie flick called "Rammbock."

Three of the most intriguing offerings are "Draußen am See," "Saturn Returns" and "Unbelehrbar."

More information at http://www.achtungberlin.de/

Tip: Flying Bach at the Neue Nationalgalerie

2010-04-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

WOW! First a new Bach Museum and now the Wohltempierte Klavier with Breakdancing! What will those Germans think of next?

Seriously, though, this looks fascinating. It runs for the next week and a half at the Neue Nationalgalerie. More info here, on the site of the event's sponsor, RED BULL!!!!

Plus, below is an AFP article that was published two days ago.

BERLIN — Breakdancing combines with Bach in Berlin this month as an award-winning dance group and an avant-garde musical director put an ultra-modern spin on the German composer's almost 300-year-old music.

For 12 nights from Tuesday, Berlin-based Flying Steps, four times world champions in breakdance, perform to works from Johann Sebastian Bach's "Das Wohltemperierte Klavier" ("The Well-Tempered Clavier").

"Flying Bach", as the show is known, is billed as "hip-hop philosophy meets classical genius" and a "Bach battle in 12 rounds".

The 70-minute performance sees the composer's preludes and fugues played either on piano or harpsichord, or given an electronic makeover and pumped through speakers at a Berlin modern art museum, the Neue Nationalgalerie.

As the group's founder Vartan Bassil explains, the six dancers of Flying Steps mix up breakdancing with so many different high-energy styles that it can look like something completely new.
(AFP)

READ MORE HERE

At 325, Bach Gets a New Museum in Leipzig

2010-04-14T03:05:00.000-07:00

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal

By A.J. GOLDMANN

Leipzig, Germany

This is the city where Johann Sebastian Bach spent his final 27 years and composed many of his major works, including the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in B Minor, the "Art of the Fugue" and nearly 200 cantatas. And this year, amid the predictable Easter-season concert programming, Leipzig marked the composer's 325th birthday with the opening of a renovated and greatly expanded Bach Museum, part of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. Founded in 1950 (the 200th anniversary of the composer's death), the Archiv is one of the finest Bach research institutes on earth, largely thanks to its important collection of Bach manuscripts.

The Archiv's old museum dealt exclusively with Bach's relationship to Leipzig. Now, after a costly two-year renovation, the museum unfurls throughout a beautifully restored Renaissance house on Thomaskirchhof Square, opposite St. Thomas Church. (The Old Thomas School, where Bach lived with his family, was demolished in 1902.)

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

Exploring Berlin's Underground

2010-04-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

From the NYTimes travelblog, Globespotters

An organization called the Berlin Underworlds offers visitors an unexpected perspective of the German capital.

Founded in 1997, Underworlds is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the documentation and preservation of Berlin’s vast network of subterranean spaces. It funds its projects by giving tours of bunkers, sewers, air raid shelters and catacombs. The tours are offered in a variety of languages, including English.

The 300-plus members of the association include history buffs, hobbyists and scholars of all ages. “Basically, people who all enjoy crawling around in the dark,” said Robin Williams, 32, one of the organization’s English-language guides.

Since many of Berlin’s underground structures were developed during the Nazi period, the association’s main work is based around World War II, Mr. Williams said. One popular tour (simply titled the “Classic Tour”) that guides you through a wartime bomb shelter is a history lesson from the perspective of German civilians living in fear of Allied bombs. The experience is made all the more unsettling by the fact that the shelter is located below the bustling Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station, above.

Similar organizations exist in other cities, including Hamburg and Vienna. But the Berlin Underworlds Association owes its success in large measure to the continued fascination with World War II and the Cold War that followed.

Many people ask whether the association gives tours of Hitler’s bunker, according to Mr. Williams. A note on the association’s Web site explains that the remains of the demolished Führerbunker are beneath a parking lot in Mitte, marked only by an informational plaque.

The association does, however, offer tours through Cold War-era bomb shelters, abandoned U-Bahn lines and subterranean escape routes from East to West Berlin.

The Underworlds’ newest tour explores the Fichtebunker, one of Europe’s oldest gasometers. The structure, located on a quiet residential street in Kreuzberg, has served various purposes over the last hundred years: as a war bunker, a prison, an old age home, a homeless shelter; it is currently being turned into luxury apartments. “We’re showing Berlin’s history from the perspective of this particular building,” Mr. Williams said.

Tickets for all regular tours are available from 10:30 a.m. at the Berlin Underworlds Association, located in the southern entrance of the U8 subway station Gesundbrunnen (exit direction to Humboldthain Park), Brunnenstrasse; 49-30-499-105-17.

Berlin's Wintertime Bayreuth

2010-04-03T03:12:00.000-07:00

From the NYTimes Globespotters blog

Wagner Weeks, a mini-festival of operas by the acclaimed composer at the Deutsche Oper Berlin could well be described as a wintertime Bayreuth.

The festival, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Bismarckstrasse 35; 49-30-343-84-343; deutscheoperberlin.de), includes six of Wagner’s principal operas sung by some of the world’s greatest Wagnerians, including many Bayreuth veterans. Unlike the legendary summer festival, however, expect tickets to the Wagner Weeks presentations to be both easier to come by and more affordable.

The centerpiece of Wagner Weeks, which runs until Feb. 24, is a provocative new production of the little-seen “Rienzi” from the director Philipp Stölzl (next showing on Sunday). In Wagner’s day, this early work was among the composer’s most popular operas. (Hitler, a consummate Wagnerian, considered “Rienzi” his favorite opera and reportedly owned the original manuscript of the score.) This detail has certainly not been lost on Stölzl, who recasts the opera — about a 14th-century Roman tribune — as a parable for the grandeur and decadence of a fascist dictator. Torsten Kerl embodies the power-hungry ruler with vocal and dramatic flair. As his rival Adriano, the American soprano Kate Aldrich is sensationally agile and varied.

“Rienzi” joins ranks with other striking recent productions that are being staged in the remaining weeks of the series. Also being revived is a breathtaking staging of “Tannhäuser,” by the Oper’s artistic director, Kirsten Harms, starring Stephen Gould in the title role and Nadja Michael doing double duty as Venus and Elisabeth. Be prepared for some baffling Regietheater touches here as well, in Tatjana Gürbaca’s stark and menacing production of “The Flying Dutchman.”

And while Wagner Weeks ends in late February, there is still more to come: For those planning a trip during the spring, watch out for two complete cycles of the monumental “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in April.

2010-03-28T03:34:00.000-07:00

These two recent articles about youth culture in Berlin made me chuckle, groan and occasionally nod in agreement. The first one comes from "The Forward," a weekly Jewish newspaper out of New York. The second is from Canada's "Globe & Mail."

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Berlin’s Underemployed, Well-Educated Expat Hipsters Lend City a Gritty Verve

Shira Dicker

Four hours before my flight to Berlin is scheduled to depart from JFK International Airport, I stand at the check-out counter of Zabar’s, attempting to lift three overstuffed shopping bags. They contain $150 worth of coffee, babka, bagels, rugelach, hard salami, chocolate and smoked salmon — all Zabar’s own house brand — plus Melinda’s hot sauce and some aged Kilkenny Irish cheddar cheese.

My eldest son’s Zabar’s wish list arrived via e-mail the week before, reassuring me that New York still possesses some amenities he considers vital for survival. The money I spent on the goodies (and later at the airport, for extra poundage) was a down-payment on an insurance policy of sorts, an investment in the hope that one day soon, Adam would conclude his Berlin adventure and return home.

That evening’s flight constituted my fourth trip to Berlin in as many years — each one a direct result of my son’s presence there. Other European cities have a stronger claim on me. But Berlin is undeniably fascinating, filled with a raw and gritty energy. Each new journey there has provided me with another opportunity to peep at my son’s life in the bohemian bowels of this pulsating, paradoxical, problematic city.

“Berlin is New York in the ’70s!”

“Berlin’s like Paris in the ’20s, when Hemingway and Fitzgerald and everyone lived there!”

“Prague is so over. The new expat hangout is Berlin!”

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

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Berlin hits the hipster wall

Leah McLaren

"No one in Berlin goes out clubbing until 10 a.m. on Sunday," says Daniel, my German friend. A bunch of us are sitting in a sushi bar in Prenzlauer Berg, a gentrified district of the former East Berlin, eating squid cake, guzzling cold sake and trying to decide what do for the weekend.

It's proving tricky. Apparently there are rules for having fun in Europe's unofficial capital of cool – one of them is that bourgeois plebes, and their bourgeois plebian ideas of time, must be avoided at all costs.

“Before then, it's too early to dance,” Daniel explains. “The clubs are filled with tourists. Sometimes we wait until Monday to go out.”

But I am a tourist. Plus I have to work on Monday. So I ask about the famous Berlin flea market. Daniel shrugs. He is a 28-year-old former pro football player turned digital media artist – a career arc that could exist only in contemporary Berlin. “It used to be cool,” he says, “five years ago when it started. It was like an extension of the all-night party. Now, it's too commercial. People sell crafts and clothes.”

And that's when it hits me: I'll never be cool enough to live in Berlin, a city where hipsters are so ubiquitous that it sometimes feels as if youth culture is cannibalizing itself.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE...

Eat, drink, and donate at the city’s Weinerei chain

2010-03-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

from Gourmet.com

A small chain of Berlin wine bars, the so-called Weinerein, offers what is arguably one of the city’s most enjoyable culinary experiences. It is also one of Berlin’s best-kept secrets. These renegade bars promote oenophilia in a casual, unpretentious atmosphere that subverts traditional notions of dining and connoisseurship. Located in the fashionable neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg in the former East, the three Weinerein—called Forum, Perlin, and Fra Rosa—operate with an unorthodox business model. They function entirely on the honor system.

Night after night, swarms of customers pile into the moderately sized establishments. An initial deposit of one euro—casually tossed into a small fountain—is required to “rent” a wine glass. Thereafter, patrons sample an impressive assortment of wines (and whatever happens to be cooking that evening). During the summer months, the crowd spills out onto the sidewalks. On leaving, customers feed a tip jar, thus deciding for themselves how much the experience was worth.

Surprisingly, this simple concept actually works. There seems to be a genuine desire among residents to keep the Weinerein in business; Berliners apparently know a good thing when they see one. Another key to understanding the success of the Weinerein is to view it as an attempt in the former East to create a trusting atmosphere that breaks with established capitalist models. Perhaps long-time residents are feeling the necessity of places like the Weinerein now more than ever as rent prices in Prenzlauer Berg continue their steady rise.

The owners of the Weinerein also run a wine store on nearby Veteranenstrasse that stocks the varied selections served at the wine bars—mostly European wines, many of them imported by the proprietors. Asked about the selection process for the three Weinerein, employee Philippe Gross answered casually. “We choose the wines based on our whim and fancy, as the mood takes us.”

On a recent Saturday night, Forum was bustling with the usual mix of locals, expatriates, students, and a few well-informed tourists. The selection of half a dozen reds that night included a medium-bodied 2006 Côtes de Rousillon and an intense, fruity 2005 Porta dos Cavaleiros. German vineyards were well represented in the selection of whites.

At Fra Rosa, equal emphasis is placed on the wine and the food. The restaurant is open every night of the week, and reservations are essential—but the evening’s menu is only revealed at dinnertime. Co-chiefs Hugo and Antonio prepare a lavish seven-course menu, with an eye to the evening’s wine selection.

Asked what he felt a fair donation was for a full meal with wine pairings, Antonio stuck to the company line: “Each guest needs to figure it out for himself. It would be wrong of me to try and tell them how much to give.”

Forum Fehrbelliner Strasse 57, Berlin (030-60053072)
Perlin Griebenowstrasse 5, Berlin (030-40690951)
Fra Rosa Zionskirchstrasse 40, Berlin (030-65706756)

In Berlin, Life is Still a Cabaret!

2010-03-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

From Globespotters, an NYTimes blog

Berlin will always be synonymous with the artistic diversity and decadence of the Weimar Republic. But aside from the occasional revivals of “The Three Penny Opera,” cabaret culture in the city is largely a thing of the past. Perhaps the most insistent exception is the Kleine Nachtrevue (“Little Night Revue”), an erotic nightclub in the Schöneberg district that balances the risqué with the classy.

The intimate club (Kurfürstenstrasse 116; 49-30-218-8950; www.kleine-nachtrevue.de) is dimly lit, with seating for a few dozen at night-club tables and at the bar, which is decorated with a couple of suggestive sculptures, below a ceiling curved like an oyster shell. On a modest stage, an ensemble of dancers, acrobats, actors and singers perform the 11 shows that the club currently offers in rotation. (Shows are at 9 p.m., Wednesday to Saturday, followed by the “Burlesque and Naked Ballet Deluxe” at 11:45 p.m.)

Sylvia Schmid, the owner, is responsible for choreography and costume design and is herself a frequent performer. And despite its sexy appeal, the Nachtrevue doesn’t advertise. “We’re an insider tip,” said Ms. Schmid, who greets you as you enter the club.

During a recent performance, the crowd was a mix of older and younger couples (no stag parties were in evidence). That evening’s show, promisingly titled “Be a Stripper, Be a Star: Burlesque As You Like It,” took the audience on a lighthearted tour through the various eras of burlesque. There is tap dance, Busby Berkeley-style formations and plenty, plenty of nudity, accompanied by musical numbers from “Gypsy” and pop standards like “Calendar Girl.” The somewhat scrappy lighting and music cues give the show a down-to-earth feel and appropriately unpolished edge.

Other programs are devoted to Edith Piaf and Mata Hari; some are centered around famous Berliners, including Marlene Dietrich and the graphic artist Heinrich Zille.

After the main show, stick around for the informal program that features a mix of chanson, dance and acrobatics that lasts well into the night.

Two pieces of advice: reservations are strongly recommended, and leave the kiddies at home.

Metropolis Redux

2010-02-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is among the most iconic and influential movies of all time, referenced (and lovingly ripped off) by everyone from Stanley Kubrick to Luc Besson. It depicts not only a fantastical city of elegance and splendor, built on the back of workers who toil underground, but the sexy robot who is engineered by a mad scientist to destroy this new Babylon. Few films have been so enjoyed by generations of film buffs and pored over by scholars. Few films, too, have had such a fraught history or existed in so many versions. Now, 83 years after its Berlin premiere, "Metropolis" can finally be seen as Lang originally intended it. Well, almost.

A restored version that incorporates over 20 minutes of newly discovered footage was screened last Friday at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. Tickets to the gala, featuring the original score performed by a live symphony orchestra, sold out quickly. But throngs of cinéphiles braved subfreezing temperatures to congregate at Pariser Platz, where the film was beamed onto a screen set up at the Brandenburg Gate.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE...

Milchig Kosher Gourmet? You must be yidding - cough - kidding me.

2007-06-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

I only allow myself to use that racial epithet, since I have been voted an honorary member of the tribe since joining the Feuilleton and have learned of its somewhat erratic policies.

Until "Night Kitchen" finds a permanent food critic, I'll be handling all restaurant reviews.

For my first culinary outing, I chose "Va Bene" the only Kosher Dairy Restaurant in the city. Located at 82nd and 2nd Avenue, this pricey joint blends in nicely with the gentry-reeking 'hood. The facade, advertising the Kosher cuisine of Rome, and the elegant, red interior, are auspicious signs as I enter into the medium-sized establishment.

The menu, too, seems promising, with very tasteful (no pun intended) and mouthwatering descriptions of salads, pastas and fish dishes. Only when I turn to the wine menu and ask about the house red, do I notice unsettling signs. The waiter makes like he doesn't want to tell me what it is, and assures me that I'll like it. I press him further. He responds curtly that it's a Sangiovese and quickly darts off - ostensibly, to fetch me a glass.

The house red wasn't half bad, although certainly nothing justifying its $9 price tag. Still, it was probably the menu's best value. The double-portion Caesar salad - lettuce, Parmesan, anchovies and dressing - was priced at $30, the same price as the Tuna marinated in Balsamic. That dish was moderately flavorful, although unevenly cooked and seasoned. The sides of asparagus and potato were likewise bland and visually displeasing.

The penne, one of the cheaper options, was serviceable. No word yet on whether "Va Bene" makes their own pasta. According to the unremarkable evidence - i.e., the dish it question - there's no reason to think that it was.

The Minestrone soup was thick, hearty and woefully under-seasoned. Though a pinch of salt did aid a bit, the best one could hope for from the soup was to warm oneself up a bit.

An evening of mediocre and overpriced fair came to an unexpectedly glorious finish with a Tiramisu that was just short of cataclysmic. The velvety desert was a perfect marriage of cream, cake and chocolate. The only shortcoming was an overemphasis on the coffee-flavor.

Beginning with the wine incident, the service was downright lousy. The wait staff was inattentive and brash, and flagging a waiter down required superhuman effort. One waiter was actually chewing gum as he took my order. Another waiter refused to turn down the AC, after my party had complained - repeatedly - about it being too cold in the restaurant.

All in all, this overpriced joint is a simulacrum of a fine-dining experience, the likes of which many of its clientelle know absolutely nothing about, due to their dietary restrictions. Hopefully, a world class Kosher restaurant is possible yet. "Va Bene," however, falls short of accomplishing this.

Requiem for a Coffeehouse

2007-06-26T11:23:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday, Corey Lopez-Thomas, the general manager of the Upper East Side café DTUT, turned 22. That evening, the much-loved coffeehouse located at 2nd avenue between 84th and 85th streets closed its doors once and for all.

The café, which has been a fixture on the Upper East Side for over a decade, lost its lease a week ago after the rent doubled overnight.

DTUT had a hip, run-down feel more often associated with downtown than with the posh Upper East Side. Up until a year ago, they had open-mike nights. The love-it-or-hate-it artwork on the walls (and for sale) was changed every 3 -4 months, according to Lopez-Thomas.

The atmosphere was festive in the oblong café, decorated with myriad mismatched couches and bizarre artwork. At the counter, Lopez-Thomas took orders and fratrinized with the customers, mostly 20- and 30-somethings nursing cups of coffee and beers (available at cut prices to get rid of stock).

Some sat eating the café’s specialties, Make-Your-Own S’mores and Chocolate Fondue ($10.95 each).

Above a dining-room table reserved from guests with laptops, the baseball game played on TV. Nobody seemed to be watching.

“It was a great place for people who don’t like bars to get together. And it was romantic for couples.” Lopez-Thomas pointed out a seating-area cut off from the rest of the café: private quarters available on a first-come-first-served basis. “We call it the make-out room,” he explained.

Even with a liquor license, DTUT made the bulk of its revenue from coffee-sales, according to Lopez-Thomas. During the day, the café catered mostly to students, who would sit decked out with laptops for hours on end.

John Greenblatt, 37, a physician who remembers when DTUT opened, said his girlfriend was depressed about the closing. “It’s a shame. It was really part of the neighborhood.” He compared DTUT to Central Perk, the café on the TV show “Friends” and lamented that rent in the area had become prohibitive.

It remains to be seen what the landlord makes of the cavernous storefront. “The best thing that could happen would be Starbucks opening up here,” Greenblatt mused. “A more loungy Starbucks, I mean.”

The Apple Store

2007-06-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

I have a good friend who lives at 58th and Park. We usually meet up downtown, but I happened to be in his neighborhood last night. When we finally met up at midnight, my friend wasn't up to a long subway ride downtown so we decided to walk around his neighborhood. What's there to do in midtown east on a Sunday night at midnight? Any guesses?

The Apple Store at 59th and 5th is open 24/7. My friend has joked that he can always skip over there at 3am if his computer crashes. Well, we did case out the joint and found that it was hopping! At least, for 3am. There was a line at the genius bar and quite a few natives and tourists were inspecting various wares. We also got a sneak peek of the iPhone. Below are some images from that unforgettable visit.

The Florescent Apple

iPhone (Shown Actual Size)

The Genius Bar at 12:30am

A Gathering of Apple Store Employees

For $175, you can expect a lot more from your headphones

IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN

The Lighter Side...

Berlin Opera x 3

- from the July issue of OPERA NEWS magazine

Die Walküre

BERLIN Staatsoper Unter den Linden 4/17/11

Salome

BERLIN Komische Oper Berlin 4/10/11

Wozzeck

BERLIN Staatsoper Unter den Linden 4/21/11

Tristan und Rusalka

No Journalism After Auschwitz

Originally published in the New York Jewish Week

Mixed Media: Never Forget What Was Never Reported

What the Demjanjuk Verdict Means for Germany

Wim Wenders on Using 3D Technology

Mahlerfest Leipzig!

Reflections on the Japanese Catastrophe

Wanda Landowska Honored in Eisenach

Berlin Staatsoper & Deutsche Oper - 2011 / 2012

Composer Alexander Goehr Feted in Berlin

By A.J. Goldmann

By A.J. Goldmann

Composer Alexander Goehr Feted in Berlin

By A.J. Goldmann

By A.J. Goldmann

Snow Queen in Berlin

BERLIN Komische Oper Berlin 10/24/10

Berlin Competition Selection Complete

Berlin Fall 2010 Opera Review

FINAL WEEKS: HITLER AND THE GERMANS AT DHM

Three Cheers for the Red, Black and Gold

Like a German (JA!)

Komische Oper Season 2010-2011

Savitri staged in the Berghain techno club

Holst’s Sanskrit opera succesfully blurs boundaries

New Look for the "New York Feuilleton"

Berlin's Chabad Center hosts Jewish Parade and Carnival

Deutsche Oper Berlin hosts a different 'Nibelungen'

2010 - 2011 season announced for Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper

Jodorowsky & Squat

Lulu & Cello go to Dinner

Baroque Breakdancing in Berlin

TIP: Party Like It's 1929!

TIP! Fritz Lang's Nibelungen Scored and Restored on Apr. 27

Tip! Holst in Berghain - May 10 & 11

Tip: "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" at the Staatsballet

Tip: The Berlin Jewish Film Festival (April 25 - May 9)

An Unlikely Jewish Renaissance in Berlin

Tip: Achtung Film Festival (April 14 - 21)

Tip: Flying Bach at the Neue Nationalgalerie

At 325, Bach Gets a New Museum in Leipzig

Exploring Berlin's Underground

Berlin's Wintertime Bayreuth

Berlin’s Underemployed, Well-Educated Expat Hipsters Lend City a Gritty Verve

Berlin hits the hipster wall

Eat, drink, and donate at the city’s Weinerei chain

In Berlin, Life is Still a Cabaret!

Metropolis Redux

Milchig Kosher Gourmet? You must be yidding - cough - kidding me.

Requiem for a Coffeehouse

The Apple Store

BERLIN
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
4/17/11

BERLIN
Komische Oper Berlin
4/10/11

BERLIN
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
4/21/11

BERLIN
Komische Oper Berlin
10/24/10