Right from the beginning we see Medea trying, literally, to bury her past in the form of the fleece and some magic objects while Jason asserts his Greekness by changing into the modern, white clothing that stands throughout for Hellenicness.  All this takes place on a desolate, volcanic landscape while above the stage left sits a sort of room or cabin, the floor of which will descend and rise to close and open the gulf between Greek and “other”.

In Bild 2 we see Medea desperately trying to assimilate (I need an antithesis for Medeize here!) aided by the sympathetic Kreusa (Kreon’s daughter).  But Jason is having none of it.  He’s set his cap at Kreusa and with it, ultimately, the throne of Corinth and Medea must be discarded.  He’s aided and abetted by Kreon, especially after a herald from Delphi shows up demanding the expulsion of both Jason and Medea.  Medea’s “otherness” must be emphasised and her attempts to assimilate rejected in order to save Jason.  I don’t know whether Western attitudes to Muslim immigrants are being consciously referenced here but that’s what it had me thinking of.

Bild 3 sees Medea reacting angrily to her rejection and exile.  She engineers the deaths of Kreusa and her children to the horror even of her maid/companion Gora.  Jason too now serves no purpose and is exiled.  In Bild 4 we get the final confrontation between the broken Jason and the resigned Medea.  She will go to Delphi and restore the fleece to the temple then cast herself on the judgement of the priests.  As for Jason, who knows or, indeed, cares?  The opera closes with some of its most lyrical music as Medea exits up stage and the light fades.

The music is classic Reimann.  It is uncompromisingly in the European modernist tradition with no concessions to current trendy notions of accessibility.  It’s atonal, dissonant and often heavy on the percussion and the brass.  The only relief is the final scene which has shades of Shostakovich at his more lyrical and in the sort of floaty coloratura line given to Kreusa who serves as a sort of dramatic and musical bimbo.  So it’s not an easy listen but it’s very inventive and fits the subject matter well.

The performances are first class.  Conductor Michael Boder really seems to understand the music and gets a taut and disciplined performance out of the Wiener Staatsoper orchestra while letting the soloists express themselves.  Marlis Petersen is a stand out in the title role.  Throughout she acts and sings with total commitment; equally convincing as she commits herself to the death of her children as when she struggles unsuccessfully to master a Greek song.  Michaela Selinger makes a very appealing Kreusa too.  She’s a fine physical actress and she gets the required contrasts out of her music with some lovely lyrical singing.  Counter tenor Max Emanuel Cecic makes a spooky and threatening herald and Michael Roider, as Kreon, Adrian Eröd, as Jason, and Elisabeth Kulman, as Gora, are all more than adequate.  Marco Arturo Marelli is responsible for the stage and lighting design and the direction and aided by the simple but effective costumes by Dagmar Niefind he pulls the whole thing together really well.

It’s a big, dark stage with quite a lot of action set well back so I don’t think it was easy to film.  Video director Peter Schröder does a pretty decent job.  He gives us a useful amount of scene setting long shots and doesn’t get tricksy.  I’m not sure I would really ask for anything different though I did get the impression that this was a production better seen live.  The picture on Blu-ray is spiffy 1080i and the sound is wonderfully vivid and spatially precise DTS-HD Master Audio.  There are German, English, French, Spanish and Italian subtitles.  The booklet contains a synopsis and a handy essay but there are no extras on the disk.

I can see why this piece more or less sold out its premiere run in Vienna.  It shows that one can still make great opera from the combination of a classic story and committed music making.  Dumbing down is not required for success.

The two productions make for interesting contrasts on many levels. In Barcelona, music director Michal Boder, while opting to use the Shostakovich orchestration as a basis modifies it in places with elements of the Rimsky-Korsakoff version. He also uses Voronhov’s lower key alternative to the Stravinsky in the final chorus and he makes some cuts; most notably the Susannah scene in Act 3. He also gets quite a different sound from the orchestra. Where Abbado in Vienna is very refined, one might almost say Viennese, Boder is brasher. In places the music almost sounds like Shostakovich with the characteristic braying brass. Admittedly some of this may be due to the quality of the recorded sound. The Vienna recording is rather soft focussed Dolby 2.0 while Barcelona gets very crisp and detailed DTS 5.1 (There’s LPCM stereo too but I didn’t check it out).

The stage productions too are very different. Stein Winge in Barcelona eschews the opulence of 1620s Russia and opts for a bleak 1950s setting. This actually works quite well in bringing out the self serving agendas of the three main characters as well as their essential smallness when deprived of their bullying platform. There are some neat touches. Khovansky senior has a dwarf. The respect and affection with which he treats the dwarf compared to his son highlights the impotence and irrelevance of the latter. Chillingly it’s the dwarf who delivers the fatal blow in act 4 after a scene with his dancers that makes Khovansky seem more like Silvio Berlusconi than a powerful warlord. It’s even oddly unerotic. The Persian dancers are straight out of a Disney version of the Arabian Nights which is a rather stark contrast with Kirchner’s lesbian BDSM near porn scene. The final mass suicide in Barcelona is played out in a low key but effective way with the stage lit only by candles that are extinguished one by one. The pathos is heightened by the inclusion of children among the Believers.

In terms of performance there are pros and cons to both recordings. The acting, clearly more closely directed, is more theatrical and less old fashioned operatic in the Barcelona production. Vocally, it’s a mix. Ghiaurov for Abbado is a much more charismatic Khovansky than Vladimir Ognovenko. Graham Clark’s Scribe in Barcelona makes much more of the part than his Vienna equivalent and Vladimir Vaseev’s Gosifei for Boder is more lyrical than his opposite number. I didn’t see much to choose between the other male characters. The biggest differenceis in the Marfas. Elena Zeremba’s vibrato is really quite excessive and mars a good acting performance. She’s very much a weak link compared to the excellent Ludmila Semtschuk in Vienna.

Technically the newer recording is much, much better. The sound, as mentioned above, is far superior and the 16:9 anamorphic picture is much better than Vienna’s near TV quality. The Barcelona disc also has useful extras; a synopsis and a good interview with Boder as well as documentation including a useful essay by Winge. The subtitles; English, French, German, Italian, Castilian and Catalan, are much less obtrusive though quite legible.

Surprisingly the video direction for Barcelona isn’t a huge improvement on Vienna. Angel Luis Ramirez does manage to stay back from the action more than Brian Large but he gets rushes of blood to the head in the big choruses in both Acts 3 and 5. In both cases there is a very full stage and a picture carefully composed by the director. In both cases Ramirez keeps cutting back and forward between wide shots and completely irrelevant close ups with a full arsenal of fades, dissolves and superpositions (see the third screen cap above). The farcical drunken chorus of the Streltsy in Act 3 can almost survive the treatment but it does much to undermine the deliberate simplicity of the final suicide.

The most recent example involves criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder over Fast and Furious, an operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was overseen by the Justice Department. It involved the indirect sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in some 300 killings in Mexico, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Throughout, despite having received detailed memos from DOJ officials about it, Holder has denied he was aware of it.

The scandal and Holder’s stonewalling have led to some 60 congressmen demanding his resignation, and 75 cosponsoring a House resolution calling for a “no-confidence” vote on his performance as attorney general.

Holder has defiantly denied culpability, and President Obama, without betraying the slightest concern, has proclaimed his complete confidence in Holder. In a New York Times interview, Holder suggested race was partially driving a “more extreme segment” against him and Obama.

Holder said, “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship, and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.” When pressed for some proof to support Holder’s allegation, the Justice Department did not respond. Nor has the White House distanced itself from Holder’s comments.

Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson had earlier played the race card regarding Fast and Furious, calling it “another manufactured controversy by the Second Amendment, NRA Republican tea party movement.” He said, “Now, how many firearms are sold to al-Qaida terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, to convicted felons, to white supremacists?”

And Biden says The Taliban aren’t our enemy.

Nor was this the first time Holder had invoked the issue of race. During a speech commemorating Black History Month shortly after he became attorney general, Holder said the American people are “essentially a nation of cowards when it comes to racial matters.”

This seemed to many a curious way to celebrate the election of an African-American president, not to mention reflecting Holder’s sizable preoccupation with race and his apparent perception of societal problems through a racial lens. It could also help to explain his Justice Department’s indefensible dismissal of an already won voter intimidation case against New Black Panther Party members using the specious excuse that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

None of this comes as any surprise, however, because President Obama had telegraphed his race-oriented mindset in his book, in his church association and in his projecting statement that small-town people “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” He has worn race on his sleeve numerous times as president.

When a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass., arrested Harvard professor Henry Gates, an African-American, Obama, without having heard both sides of the case, publicly injected himself into the local matter and gratuitously smeared the entire police department as having “acted stupidly.” In addition, Obama told guests at a private dinner at the White House that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency, especially among tea party members.

Not only has Obama made these viscerally charged racial statements, he has also consciously appealed to minority groups with specific reference to their race. In a Democratic National Committee video in April 2010, he urged “young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women … to stand together once again.” Shortly before the November 2010 congressional elections, he told an audience that Republicans “are counting on black folks staying home.” Separately, he appealed to Latino voters not to stay home at election time but to “punish our enemies” and not go along with the Republicans’ “cynical attempt to discourage Latinos from voting.”

These developments are most disturbing and discouraging. There exists a great ideological divide in this nation over which of two primary sets of policy prescriptions ought to be adopted to rescue America from its economic malaise, its bankrupting debt and a host of other major issues.

Conservative opposition to Obama isn’t about race, and I’m confident this administration is well aware of that but is using the race card anyway, out of political desperation, to the destruction of the nation, and to racial relations. It’s disgraceful and unconscionable. (David Limbaugh)

Alabama’s unemployment rate fell at a record pace in November amid stepped-up efforts by President Barack Obama’s deputies to frustrate enforcement of the state’s popular new immigration reform.

The state’s unemployment rate fell 0.6 percent in November to 8.7 percent, according to new state reports, partly because the state’s employers opened up jobs to Americans after shedding illegal immigrants.

The unemployment rate is far below October’s rate of 9.3 percent and September’s rate of 9.8 percent.

“The continued drop is proof that people — American Citizens [and] legal migrants, have suffered at the hands of politicians who choose politics over economics,” said Chuck Ellis, a council member in Northern Alabama’s Marshall County.

“What’s really amazing is that in Marshall County, a county of 95,000 residents, 30,000 workforce eligible, there are over 600 people who now have jobs that they didn’t have 6 months ago,” he said.

In November the county’s unemployment rate dropped 0.7 percent, from 8.1 percent to 7.4 percent.

“Is that a difference of great significance? Ask those families for an answer as they undertake the Christmas season,” Ellis said.

Department of Justice officials, including civil-regulation chief Tom Perez, have repeatedly visited the state to invite people to make claims of discrimination.

Perez is pushing ahead with a lawsuit intended to gut the reform, which was supported by members of both parties, and by both white and African-American legislators.

Perez’s efforts have been broadcast by many established media outlets, many of which have also highlighted the reform’s painful impact on illegal immigrants. Few outlets, however, have detailed the beneficial impact of the state’s falling unemployment rate.

Administration officials have cracked down on immigration enforcement by several states in partial exchange for promises by the Hispanic lobbies to spur turnout by Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters in 2012.

The lobbies had sought a federal amnesty, but rising public opposition has deterred Democrats from seriously promoting any amnesty since Obama’s 2008 election.

In compensation for their inaction, the federal government and allied Hispanic lobbies have already sued several other states, including New Mexico, South Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

On Thursday, Perez also announced a litany of complaints about the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz. Perez, who opened his Thursday press conference by saying “Buenos Dias,” also said he would stop helping the sheriff enforce federal immigration laws.

“We’re going to fight back, we’re going to show the politics involved. … The president wants to get the Hispanic vote,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a Fox interview Dec. 16.

The Alabama reform copied federal immigration laws, making it more difficult for local entrepreneurs and businesses to hire or trade with illegal immigrants. Top state officials, including Gov. Robert Bentley, have said they’ll make some trims to the law in the new year to defeat the legal challenges by Obama’s deputies, business lobbies and immigration advocates.

In October, Alabama was ranked 37th-worst in the nation for unemployment. November’s numbers pushed the state up to 30th place, based on the October rankings.

In a complex economy, “it’s certainly plausible that immigration enforcement — and the subsequent drop in the number of illegals — enabled unemployed Americans to find work,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a D.C. -based advocacy group.

“Americans with the highest unemployment rates — young workers, less-educated workers, minority workers — are the ones facing the greatest job competition from illegal aliens, and thus would benefit the most from the departure of those illegal aliens,” he added.

The state’s new immigration reform gets much of the credit from local boosters, although stepped-up Christmas hiring likely played some role. However, Alabama reduced its unemployment much more than the adjacent states of Mississippi and Georgia.

In Georgia, the unemployment rate fell to 9.9 percent in November, down from 10.2 percent in October and 10.3 percent in September.

In Mississippi, the November numbers have not been released, but the state’s unemployment rate stayed steady at 10.6 percent in October and 10.6 percent in September.

In Alabama, the unemployment rate is lower in northern counties.

For example, Madison County’s rate was 6.9 percent in November, down from a September level of 8.2 percent, according to the state’s Department of Industrial Relations.

The highest rate of unemployment are in the southern, majority-black districts of WIlcox, Perry, and Bullock. In November, their unemployment rates were 15.5 percent or greater. (DC)

But that’s probably racist too…

The family of slain border agent Brian Terry had complained that Napolitano had offered them “empty words” when she called to express her condolences.  “I said ‘you gotta wake your man up in the White House,’” said Kent Terry, the father of murdered border agent Brian Terry.  Terry said this in response to Barack Obama’s inaction on our porous and dangerous southern border.     continued……

Moms, Dads, Grandparents need a place to vent about the direction our government is taking? Go to MomsAndDadsBeHeard  and speak out. Help us and be part of bringing our Great country back.

The Barack Hussein Obama administration is ceding three southern Arizona counties to Mexico.  They are telling American citizens to stay out of three southern Arizona counties. It is too dangerous because of armed smugglers from Mexico.  continued…..

Visit MomsAndDadsBeHeard a forum for you to express your views and concerns. Be part of bringing our Great Christian country back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsiHYkr4WEw

Watch it in HD!

Quan ha acabat la funció el primer que he fet ha estat mirar el llibret per veure si aquesta Salome es tractava d’una coproducció. I he respirat en veure que sí. Cap problema, doncs: el Liceu ha apostat pel senyor Guy Joosten i això ha estat un error monumental, però només faltaria que els teatres es posessin a controlar la feina dels seus directors d’escena contractats. Altra cosa és que fos una producció comprada. Llavors caldria investigar qui va prendre la decisió per demanar-ne el cap (i mai millor dit).

Ja sabeu que no tinc cap problema amb les produccions anomenades “modernes”, que actualitzen les òperes o que en canvien coses: em va fascinar el Tannhäuser de Carsen, i vaig trobar punts interessants al Don Giovanni i el Wozzeck de Bieito.

En canvi aquesta Salome em sembla un bunyol monumental, un xurro de cap a peus, la pitjor producció que he vist al teatre. No entraré en detalls sobre l’error del concepte o la nul·la capacitat artística que demostra Joosten per no avorrir-vos. Només diré que un director d’escena ha de ser també artesà, i no es pot tolerar que es faci un interludi musical amb el teló baixat i haguem de sentir els sorolls de tots els canvis sobre l’escenari. Impresentable.

L’altre punt que vull comentar és l’orquestra. I aquí el problema és que m’ha agradat, i en la darrera mitja hora m’ha semblat excel·lent: els metalls han sonat com calien, les cordes han estat meravelloses i impactants en les dissonàncies, etcètera. Com s’explica doncs que hi hagués fortes crítiques el dia de l’estrena? El mateix va passar amb Els mestres cantaires.

Només hi ha una explicació: manca d’assajos. Doncs bé, proposo un mètode. S’agafen els enregistraments de totes les funcions i es detecta quina és la primera que compleix el nivell que requereix el Liceu. La cinquena funció? Doncs cinc assajos més abans de l’estrena. Si ho fan les corals d’aficionats, amb més motiu ho haurien de fer uns professionals que cobren. Està vist que els manca repeticions, doncs a repetir.

Quatre apunts finalment sobre els cantants. M’ha agradat Erika Sunnegårdh com a Salome, tot i que a vegades costava sentir-la. En un teatre més petit jo la contractaria, i a més té el físic i sembla que balla bé… pel poc que li hem pogut veure, clar. Destaco l’Herodes de Gerhard Siegel, el Mime oficial del nostre temps, i sospito que té més veu que molts Siegfried que li deuen tocar com a company. Correctes la resta de protagonistes (a destacar el Narraboth de Stefan Heibach), però els comprimaris m’han semblat força fluixos.

Conclusions: podem esperar grans coses de Boder sempre que l’orquestra treballi més; i si Joosten torna demanar feina al teatre, ni tan sols obrir-li la porta (no fos cas que ens la tornés a colar).

” In Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Tex., tourists, are taken to the spot where the cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas was arrested in 2003 after a shooting incident with Mexican officials. (…) even with all of the government’s efforts to draw attention away from these spots, occasionally people will leave flowers at their graves, or ask a taxi driver to take them to visit the final resting place of one or another deceased drug lord; a sign that the cartels still have a hold on Mexico’s imagination.”

Related:

• 7 Narco corridos from Macario Leyva and Banda Limón
• Mexico’s  drugs on war on Time.com
• NarcoGuerra Times