Who owns Kafka?

Who owns, or should be able to own, the work of a great artist? A trunk filled with unpublished work by Franz Kafka has sparked a court case that, as the philosopher Judith Butler reports in the current London Review of Books, raises a host of questions about national identity, cultural heritage, the commodification of art, and the meaning of ownership, whether individual or collective.

The facts are both straightforward, and, as with everything to do with Kafka, extraordinarily convoluted. Born in Prague to Jewish parents during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka spoke and wrote in German. After publishing a number of short stories and novellas, he died in 1924 leaving no will, but only a letter to his friend Max Brod:

Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me (in my bookcase, linen-cupboard, and my desk both at home and in the office, or anywhere else where anything may have got to and meets your eye), in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, to be burned unread; also all writings and sketches which you or others may possess; and ask those others for them in my name. Letters which they do not want to hand over to you, they should at least promise faithfully to burn themselves.

Of course, Brod did not burn Kafka's work, but instead immediately began editing and arranging for the publication of his novels Der Prozess (The Trial, 1925), Das Schloss (The Castle, 1926), and Amerika (originally entitled Der Verschollene, or The Disappearance, 1927); a collection of short stories, parables, and other pieces, Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer (The Great Wall of China, 1931); and an edition of his Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Works, 1935-37).

Brod, a longtime Zionist, emigrated to Palestine in 1939, carrying the Kafka manuscripts with him. He later edited editions of Kafka's diaries and letters, but refused to allow other scholars to have access to the manuscripts, or to place them in a library, museum or archive. However, as war loomed during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Brod sent the bulk of the manuscripts to safekeeping in a Swiss bank vault. After lengthy negotiations involving Brod, Kafka's publisher Salman Schocken, Kafka's niece and heir Marianne Steiner (daughter of Kafka's sister Valerie), and literary scholar Malcolm Pasley, the manuscripts were transferred in 1961 to the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

However, Brod still retained the manuscript of Der Prozess (which Kafka had given him in 1920) and an unknown quantity of unpublished material. On his death in 1968 these manuscripts were bequeathed to his secretary (and, apparently, lover) Esther Hoffe. In 1988, she put the manuscript of Der Prozess up for auction at Sotheby's, where it sold for $1.98 million. Herbert Tenschert, the West German book dealer who placed the winning bid on behalf of the Deutsche Literaturarchiv Marbach, was quoted after the auction as saying "This is perhaps the most important work in 20th-century German literature, and Germany had to have it." Kafka would surely have appreciated the multiple ironies: not only was he not German, but this wasn't the first time a German government had expressed keen interest in his work: the Nazis had seized 20 of his notebooks and a cache of letters from his lover Dora Diamant in Berlin in 1933, and probably burned them.

Kafka's work has now become a nexus of competing national, cultural, ethnic, and mercenary claims. Esther Hoffe's daughters, Eva and Ruth, have now inherited the remaining Kafka manuscripts, which they want to sell—by weight, without an inventory or any other kind of assessment. However, several parties are suing to contest the Hoffe sisters' claims to the manuscripts: the National Library of Israel asserts that the Kafka manuscripts are "cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people," and so belong in its collection (Kafka wrote in a 1914 diary entry, "What have I in common with the Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself..."). The Deutsche Literaturarchiv Marbach is also in court, suggesting that the remainder of the manuscripts ought to be reunited with Der Prozess in its collection. This isn't the first time that competing claims have been made about Kafka's work; Butler quotes a letter Kafka wrote in 1916 to Felice Bauer:

And incidentally, won't you tell me what I really am; in the last Neue Rundschau...the writer says: "There is something fundamentally German about K's narrative art." In Max's article on the other hand: "K's stories are among the most typically Jewish documents of our time." A difficult case. Am I a circus rider on two horses? Alas, I am no rider, but lie prostrate on the ground.

Further recommended reading: David Mairowitz and R. Crumb's Kafka (Fantagraphics Books, 2007). The latest edition of this book, valuable especially for Crumb's haunting illustrations of Kafka's life and works.

Update 16 June 2020: In 2016 the Israeli supreme court awarded the surviving Kafka manuscripts remaining in the possession of Eva Hoffe to the National Library of Israel. For more information, see Hilo Glazer's article in Haaretz of 17 February 2017.

The Pallisers

The Pallisers (1974) is a revered BBC adaptation from the early 1970s, the era of other classic series such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and Elizabeth R (1971). It is based on the six Palliser novels (1864 - 1879) of Anthony Trollope, plus an episode from his The Small House At Allington (1864).

Trollope's Palliser novels are a rich, complex portrait of high-Victorian politics and society as seen through the intertwining lives of an ever-shifting ensemble of characters. Chief among them are Plantagenet Palliser, a rising politician and heir to the Duke of Omnium; Lady Glencora, who reluctantly agrees to an arranged marriage with Palliser, but who loves another man, Burgo Fitzgerald; and Phineas Finn, a naïve and idealistic young man who over the course of two of the novels undergoes a political and sentimental education.

We've just finished reading (aloud!) the first novel in the series, Can You Forgive Her?, and thought that we'd enjoy Simon Raven's highly-regarded 26-part BBC series. After all, we love the BBC adaptations of George Eliot's Middlemarch (1994) and of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1995) and Persuasion (1995).

But almost immediately The Pallisers goes wrong—horribly wrong. Our first surprise was that, like Elizabeth R and The Six Wives of Henry VIII, it was shot on video, which makes even the gorgeous settings and costumes look flat and cheap. But that would be a minor annoyance if the casting and Raven's script weren't so badly off.

Trollope writes of Plantagenet Palliser at his first appearance in The Small House At Allington: "He was about five-and-twenty years of age...dressed very quietly, never changing the colour or form of his garments; and in society was quiet, reserved, and very often silent. He was tall, slight, and not ill-looking..." [1] His youth is highly significant; one of the recurring issues in Can You Forgive Her? is Palliser's relative inexperience in comparison to the other men of power with whom he is vying for the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unfortunately the actor portraying him, Philip Latham, was 45 at the time the series was filmed, and if anything looks older. This is just one example of the persistent miscasting in The Pallisers.

The episode from The Small House At Allington that is included in the first episode of the series is Plantagenet's flirtation with the married Lady Dumbello. She is very beautiful and (thanks to her marriage) very rich, but, as her name might suggest, not especially vivacious or witty. One of Trollope's jokes is that these two "reserved" and "undemonstrative" people, who can hardly bring themselves to utter more than a few polite banalities to each other, apparently contemplate having an affair.

However, in the extended opening scene of The Pallisers, a garden party, Palliser and Lady Dumbello are hardly reserved or undemonstrative. We see them move away together from the rest of the guests and, in a shaded nook, speak animatedly to each other about the financial issues facing the nation (a subject about which Trollope's Lady Dumbello would be unlikely—or unable—to carry on a conversation). Here there's another error of casting, or direction. Lady Dumbello is portrayed with a very thick upper-class accent (so clipped and mumbled we could hardly understand what she was saying). In Trollope's novel, however, before she became Lady Dumbello she was Griselda Grantly, the daughter of a country priest—someone unlikely to have such an upper-crust accent. In fact, perhaps it is Lady Dumbello's anxiety about revealing her middle-class origins that makes her so reticent in company. Trollope also writes that "she was a lady still very young, having as yet been little more than two years married." [2] So Lady Dumbello is likely to be in her early 20s; Rachel Herbert, the actress who portrays her, looks to be in her mid-30s, and (not to be unkind) does not have the sort of looks that would have all of society competing for her favor, as does Trollope's Lady Dumbello.

Yet another example of miscasting: Lady Glencora M'Cluskie "has only been out a few months," as we are told by one of the characters in The Pallisers, placing her in her late teens. The actress portraying her, Susan Hampshire, was 37, and even though she looks younger than her age is still far too old. Plus, Raven has her behaving far too brazenly with her swain Burgo Fitzgerald. Lady Glencora is flirtatious, but would hardly kiss her partner openly on the dance floor before all her family and acquaintances—no young woman of her class, situation and era would.

As for Burgo Fitzgerald: "He was one of those young men with dark hair and blue eyes,—who wear no beard, and are certainly among the handsomest of all God's creatures. No more handsome man than Burgo Fitzgerald lived in his days; and this merit at any rate was his,—that he thought nothing of his own beauty." [3] Barry Justice, who plays Burgo, has light brown hair and brown eyes. I mean no disrespect, and I am not the most reliable judge of men's looks, but I would not say that no more handsome man than Barry Justice lived in his days, even if those days were the mid-70s. (You can judge for yourself to the right; images "borrowed" from Ellen and Jim Have a Blog Too.)

The travesty continues: George Vavasor is not only (of course!) too old (Trollope says that he is "a year or two over thirty," while the actor Gary Watson looks to be well over forty)—he has no facial scar! Trollope: "one side of his face been dreadfully scarred by a cicatrice, which in healing, had left a dark indented line down from his left eye to his lower jaw. That black ravine running through his cheek was certainly ugly. On some occasions, when he was angry or disappointed, it was very hideous; for he would so contort his face that the scar would, as it were, stretch itself out, revealing all its horrors, and his countenance would become all scar." [4]

Finally, there's Dolly Longestaffe, a man apparently in late middle age who rather too explicitly explains all the Palliser characters and their connections to George Vavasor (and, of course, to us—he's a bit too obviously the screenwriter's stand-in). The only problem is that Dolly Longestaffe is not even a character in the first five Palliser novels. He doesn't appear until the final book, The Duke's Children (1879), after being introduced in the (non-Palliser) The Way We Live Now (1875). In The Way We Live Now Dolly is a frivolous man who is somewhere between his late twenties and mid-thirties; if the action in the first episode of The Pallisers is taking place ten years earlier, Dolly is twice as old as he should be (the actor Donald Pickering was in his forties, and is made up to look even older).

All this occurs in the first ten minutes of the first episode! Alas, that is all of that episode, or of any episode of The Pallisers, that we will ever see. Those who report enjoying the series must either have never read Trollope, or are better able than we are to block out what they remember of the books. Instead, we'll be returning to the pleasures of Trollope's writing, read aloud.

Update 3 Feb 2011: The Duke's garden party, which I had assumed was an invention of The Pallisers screenwriter Simon Raven, is based on an important scene in Trollope—but one that occurs towards the end of the second Palliser novel, Phineas Finn (1867). It's a brilliant scene, in which the rising politician Phineas Finn encounters in turn each of the three women (the unhappily married Lady Laura Kennedy, the unhappily engaged Violet Effingham, and the unhappily dis-engaged Madame Max Goesler) who represent his past, present, and future marital aspirations.

But Raven almost throws away this scene. He uses it as a means of introducing several of the major characters, and it is a spectacular set-piece. But because the characters have not yet been laboriously explained to us by Dolly Longestaffe, their actions and relationships don't yet carry any emotional weight. It's another missed opportunity; the scene would have been far more effective in its true place in the saga.

Update 26 May 2012: You can read more of my thoughts on Trollope's Palliser novels in my post A guide to the novels of Anthony Trollope, Part 2: The Palliser novels.

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1. The Small House At Allington, Ch. XXIII.
2. The Small House At Allington, Ch. XVII.
3. Can You Forgive Her?, Ch. XVIII.
4. Can You Forgive Her?, Ch. IV

Bollywood mini-reviews

Over the past year we watched something on the order of 30 Indian films, but I only wrote about a handful of them. Sometimes they had already been covered in such loving (or excoriating) detail by other writers that I didn't feel I had much to add. Sometimes they didn't seem worth a full-length post. And sometimes life just caught up with me and I didn't have the time.

So here are some capsule reviews of films that, for one reason or another, never got the full-length treatment.

Dor (String, 2006) is well-written, beautifully filmed, and offers two strong performances by its lead actresses, Gul Panang and Ayesha Takia. Zeenat (Panang) learns that her husband faces a death sentence in Saudia Arabia for the (accidental?) killing of his roommate in a guest-worker dormitory. Zeenat's husband can only be saved by the pardon of the victim's widow Meera (Takia), and so Zeenat travels to Rajasthan to try to find her. Along the way she encounters the itinerant actor Behroopiya (Shreyas Talpade), who—after introducing himself by stealing her belongings—comes to aid her in her search.

Panang is fiercely convincing as the driven Zeenat, showing us both her inner strength and her desperation. Takia, previously cast mainly in lightweight comedies like Dil Maane More!!! (2004) and Home Delivery (2005), gives a subdued and nuanced performance as the young widow Meera. The scene where Meera discovers that Zeenat's friendship has an ulterior motive is heartrending, and very real.

The only thing that makes me hesitate with Dor is that, while its surfaces suggest the gritty realism of parallel cinema, as it goes along it more and more betrays its filmi heart. Talpade's character is simply too good to be true, a self-conscious star turn that feels jarringly out-of-place at times. Director Nagesh Kukunoor incorporates multiple references to Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) and Bunty aur Babli (2005), and in Dor's final moments he directly quotes Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995). While I love Bollywood in-references, I think the movie would have been even stronger without these touches. Still, a compelling film about the power of emotional bonds between women.

Two with Kamalinee Mukherjee: Anand (2004) and Godavari (2006)

The best thing about these two Telugu movies is Kamalinee Mukherjee, who is delightful as the confident, independent young heroines. In Anand she is Rupa, a young woman alone in the world who is pursued by two over-persistent lovers. One of them, Anand (Raja), moves in next door and randomly accosts her, and the other, Rahul (Anuj Gurwara), tries to rape her. After Anand saves Rupa by thrashing Rahul in the obligatory fight scene, he then blames her for the attack because she was too friendly with Rahul (!). Writer/director Sekhar Kammula creates a wonderful heroine, and then unfortunately matches her with a woefully conventional, not to say sexist, hero. Despite its charms—Kamalinee's performance, and the closely observed interactions between Rupa and her next-door neighbor Anita (Satya Krishnan) and her kids—Anand felt like it would have been better with a better hero.

Godavari, Kammula's next film, has a slightly different hero problem. Sriram (Sumanth) is travelling by boat down the Godavari River to attend the wedding of Raji (Neetu Chandra), the woman he loves but whose family has arranged her marriage with another suitor. As they float downriver to the temple of Lord Ram at Bhadrachalam, he meets Seeta (Kamalinee). Ram, Seeta, Bhadrachalam—that's not overdetermined, is it? The morose Ram and the plucky Seeta argue constantly, which means, of course, that they're falling in love, even if they're not quite aware of it. Unfortunately in the second half there's an odd incident that makes us doubt whether Ram is really ready to have someone like Seeta—or, really, anyone—in his life.

Seeta is a complex character, very sympathetically portrayed by Kamalinee: she's smart, open, generous, and aware of her own attractiveness, but given to occasional moments of doubt and jealousy. The shots of the river trip and the details of the community life on board the boat are wonderful, beautifully framed by director Kammula, and, together with Kamalinee's charming performance, are the best reason to watch Godavari.

Three with Priyanka Chopra: What's Your Raashee? (What's Your Sign?, 2009), Pyaar Impossible! (Love Impossible, 2010), and Anjaana Anjaani (Strangers, 2010)

Speaking of hero and script problems...

Priyanka may have looked great in the backless, gold-lamé swimsuit she wore in Dostana (2008), but her best asset is her voice, which is low and throaty. As she proves in What's Your Raashee?, though, she's capable of many voices, some extremely grating. Priyanka plays 12 hopeful brides, each representing the supposed characteristics of a different zodiac sign. Watching Priyanka portray 12 different women is pretty enjoyable, but the film gets bogged down in complicated subplots featuring the blandly handsome but distinctly uncharismatic Harman Baweja. Three and a half hours is a long time to spend in his company.

Things don't improve a great deal in Pyaar Impossible!, where we're asked to believe that Uday Chopra is a software engineer. Uday's really not bad in this; the role of the geeky Abhay forces him to tone down his usually all-too-apparent self-love. Abhay manages to be somewhat endearing, as long as you don't think too hard about his stalking of college beauty Alisha (Priyanka). I also have a soft spot for the picturization of the title song, where Abhay shows Alisha how brutal the dating market can be for nonconformists (though I have news for director Jugal Hansraj and his costume department: Priyanka would have no trouble getting a date in those cool nerd glasses). But despite the best efforts of Priyanka and Advika Yadav, who plays her bratty 7-year-old daughter, the silicon-wafer-thin story—written by Uday himself!—doesn't bear a moment's consideration.

Priyanka finally gets to play opposite a plausible hero, Ranbir Kapoor, in Anjaana Anjaani—only the movie's entire budget seems to have been spent on its stars and location shooting, with nothing left over for script development. (Curiously—or perhaps not—no writers are credited on the film's Wikipedia or IMDB pages.) Akash (Ranbir) is about to jump off a bridge when he's interrupted by Kiara (Priyanka), who is also there to jump. Nothing about this film is surprising in the least: we understand where it's going in the first five minutes, but it takes the rest of the film for these uninvolving characters to catch up with us. In the meantime, their cluelessness and self-involvement becomes ever more irritating.

There is one great moment: Kiara and Akash have agreed to a reunion on the bridge at midnight on New Year's Eve, but he hasn't shown. Dejected, she's turning to leave—and then she hears his voice. In quick succession, about a dozen distinct emotions cross Priyanka's face. It's amazing to watch, but one great moment doesn't make up for the rest of the movie.

Karthik Calling Karthik (2010) is a slickly filmed and atmospheric mystery/thriller with appealing stars in Farhan Akhtar and Deepika Padukone, and at least one catchy tune in Shankar-Eshaan-Loy's "Uff Teri Adaa." But the solution to the mystery is so ludicrous that it reveals the rest of the movie to be the empty exercise in style that it is.

I Hate Luv Storys [sic] (2010): Halfway through IHLS I asked my partner, "Do you notice a lack of chemistry between Imran Khan and Sonam Kapoor?" She replied, "I notice a lack of chemistry between Imran and the camera."

And that's the problem with over-saturating your film with references to DDLJ (1995), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), and many other romantic classics—you invite comparisons between your lead couple and the most charismatic jodis in latter-day Hindi cinema. In comparison, both Imran and Sonam are, well, inert, separately and together. And that's the main problem with IHLS—all the in-references just serve to highlight the movie's own inadequacies. It's early days yet for Imran and Sonam—this is only his fourth movie, and her third—so they may get better. I'll check back in a few years.

Dulha Mil Gaya (Found A Groom, 2010): Speaking of comparisons, Fardeen Khan should make sure that he never has to share a screen with Shah Rukh Khan again. FK's lack of magnetism is always obvious, but it becomes so glaring after SRK enters in the second half that I felt embarrassed for him. The one entertaining moment is "Dilrubaon Ke Jalwe," which deliriously mashes up SRK's and Sushmita Sen's filmographies. Otherwise, this one is for SRK completists only.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Favorites of 2010: Music

A continuation of my Favorites of 2010: Books and Favorites of 2010: Movies and television. As before, my favorites weren't necessarily produced, but instead first encountered, in 2010.

Music

Favorite rock recording: Patti Smith, Twelve. Columbia 87251 (2007).

Twelve is Patti Smith's album of covers, but it sounds and feels like a really good Patti Smith record. Some of the songs were originally by artists with whom she obviously has a strong affinity: Jimi Hendrix ("Are You Experienced?"), Mick Jagger & Keith Richards ("Gimme Shelter"), Jim Morrison ("Soul Kitchen"), Bob Dylan (though the song is a surprise: the born-again era "Changing of the Guards"). Other choices are more unexpected: Tears for Fears ("Everybody Wants to Rule the World"), Allman Brothers ("Midnight Rider"), Paul Simon ("Boy In the Bubble"), Stevie Wonder ("Pastime Paradise"). Many of the songs she includes are so iconic in their original versions that it's an act of daring even to attempt to cover them--only such a strongly individual performer could get away with it. A good companion to her recently released memoir, Just Kids. Thanks very much to Robin for sending this along.

Favorite classical instrumental recording: (tie)

Joseph Haydn: Baryton Trios. Balázs Kakuk, baryton; Péter Lukács, viola; Tibor Párkányi, cello. Hungaroton 31174 (1989).

The baryton was an 18th-century instrument that falls somewhere between a viola da gamba and a cello in its sonority. In addition to bowed gut strings, though, the baryton had another 8 to 20 sympathetic metal strings that could be plucked by the performer. These baryton trios were originally written for Haydn's patron Prince Nicholas Esterházy, an avid amateur baryton player; Haydn himself may have played the viola part. They are lovely works that generally reach neither for deep profundity nor for spectacular virtuosity, but instead for intimacy and melodic pleasure. One remarkable thing about the trios is that they involve only low(ish) strings, which results in a very rich sound. An utterly charming recording.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Sonatas for viola da gamba and basso continuo. Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba; Rinaldo Alessandrini, harpsichord. Brilliant Classics 93362 (2008, originally recorded 1995).

Johann Sebastian Bach's second son, in contrast to his father, is sometimes accused of a lack of profundity. But these sonatas are masterful and expressive works that stand comparison with the senior Bach's own viola da gamba sonatas. At least, in these performances, which involve two of the most brilliant musicians to emerge from Italy's early music movement. This wonderful disc makes me wonder what other C.P.E. Bach treasures I've overlooked.

Favorite classical vocal recording: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson: Lorraine at Emmanuel: Celebrating the Lives of Craig Smith and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. The Orchestra of Emmanuel Music; Craig Smith and John Harbison, conductors. Avie 2130 (2008).

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's voice was "primally beautiful, rich in tone and true in pitch, warm and deep and wine-dark," as Alex Ross once wrote.[1] If you ever had the privilege of seeing Lorraine Hunt Lieberson onstage, you know what a thrilling experience it was to hear that voice live. And it wasn't just that her voice was gorgeous; her commitment to conveying textual and emotional meaning was total. During the time you'd spent in her company you felt that you had lived more deeply.

This disc documents three concert performances given at Boston's Emmanuel Church: two arias from Bach cantatas, and Dejanira's arias from Handel's oratorio Hercules. At first glance the programming seems a bit odd: the Bach works are sacred, the Handel secular; the Bach is in German, the Handel in English; and the dates of recording are several years apart (the earliest is from 1992, while the latest is from 1999). But this disc holds together thanks to Hunt Lieberson's superb performances. She was once a violist with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, and it's easy to believe that she felt a special connection with the ensemble. And with the music: conductor Craig Smith famously founded Emmanuel Music in order to perform Bach's cantatas, and Hunt Lieberson had performed many as both a member of the orchestra and as a featured vocalist. She also clearly loved Handel: she became famous in part for her assumption of the role of Sesto in Peter Sellars' production of Handel's Giulio Cesare at Glimmerglass in 1985, and made a specialty of Handel roles in her recordings with the Bay Area's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Hunt Lieberson's life was tragically cut short by breast cancer in 2006, making even more precious the rare documents (such as this one) of her profound gifts.

Favorite (semi-)opera recording: Henry Purcell, The Fairy Queen. Jonathan Kent, stage director; Paul Brown, designer. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/The Glyndebourne Chorus; William Christie, conductor. Opus Arte DVD 1931 D (2010).

The Fairy Queen of the title is Titania, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Purcell's music was originally performed as a masque in between acts of a heavily cut performance of the Shakespeare play, and remarkably that is how it is performed here. It makes for a long performance—the running time is 230 minutes, or nearly 4 hours—but in restoring the Shakepearean context the director Jonathan Kent allows Purcell's songs to reflect and comment on the action of the play. And the staging of the musical material is highly imaginative and really fun: I'm pretty sure that Purcell's original score didn't call for giant bunnies to bound onstage and start having sex in a variety of acrobatic positions (the, er, choreography is by Kim Brandstrup). The cast of vocalists (which includes Lucy Crowe and Carolyn Sampson) is excellent and quite characterful. Conductor William Christie's long familiarity with this score is evident in the sparkling playing he draws from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. A wonderful example of how Baroque theater can be reimagined for modern audiences without doing violence to its original meanings.

Favorite opera performance: (three-way tie)

Mozart and Da Ponte: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). San Francisco Opera, with Danielle De Niese (Susanna), Luca Pisaroni (Figaro), Ellie Dehn (The Countess), Lucas Meachem (Count Almaviva), and Heidi Stober (Cherubino); Nicola Luisotti, conductor. Seen September 21 and October 5, 2010.

In an earlier post I wrote about why Le Nozze di Figaro is, for me, the greatest opera ever written. The San Francisco Opera's handsome Figaro, directed by John Copley, showed how effective a production can be when it pays attention to what the composer and librettist intended. It's set in the late 18th century (the time of its composition), and the sets and costumes realistically attempt to evoke a rural Spanish estate. There were a few missed opportunities—for some reason directors almost universally feel that they have to mess about with the garden scenes, which have no need to be changed—but mainly the action was straightforward and persuasively realized. Of course, it helped to have an excellent cast, with Danielle De Niese as an especially delightful Susanna, and Ellie Dehn as a touchingly vulnerable Countess. So good we saw it twice! (Photo: Danielle De Niese as Susanna; credit: Marty Sohl.)

Handel: Serse (Xerxes). Berkeley West Edge Opera, with Paula Rasmussen (Serse), Angela Cadelago (Romilda), Ryan Belongie (Arsamene), Anna Slate (Atalanta), Sonia Gariaeff (Amastre), Don Sherrill (Elviro); Alan Curtis, conductor. Seen November 21, 2010.

I wrote about this production in an earlier post. A wonderfully ambitious production for a small local company, with a conductor and prima donna of international stature and an accomplished supporting cast. This is exactly what companies like BWEO should be doing: programming under-performed gems in clever productions that make virtues of tight-budget necessities. I hope that the success of Serse leads to future productions of other comic or semi-comic Baroque operas: I vote for Cavalli's La Calisto.

Blow: Venus & Adonis. Magnificat, with Catherine Webster (Venus), Peter Becker (Adonis), and José Lemos (Cupid). Warren Stewart, conductor. Seen October 10, 2010.

I also wrote about this production in an earlier post. Venus & Adonis, like its successor by Purcell, Dido & Aeneas, is a lovely chamber opera that packs an emotional punch well out of proportion to its size. As I wrote earlier, "Magnificat made a compelling case for the work; given its obviously high quality and modest scale, I'm amazed that it isn't programmed more frequently....Thanks are due to Stewart and Magnificat for bringing this unjustly neglected work to life."

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1. Alex Ross, "Fervor: Remembering Lorraine Hunt Lieberson," The New Yorker, September 25, 2006.

Favorites of 2010: Books

A continuation of my Favorites of 2010: Movies and television. As before, my favorites were first encountered this year, but not necessarily produced this year.

Books

2010 was for me the Year of the Victorian Novel. For the first time I discovered the pleasures of curling up in an overstuffed armchair with overstuffed 19th-century fiction.

Favorite novel: George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72)

In my earlier full-length post on the "three love problems" of Middlemarch I wrote, "its characters are so fully realized that readers will recognize in them their neighbors, relatives and friends—and especially, parts of themselves that usually remain unacknowledged." Eliot writes with an almost painful psychological acuity and unsparingly dissects the emotional dynamics of love and marriage.

Runners-up: (tie)

The novels of Anthony Trollope: The Way We Live Now (1875), Can You Forgive Her? (1865), The Small House at Allington (1864), He Knew He Was Right (1869)

Trollope perhaps has a more conventional view of the roles of men and women than does George Eliot. And it's difficult to decide if the prejudices and conventionality of his upper-class characters are entirely their own, or whether they're not shared to a lesser or greater extent by the author. But if in Middlemarch George Eliot peoples a provincial village with richly drawn characters, Trollope manages to people the entire city of London and several surrounding towns. The only thing more astonishing than the sheer volume of his output—in the decade between The Small House at Allington and The Way We Live Now he wrote 18 other fat novels, plus short stories, essays, plays, travel sketches, and a school textbook (!)—is its uniformly high quality. His female characters are especially vivid, and Trollope makes their dilemmas keenly felt: there are women who love men unworthy of them (Lily Dale in The Small House at Allington, Marie Melmotte in The Way We Live Now, and Lady Glencora in Can You Forgive Her?), women who face family opposition to the men they love (Hetta Carbury in The Way We Live Now, Dorothy Stanbury and Nora Rowley in He Knew He Was Right), women trapped in difficult marriages (Lady Glencora, and Emily Trevelyan in He Knew He Was Right), and women who find no outlet for their intelligence and their passionate desire to make a difference in the world (Alice Vavasor in Can You Forgive Her?). Trollope's fictional world is almost Tolstoyan in the complexity and richness of its characters.

The late novels of Machado de Assis: Dom Casmurro (1899) and Memorial de Aires (Counselor Aires' Memoirs, 1908)

Six months ago I wrote a post on Dom Casmurro; after The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas I think it's Machado's strongest novel. But I have a special affection as well for his last book, Memorial de Aires, translated by Helen Caldwell as Counselor Ayres' Memorial (University of California Press, 1982). In a series of diary entries we follow Aires' observations of the slowly blossoming romance of a beautiful (and somewhat reluctant) young widow, and his elegiac reflections on love and the passing of youth. The final passages of this slim story beautifully crystallize Aires' melancholy acceptance of time's erosive power on memory and the emotions. The book is a masterpiece in miniature.

Favorite non-fiction book: (tie)

Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (Penguin, 2009)

I posted about Zadie Smith's "smart, insightful and beautifully written" essays earlier this year. "Dead Man Laughing" affectingly describes the death of her father and their shared love of British comedy, while "Middlemarch and Everybody" inspired me to pick up Eliot's wonderful novel for the first time. Changing My Mind is now out in paperback.

Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco, 2010)

In the summer of 1967 the 20-year-old Patti Smith arrived in New York City with $32 and a battered copy of Rimbaud's Illuminations in her pocket. By chance she encountered Robert Mapplethorpe, and the two began a romantic and artistic partnership that transformed both of their lives. Just Kids is written in an autodidact's style which is direct, genuine, unsentimental, at times incantory, and like her music, utterly compelling. The book won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction and is now out in paperback.

Next time: Music