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The constant temptation for writers here at Samizdata is to focus only on politics, and as a direct consequence to get depressed. Politics is always depressing. Depressing is what politicians do. They say they are going to encourage this or that, but these thises and thats generally involve extorting yet more tax to pay for such encouragement, which depresses taxpayers yet more, and the encouragement as often as not turns out to be the opposite, while nevertheless scaring away any non-governmental encouragers who might really have helped, which is especially depressing for everyone who got their hopes up.
So, I will now write about opera on DVD, which is not nearly such a depressing subject as politics, and especially not right now. True, opera is often paid for by governments – which goes a long way to explaining why most new operas now are such junk. And true, the stories told in operas are often themselves very depressing, involving, as they often do, politicians, as well as other sorts of bad people doing bad things. But, despite all that, the presentation on DVD of the operas that date from the time when opera was show business and when people ran opera houses for fun and profit, rather than out of a sense of cultural duty, is now getting seriously into its stride.
DVD has always seemed to me the obvious way to enjoy opera. The thing itself, in an actual opera house with actual live singers and players, is for me just too expensive and too chancey. For instance, a few years ago I attended an English National Opera production of Madame Butterfly. It was advertised as being sung in English, but it turned out to be that particular sort of unintelligible English that only opera singers sing. Waar-blaar-traar-hyaar etc. I couldn’t make out one single damn word of it. Since I was paying for someone else to be there too, that was a big slice out of a hundred quid in exchange for a few tunes that I already knew and already had on CD in several versions, all of them better.
And as for when they are singing in another language, well, where’s the fun in that if you don’t understand it? To enjoy that, you have to do a ton of homework, and for me that drains all the fun out of it. No, the answer had to be DVD, with subtitles (which I believe you can often summon up even if they are singing in operenglish). And the good news, for me, is that opera DVDs are finally coming within my price range.
I don’t buy opera DVDs new, any more often than I buy full price regular classical CDs new. I buy them new, that is to say, only very occasionally. Fifteen quid for one disc? No thank you. And operas on DVD still tend to cost nearer thirty quid than fifteen, if you buy them new. But, and this is the really good news, opera DVDs have finally started to show up in decent numbers in the second hand classical CD shops and market stalls that I regularly visit. So, for instance, I recently got the entire Levine/New York Met set of Wagner’s Ring Cycle for thirty quid, and, during the same trip, Beethoven’s Fidelio and Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier for a tenner each. Some operas are going now for even less. That, for me, is value. These prices mean that now, I can finally allow myself to enjoy opera, because if I become addicted to it, as I never have allowed myself to so far, the habit will not ruin me and mean that I have to die under Charing Cross Bridge in a cardboard box, instead of indoors and comfortable.
Have I disliked opera because I really did dislike it? – mostly because of the wobbly, incomprehensible way they so often sing it. Or did I dislike it in mere self-defence against being economically ruined by it? Hard to say. But, a few nights ago, listening to the closing scene of Der Rosenkavalier, I could feel myself getting seriously hooked.
Der Rosenkavalier contains many ridiculous things. The leading man is sung by a soprano, which takes some getting used to, however well she sings. And teenager Sophie, whom the leading man (well, more like a boy) eventually becomes engaged to in that melodious last scene, is, in this production, rather obviously nearer to forty than twenty, albeit a very nice looking forty-year-old. Above all, these people are all old-time Viennese, which means that not only does the villain have a thoroughly warped view of the world, but so, frankly, albeit to a lesser degree of course, do the good guys. I.e. the good girls.
But no matter. Richard Strauss’s taste in operatic singing is pretty much the same as mine. He adored the light soprano voice – as opposed to the heavy, wobbly, knock-a-giant-down-at-fifty-paces Wagner-type soprano voice – to the point where ever since, people have tended to call such sopranos “Straussian”. (Gundula Janowitz and Lucia Popp are two of my favourites, both of whom were sublimely wonderful performers of Strauss’s sublimely wonderful Four Last Songs, which I have adored for decades.) Der Rosenkavalier, like most operas, has its longueurs, when they do that annoying form of operatic talking which is half talking and half orchestrally accompanied singing, which is similar to what actors used to do, without music. But every so often, and the final scene of Rosenkavalier is definitely one such time, they get some actual tunes to sing, and as Sophie and the Boy/Girl Soprano sang away ecstatically, I could feel myself surrendering.
Good. For me, classical music is something to enjoy first, rather than to “understand”. But, there is no doubt that if you do want to deepen your understanding of this music, you have to at least be acquainted with opera. Mozart’s piano concertos, for instance, are intensely “operatic”, and a thorough study of the way they echo tunes in his operas will give you an order of magnitude greater feeling for what they are all about.
I already have a number of operatic DVDs, quite aside from the ones I have recently acquired, for the operatic DVD bargain is not an entirely new phenomenon. But, for all the considerations alluded to above, I have tended to keep them on the shelf, unsurrendered to. Now, I look at my little DVD opera collection with new eyes, knowing that I will soon be listening to it with new ears and watching it with those same new eyes, enthralled.
Nice to see that those superannuated rock legends, the Rolling Stones, brushed aside the dictates of Chinese censors and bashed out some of their naughtiest tunes at a concert in China. Mind you, I cannot really see these guys going on much longer.
Here is a teaser from the first chapter of Good & Plenty, Tyler Cowen’s new book about public art and the liberal tradition, out next week:
I write with one foot in the art lover camp and with another foot in the libertarian economist camp. I try to make each position intelligible, and perhaps even sympathetic (if not convincing) to the other side. I try to show how the other side might believe what it does, and how close the two views might be brought together. Furthermore, I use the fact of persistent disagreement as a kind of datum, as a clue for discovering what the issues are really about.
Q: What does the inside of Tyler Cowen’s head look like? A: A sack o’ cats heading for the river, i.e., all fur, teeth and claws, yet somehow… endearingly cute. At any rate, the internal wrestling match should make for a most excellent read.
The new film, V for Vendetta, based on the British comic strip (like so many movies are these days), is an absolute crackerjack of a production, in my view. I watched it last night, having already acquired an outline of what the plot is about from scanning comics over the years, but unlike some transfers from comic to the screen, this film works very well.
It is set in a Britain about 20 or so years from now, a Britain governed by a regime obsessed by managing the citizenry for their own good (sounds familiar), hooked on propoganda and the management of expectations (ditto), scornful of history and traditions (see above), deeply corrupt (recognise anything?) and also quick to resort to violence. Against this is a masked character modelling himself on Guy Fawkes, a character who, in the early 17th Century, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
And that is what exactly is the aim of the character “V” in this film. Now, in an age of justifiable fears about terrorism, my first instinct was to recoil at the plot, but in fact if you read this film on a certain level, it is great propoganda against overmighty, corrupt authority, and a celebration of freedom, rather than the sort of totalitarian agenda espoused by the likes of radical Islamists in our own day. It may not be an explicitly libertarian film, but it is unquestionably an anti-authortarian one.
Also, any film that contains the following line has to be a must-see for Samizdata regulars:
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Not bad, not bad at all.
UPDATE: Objectivist writer Bob Bidinotto, a man who is a fine judge of films, dissents from my positive take on the movie, at least as far as this comment suggests. I agree that this is a flawed film – some of its points are a bit silly – but its overall message is about the need to keep vigilant against the abuse of power, something that a citizen living in a country framed by Jefferson, Madison and Adams would surely understand. Remember, the Founding Fathers were all thought of as subversive pains in the ass in their day. → Continue reading: A fine film
Actorist Susan Sarandon is in negotiations to play Cindy Sheehan in an upcoming telemovie portraying the latter’s life.
(Via Drudge)
“This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.”
Clint Eastwood. I wonder what particular country he had in mind.
First off, as if it is not entirely obvious, I am not the least bit unbiased about the album and people who made it as I have known most of them for fifteen years. Some of them are amongst my closest friends. With that said… if you like Irish traditional music, watch this space for information on how to buy “Tripswitch” the new album by Johnny McSherry, Donal O’Connor and friends.
The tripswitch, by the way, was in a country town recording studio I know well. A ‘to remain un-named’ member of the band attempted to light a cigarette from the toaster and somehow managed to trip the main breaker. I have been led to believe the eponymous tune was composed in the dark whilst efforts were made to figure out what had happened.
While I am on the subject of album release parties, if you are in New York City, another very dear friend, NIamh Parsons, has a release show for her new CD ‘The Old Simplicity,’ on Tuesday March 14 7:30PM at the Cutting Room, 19 W.24th St.
But now back to Belfast on on with the fun and festivities! → Continue reading: Tripswitch album release party
Well, this does not come as a great surprise, to be honest:
The US television audience for the 78th Academy Awards was down by eight per cent compared with last year.
The ceremony, which saw Crash shock the favourite Brokeback Mountain by taking best film, was watched by 38.8m people, the third lowest audience in 20 years.
I do not know to what extent this decline has been caused by the decline in the number of adults watching movies, as has been reported in various parts, or the increasing refusal of ordinary people to sit watching preening showbiz types mouth platitudes while receiving their gongs. Probably some combination of the two, I think. The film industry is fracturing, partly I think because of technologies that mean you can watch great films in the comfort of home in tremendous quality. A friend of mine recently bought a high definition big screen television for just over one thousand pounds and the quality was magnificent. And there were no annoying chatty couples sitting behind me, bad air conditioning and annoying preliminary announcements and adverts.
The Oscars are nearly upon us. (Okay, please try to keep reading) One thought prompted by this circus and what goes on in films is how films can carry messages very different from the intentions of the film-maker. A classic example is the 1987 film, Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas gave what I thought was his greatest performance as Gordon Gekko. Gekko is what your average lefty Hollywood producer imagines is a capitalist: incredibly greedy, callous and crooked, stamping the lives of good honest hardworking people, blah, blah, blah. And yet we know that in the course of the speech, Gekko gives his tremendous “greed is good” speech, which I sometimes think reads like Ayn Rand on acid.
A friend of mine, Libertarian Alliance founder Chris Tame, once told me that during this stage of the movie, he burst into applause, much to the surprise of the other cinema-goers. I wonder how many other folk have had the same reaction to a speech or line in a film where without realising it, a pro-capitalist point has been made in a way the director probably had not intended? Has anyone got any examples?
What European unity really means to most people.
Very nice writeup here of a vast retrospective of the paintings of the Frenchman Ingres, who worked around the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Even as I put aside my distaste for Bonaparte, I cannot but admire the man who painted so much of life in Napoleon’s era so cleverly. A good excuse to take that long weekend to Paris and check out some art (not that I usually need many excuses). And meanwhile it is the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt. A nice appreciation here by Robert Hughes.
Oh, and I can seriously recommend this to China art fans.
I watched a bit of The Apprentice on the BBC last night, the show featuring UK tycoon Sir Alan Sugar, who among other things owns a large stake in Tottenham Hotspur FC. The programme, like the American version, is engrossing and it nicely builds up the tension as Sugar confronts his teams of wanna-be businessfolk with their performance and fires one of them.
I have mixed views overall about the show. As pure entertainment, it succeeds in drawing the viewer in, although I am not sure in fact how well it really explains the qualities needed to be a good entrepreneur. The message seems to be that business is a dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game in which if some people win, others must lose. Which is wrong since everyone benefits from trade, otherwise why else trade in the first place? If a person who is smarter than me gets a job I covet, then the overall economic pie gets bigger than it otherwise would, so we all benefit, even though I might feel disappointed.
The Apprentice also seems to celebrate aggression to a considerable degree, and yet businessmen and women in my experience come a cropper if they stop listening to what their customers want and refuse to learn from experience. A degree of humility is actually smart. A quality I do not see much of in the show is that of sheer courage in taking business risks, something that is not sufficiently appreciated except by writers such as George Gilder.
I wonder whether Sugar (what an ill-suited surname he has!) is really a great advocate of business, at least as far as this show goes. Yes, I can admire how he rose from nothing in London’s East End to become one of Britain’s richest men (he has a net personal worth of 800 million pounds, according to the TV commenter), but he comes across as a bit of a braggart, the sort of bore one might encounter in a pub bragging to his mates about how ‘ard he is and how ruthless he can be. Yawn. I suspect that many of the greatest businessmen, while undoubtedly workaholics, ruthless and driven people, have to be able to rub along with other people. Maybe in Britain’s anti-business culture someone like Sugar stands out and he feels the need to put himself about.
Or perhaps Sugar is just hamming it up for the cameras and is a delightful fellow. You can never tell with these sort of ‘Reality TV’ shows. I would certainly watch some of the other shows in the series.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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