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Feb. ABOUT SCHMIDT. Jack Nicholson gives a surprisingly restrained performance as a repressed functionary in an insurance agency, whose life is overturned when his wife dies unexpectedly. Gone is that wicked gleam in his eyes. His batteries seem to be half run down.
March. THE HOURS. Meryl Streep & Ed Harrris star in a reworking of Virginia Wolf's Mrs Dalloway. We are flipped back and forth between the twenties (V Wolf), the fifties (a tract house in LA where Julianne Moore is an unstable housewife) and modern New York, where Meryl S maneuvers back and forth between a daughter, a former lover with aids, and her current woman partner. The question all ask: Why go on living?
Mar 22. OTELLO at the Met. Valery Gergiev's version of the tale of a virtuous woman throttled by her jealous husband, whose passions have been stirred up by a malicious aide, Iago.
Mar 29.FAUST at the Met. The French version of Faust, where the hero sells his soul for love and sex. The Germans prefer that he thirst after knowledge.
April 5. Luba Sindler, pianist, at the Brailovsky's. Born in St Petersburg, Luba plays like a demon. Hummel, Chopin, Prokofiev, von Weber, Liszt. Met Yuri, now living in Philadelphia, who told me about the vast biological laboratories underneath Sukhumi in Abkhazia. When we visited Sukhumi in the late seventies, we were totally unaware of this secret laboratory.
Apr 6. FICTION by Steven Dietz at McCarter. Husband allows wife, who is dying of a brain tumor, to read his diaries for the past few years. The diaries reveal that he has had a continuing (?) affair with one of the women in a writer's colony. In fact, his diary is replete with episodes of their trysts throughout the world. Uproar! Later, it is revealed that most of the affair is fictional--in his head. A very well crafted play.
April 7. My first crack at Haiku, the Japanese poetry form that requires (in its classical form) that there be five syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the last.
Apr 11. THE PIANIST. Searing movie by Roman Polanski about a pianist who escaped from the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw just before all of its inmates were taken off to the extermination camps. Some horrific scenes, including point blank executions with a Luger at the back of the head.
Apr 12. PARSIFAL, directed by Gergiev at the Met. Placido Domingo and Rene Pap gave outstanding performances. Gripping 5 1/2 hours.Teutonic Knights, the Holy Grail, a redeemer, a Mary Magdelen in this extravaganza by Wagner. Christian symbolism pushed to its limits.
Apr 23. BEATRICE ET BENEDICT, an opera in two acts, at the Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Ave, off 122 st, NY. Odd romantic comedy in which the two principals appear to hate one another. Fine singing by the sopranos and a contralto.
Apr 27. Recorder and harpsichord concert at the Trenton City Museum in Cadwalader Park. Erudite discussion of colonial musical traditions by John Burkhalter with fine playing on the harpsichord by Eugene Roan. Together they call themselves the Practitioners of Musick. Great sun-shiny event in the Ellarslie Mansion in the park.
June 14. Mordecai Shehori, talented Israeli pianist, at Alice Tully Hall. Liszt, Bach, and Brahms by a virtuoso performer, whose sensibility is rooted in the romantic tradition of the early 20th century, according to Allan Kozinn of the New York Times (the gentlest and sweetest of pianissimos).
July 19. Musick in 18th Century Dublin at Westminster. John Burkhalter (recorder) and Eugene Roan (harpsichord,organ,spinnet) play classic music from Corelli, Handel, Carolan, and others, together with a sly, subversive, informative commentary by John.
July 25. The Invisible City of Kitezh, a Kirov production of the Rimsky-Korsakov opera at the Met. The maiden Fevronia lives in a hermitage in thick woods. She meets Prince Vsevolod, the presumptive ruler of Greater Kitezh, falls in love and plans a marriage. Enter the evil Tartars, who destroy Lesser Kitezh and torture the town drunk into revealing where the prosperous town of Greater K was situated. The Tartars take Fevronia captive and spread the lie that she is conducting them to Kitezh. As a result of her prayers, God makes K invisible, saving it from the Tartars. The last scene in heaven is boring, saccharine and cloying.
Sept 20. ANNA IN THE TROPICS, by Nilo Cruz, first play of the season at McCarter. Jimmy Smitz plays the lector, ie, the reader at a Cuban cigar factory near Tampa. He reads from Anna Karenina, the Russian story of an adulturous wife, who falls in love with an aristocrat. Meanwhile, in the cigar factory, a similar situation is taking place between Smitz and the wife of one of the factory owners. Both stories lead to violent tragedies.Oct 17. Princeton University Orchestra playing Smetana, Grieg, and Brahms at Richardson. They were great. How do they do it while studying? Felice Kuan, a 21-year old pianist, played like an international virtuoso. A very satisfying performance.Nov 21. SYLVIA at Lincoln Plaza. The life of Sylvia Plath (the feminist icon) and Ted Hughes, two poets who couldn't live together or apart. She was terminally jealous; he attracted women like flies. Some people love; some fight. They loved to fight. Sylvia committed suicide in 1967 when Ted refused to return to her.As a result the second half of the movie is deadly sombre. Dec 27. SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE, with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton . A fairytale of love in which Nicholson, a womanizing elf in his sixties and Diane Keaton, a famous playwright, fall in love. Hard to believe but old pros Jack and Diane almost pull it off.
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