Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Heard last night the New York premiere of John Adams's Easter oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2011-12). The libretto by Peter Sellars is based on Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament sources, with texts by Dorothy Day, Louise Erdrich, Primo Levi, Rosario Castellanos, June Jordan, Hildegard von Bingen, and Ruben Dario. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic beautifully. The Los Angeles Master Chorale sang. According to the program notes, Adams and Sellars wanted to set the Passion in "the eternal present," like in paintings. This they did in the oratorio by having the biblical Mary and Martha running a house of hospitality for homeless women in Bethany, and, later, having them participate in the farm workers' strike against Teamsters and big growers. Also unusual was the depiction of Mary. Moving away from the conventional image of a "reformed prostitute," the creators made her a complex human being, suicidal, ecstatic,...

Bluebird , directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, and written by Simon Stephens, at Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2 this afternoon. Strong performance by Simon Russell Beale as a London cab driver whose reticence elicits life-stories from his fares. He reveals at the end that he has a harrowing story of his own. LW and I ran into the actor at the Grey Dog Cafe after the show. He was very pleasant when LW told him how fantastic he was in the play. Then I watched John Adams's opera Nixon in China on HD screen at Lincoln Center Plaza tonight.  Act 3, in which the Americans get roped into the story of the Communist Revolution is engagingly dramatic. The other acts are a little weird for my taste. The libretto seemed to be a patchwork of pseudo-philosophical statements and banal facts. The music with its minimalist repetitions is slightly more interesting. The opera has a kind of crude boldness that is more American than Chinese.

Before heading over to Lincoln Center, WCT and I had dinner at Barcibo Enoteca , an Italian tapas and wine bar. WCT did an interesting thing: she picked buffalo mozzarella and Quadrella di Bufula, a semi soft-washed buffalo milk cheese from Lombardy, for the comparison, she said. The salame she chose was a tasty dry aged cured meat, Bresaoloa. I started on a refreshing glass of Lugana while waiting for WCT, and drank Monica, a red wine from Sardinia, during the meal. My pulpo, calamari and shrimp salad was fresh and tasty, though I could not deal with so much octopus tentacle. Putting together a restaurant is a kind of art, Barcibo suggested. The Cleveland Orchestra played as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. For their concerts here, Music Director and conductor Franz Welser-Möst has paired three Bruckner symphonies with works by John Adams. He was quoted in the program as saying: "I sometimes say that Bruckner is in many ways the grandfather of minimalism and I truly believ...

Eric's poem for me has been published by Q Review, a queer journal based around Columbia College in Chicago. Congrats, Eric! * "Planetary system" is a good description of the set, and the world, of the Met's screening of John Adams's Doctor Atomic last night. Designed by Julian Crouch, the Los Alamos lab on stage was a peculiarly isolated and isolating landscape. In the background, cloths were draped over structures to appear like sharp mountains, over which the bomb, a hideous wired sphere, hung. Everyone constrained to his own compartment, the scientists and staff of the lab stood in the upright grid of a huge box. The marital bed was a scene of disunion. The Native Americans who stood in the top row of the grid in Act II was a constant reminder of a lost world. It was brave to try to fit scientific and bureaucratic language into the operatic idiom. Much of the libretto came from declassified government documents and communications. The singing at these ...

Last night the New York Philharmonic, with TB. Alan Gilbert conducted. Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F Minor, La passione (1768), which I was too tired to appreciate. John Adams's The Wound-Dresser , for Baritone Voice and Orchestra (1988), sung by Thomas Hampton. Interesting music but the words sounded wrong in it. Adams unexpectedly appeared with singer and conductor after the piece, and was warmly applauded. I was more awake after the intermission. I especially loved the first movement of Schubert's Symphony in B minor, D. 759, Unfinished (1822). The playing was passionate but controlled. The program ended with Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6 (1913-15), which Gilbert thought "completed" Schubert's Unfinished . You often find Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces . . . at the beginning of a program. It can be seen as an extension of Mahler's Symphony No. 6; in fact, when we perform it, you'll see an incredible instrument at the back of the s...