Band Review: The Black Sea

I believe if you enjoy Bruce Springsteen, you will enjoy The Black Sea.

It feels weird for me to say that. Although I have been gaining an appreciation for him lately, I'm not really a fan of the Boss. However, The Black Sea reminds me of him, and I nonetheless enjoy them.

It started with the first song I heard, "Now That We're Alone". It was a double punch. The music does some neat things with building and softening and is really well-constructed, so there is excitement, but there is also real poignancy from the lyrics, and it all works together.

I started noticing the resemblance to Springsteen later. There is a grittiness to the music, not only in the vocals, but also I think in the way the guitars are tuned. So there is that blue collar feel, though coming out of Leeds instead of New Jersey. There is still that feeling of being downtrodden, but not out.

Because of the reviews, I am always listening to at least two bands, which I like, but some weeks are more of a joy than others. This week was pretty good. I thought of giving them the Song of the Day today too, but I think it makes more sense to do that later.

Right now the band seems to be focusing more on getting gigs than on selling music. I have been doing my listening mostly via Soundcloud, which has five songs available. Check them out.

http://www.theblacksea.co/

https://twitter.com/TheBlackSeaUK

https://www.facebook.com/TheBlackSeaUK

https://soundcloud.com/theblacksealovesyou

Band Review: E-Mute

I was initially confused by who was whom in the band, but I think I have it now. E-mute is not just the band, but also a person, who sings, drums, and plays piano. He works with many musicians, but also has three other people - Svetlana Vassileva, Darren Ashford, and Tolis Zavaliaris - who play with him when he is doing his own material  So the one in the shocking red pants is E-mute himself.

Based on the "E", I was expecting a lot more synthesizer and beeping, but that has not really been the case. They self-describe as alternative/rock/electronica at their simplest (they have a more complex description too), and that seems fair.

There are some electronic components, but with so much piano and guitar, that does not end up being the main sound. The piano especially makes a difference, whether it is being funky on Elixir's "Wake Up Call" or moody on "Across the Sea".

The song that made the biggest impression on me was "Clock Moves Forward".

The clock moves forward when life goes backward,
Sane conclusions of past confusions, The older you get the wiser
Don't worry. Don't worry.

There is a video, and E-mute smiles charmingly as he says it, so I believe that he is sincere when he advises not worrying, though I am not sure he is correct. Anyway, that song sticks. You should also check out "The Darkness Inside"; the intro is lovely.

I did most of my listening via Soundcloud and Youtube.

Music is available via iTunes, Google play, and Bandcamp.

http://www.emute-music.com/

https://www.facebook.com/electricmute

https://twitter.com/emutemusic

http://www.youtube.com/user/emutemusic?feature=watch

https://soundcloud.com/emutemusic

http://emutemusic.bandcamp.com/album/too-proud-to-say-loud

Comics Review: March and The Montgomery Story

I mentioned a while back that I really need to catch up on the digital comics that I had before getting any more. That sounds so reasonable, but then I will see some deal I can't resist, and, well, I have a lot of comics I still get to read.

The deal that has been the most exciting to me lately was this one:

http://www.comixology.com/March-Book-One-Martin-Luther-King-And-The-Montgomery-Story/bundle/44

The timing was good, because I was reading about African-American history and civil rights, and also, how often do you get a comic book written by a Congressman? (Never before. This was the first, and the first comic to be presented to every member of Congress.)

http://comicbook.com/blog/2013/12/03/representative-john-lewiss-publisher-donates-hundreds-of-comics-to-other-congressmen/

It excited me. It excited me to think that maybe people who don't normally read comics will read March. I am excited that maybe comic readers who don't normally read a lot of history or a lot of multiracial material will read this. And I am excited to learn that a comic played a role back then.

I would be excited at the mere existence of these comics, but their importance in that way only makes it more necessary that they are good. So, let's take a look.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, written by Benton Resnik and Alfred Hassler and drawn by various artists. Originally published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, it is republished in connection with Top Shelf Productions.

That is probably the most complex set of credits I have ever done, but that makes sense for an issue with its history. The information says it "went unnoticed by the mainstream comic book industry, but spread like wildfire among civil rights groups".

The first thing I need to mention is that with various artists, it has a very uniform look, and one that I believe is very much in keeping with the styles of the time. The page layouts do change in some sections, but I don't think it is jarring.

There is an emphasis on the religious aspects which may seem outdated now, but the churches were a huge part of the Civil Rights movement of the time, and the religion of the participants was a key part of their motivation both for working towards progress and for doing so non-violently. It is clearly not merely a Christian idea either, with a section on Gandhi who was an important source of inspiration for the movement.

I suppose I was reading it largely as a historical document, but I was touched by the words about the importance of understanding and loving your enemy. It can be so hard, but that is what sanctifies the conflict. The section "How the Montgomery Method Works" is just as true now as it was then.

March: Book One, written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, with art by Nate Powell (Top Shelf)

One of the things that struck me when reading Dr. Abernathy's book, And The Walls Came Tumbling Down, was the description of the drilling that they did. It gave a new comprehension of what militant meant, and its necessity made perfect sense, but it was a new thought. The Montgomery Story shows some of the drilling, but March gives a fuller view. They had to be ready to face horrible things. It is hard to see allies shouting abuse and pouring fluids, but it would have been harder to face it from your enemies without being prepared.

I guess I am saying that March is grittier than The Montgomery Story, and it is, but also, I am saying that seeing the images, rather than just reading about what happened, gives a new feeling.

The book does a beautiful job of humanizing Lewis, and giving you a feel for how events built on each other, leading to what will come. It starts on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but the flashbacks will take a while to get us there. That's okay; there is a lot that goes into how people can do what needs to be done, and why it needs to be done.

The artwork is kind of stark, like early black and white television. This is history. There are things happening in the present day as well, but they are connected with the history.

March is lengthy, which is more of an issue for me as I am still not great at navigating digital books. The end of Book 1 occurs on page 121, and is very much at a point of continuations. Some victories have been achieved, but there is a lot more to do, then and now.

These are such important stories, and so close to my heart, and I am excited to see them in the medium of comics. I think there is room for wonderful things to happen.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/08/why-pictures.html

Inclusion and intersectionality

Sometimes there is a nice synchronicity to things. Shortly after I started reading Suzanne Pharr's Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, I saw a tweet:

"This really pisses me off, why is a boy called a 'faggot' for not objectifying women" and it linked to a "joke" from UK Banter that is not worth repeating.

I knew the answer now, though, because it was in the book, and replied "Because he is rebelling against the patriarchy by not objectifying women." And she knew that, but was still frustrated by it, which I get.

So, building on yesterday's post, since June I have been reading books that have related to African-American history and to feminist issues. During that time period there have also been several things coming up via the internet related to the intersection of different marginalized groups.

Most of them have been negative, like a hash tag going around at one point, #feminismisforwhitewomen, and a solidarity one, because prominent feminists often ignore women of color. There was also an article about black men not supporting black women. There are very valid reasons for the frustration, but I'm not sure it is always handled well.

There are two things that come to mind for me. One goes back to Pharr's book. It focused on lesbian issues, and I spotted those blinders on myself, because previously "homophobia" meant persecution of gay men to me. On one level I knew it was more than that, but men are the default, and I was subject to that, despite being a woman.

The other issue is something that has been bugging me for a while. When I read stories about women facing sexism and misogyny, and especially sexual harassment, women of color have it worse. Where I might just get something said to me, they will get groped.

This makes me feel like crying tears of rage. I have not done anything to deserve my privilege; they have not done anything to lose it. That is not anything small. The shame of the time there was physical contact is seared into my brain, and that was just once. To always have that increased risk - that lack of safety, and that lack of control over your physical space - I know I don't fully grasp how that feels, but it's wrong that it exists.

I am becoming more aware of how things vary. There also seem to be more stories of physical harassment from England. That may be centered on low income communities, because there is certainly privilege that goes away as your economic status drops, or there may be some cultural issue there; I don't know.

I do know that I am better off for being located in the Willamette Valley. If I was in a small rural area, or in the South, being female would have different ramifications, as would being a person of color. It doesn't make Portland paradise, but I'm still grateful to be here.

When one of the flare-ups was going on, I remembered something about Ida B Wells breaking away from the women's suffrage movement because it would not stand up for black rights as well. Women felt like they would lose support by including black men in their efforts. I tried to look into that, but what I found instead was something on how Wells criticized Susan B Anthony for letting her efforts take a back seat to raising her family. I guess these conflicts go back a long way.

I know that no amount of marginalization makes up for marginalizing others. I am really positive about that one. I also know that trying to throw all of those groups out and just being for humans doesn't work. There are specific things that happen that require examination, and there is a need for safe places.

I may not know the best way to balance all of that, but we need to listen to other voices. Privilege is so blind. There are things that I would never know about if I did not read, or talk to people from other walks of life. But just because you are not forced to think about something doesn't mean that you shouldn't think about it.

Apparently, there is always going to be someone who will tell you that you are doing it wrong, whether it is being female, being black, or being gay. Right now it seems very popular to tell poor people how what they are doing wrong. A lot of it makes me want to smack people, but that's not the answer.

We need to be listening to each other. Part of that listening means to quit making judgments. A lot of the criticism that comes at various voices is because they aren't speaking for a particular group. Well, yes, if all women were alike, then one could speak for all of us, but there is a great diversity of human experience, even when you start subdividing it, and it's not a fair burden to place on anyone. If any one man said he was speaking for all men, we'd know he was full of it, so why does one woman, or one gay man, or one Mexican, have to cover everyone?

At the same time, we need to be looking outward to make sure that we are not only listening to voices similar to our own. There is not true equality of opportunity now. That must change, and it has to be equality for everyone, not just some. The false idea that one group needs to put down another to get their own has the people with actual power laughing all the way to the bank. Keeping that division going works better for them than anyone else.

The dominant voices should not be the only voices. I appreciate Roxane Gay's work on this:

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/calling_for_submissions_by_feminists_of_color/

Technically that is closed to me, but it doesn't take anything away from me, and the pieces that come from this add to the dialogue. They are too easily overlooked in the current system. This kind of outreach is vital.

The chasm between how I would like things to be an how they are is discouraging some times, but there are things that give me hope. One thing that has been becoming clear is how many options there are to see another side better.

With Slavery By Another Name, there is a thick book, and I love thick books, but there is also a 90-minute movie. As I start my Native American Heritage reading for the year, because I saw some art in Chicago, I am going to explore that art more. There are plays and blogs and movies. And, there were two other things I read for my Black History reading that I was not expecting to be an option at all, and that please me greatly. They get their own post tomorrow.

Black History Month 2013

It is pretty common for me to be running late on these. Part of it this time is that I decided to work on my Black history reading along with my troubled teen reading, and so working on two different lists at once, along with anything else that happened to come up, definitely slowed things down. It also worked.

I had written before about thinking it was a good idea to intersperse comics with the history readings, because sometimes reading about hard topics requires some breaks. It did not work well then, because I had some pretty heavy comics in the mix. Here, it is still a lot of heavy material, so the idea of a break does not really work, but then the books go together in ways I might not expect, so that works.

It is messier, and part of that is that many things were unplanned, and changed, and there ended up being more multimedia, still working together. So, perhaps I am merely becoming more integrated, and everything is connected.

The first book was Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey, by Ana Maria Spagna. I had read good reviews a while ago, but I had not realized the author was white. This led to her feeling like an outsider at times as she tried to reconstruct her father's experience, but it also allowed her to see correlations between racism and homophobia, and to consider her own experiences differently.

The most important lesson was about the importance of recording memories and sharing them. Some memories and accounts disagree. You can guess how those tie together now, and some of the details may be unimportant, but having more written at the time would have helped. Many of the participants downplayed the significance of their actions. Maybe they did not realize it at the time, or they were uncomfortable with treating their actions as important, but it matters to those who come after.

Next I read Mirror to America, by John Hope Franklin. Franklin was the quintessential history teacher; I believe his text From Slavery to Freedom is still the standard African American History work. At times, reading his autobiography is like being in a lecture hall, with a sonorous voice that might lull you to sleep, though it was not boring. There was a lot that was interesting on the history of the time period, and how levels of acceptance varied, and even on academic history, because he knew the writers of all of those other standard texts.

Mainly I was touched by his warmth. He faced more than his fair share of mistreatment, and his brother's fate is heartbreaking, but there was still such a gratitude for the people who were in his life, and for the experiences he had. I ended up with feelings for him similar to those I developed for Ralph Abernathy while reading And The Walls Came Tumbling Down, though I did not end up dreaming about the book.

I had decided to start reading more poetry, so I checked out Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. I was surprised that some of the poems I knew were not included, and also at the recurring theme of "a dream deferred", which comes up in poem after poem. That made more sense after the next book. Mainly I felt like it gave me a peek into the Harlem of that time, with its rhythms and moods.

That next book was Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A Blackmon, and it was the most devastating. I had to take breaks from it (show business autobiographies may be the answer for that). It was information dense, written at a fairly high level, and emotionally painful. It was like some of the Native American heritage reading I have done, where you realize it wasn't just sending them away once, but many times.

People have the idea that the slaves were freed over the war, and that was plenty of time to succeed, but it wasn't like that. The ridiculous laws designed to keep them down not only made economic success next to impossible, but kept slavery alive and a constant threat, just by another name.

I remember one of the men who came to the soup kitchen in Fresno. He was usually very quiet, but kind when he spoke. I was told by others that he had been a slave, and that he had scars all over his back. I didn't understand how that was possible. Now it makes more sense.

There was a documentary by the same name that was well worth watching (and more digestible), and a short making of film. One of the moments that struck me in the short was the author being about to meet Green Cottenham. This was a figure whose life he had used to tie the different pieces together, and yes, it was just that they had cast an actor, but it gave this feeling of immediacy and connection to "find" him.

There was also a lot of emotion in the interviews with descendants of the re-enslaved and of their abusers. It would have been a hard thing for some of them to face some really ugly things in their family histories. These people did evil things, but they still had families that they treated well, and who loved them and were proud of them, without knowing everything. There is a lot to think about there, especially about the things we do and believe now.

http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/

I was planning on reading Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett Jr., and I found that I was not up for it. I do still plan to read it, but I was worn down, and I felt that with its length and some possible concerns about Bennett's style, I could not manage it now. There was still so much else, though, because everything related.

With For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf, by Ntozake Shange, I am not even sure whether that was more for feminism, and for my troubled teens, or for the African-American experience. It might even be poetry, a little bit. It transcends.

I had not specifically planned to watch a three-part series from The American Experience: The Abolitionists, but I did, and it was valuable. One of the people they covered was John Brown, and I have always been torn on him, because of the killing. I am still not sure he did right, but I see so much more clearly why he would do it.

The Independent Lens series gave me things about Wonder Woman and Native Americans, but also it gave me The House I Live In which goes well with Slavery By Another Name and with The New Jim Crow, and which becomes more disturbing in light of stories like these:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/09/19/are-governments-incentivizing-longer-prison-terms/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/15/throwing-children-in-prison-turns-out-to-be-a-really-bad-idea/

This goes beyond history, but history is how we got here.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/house-i-live-in/

Also, you just learn about people. For example, we read one book by Michael Oher and one book by the Tuohy's as add-ons to The Blind Side, and both of them pointed out some of the same things that were wrong in the movie. You expect some of that in a movie, but it was interesting how important it was to them to have certain things understood. That also happened with John Hope Franklin. Maybe it is more important to know that the press misrepresented a Clinton program, or that a different administration tried to use Franklin to cover a faux pas, than it is to know that Oher did not need tutoring on football, but it is important to people to be heard. Everyone wants to feel understood.

History is humanity. There's a lot of ugliness there, and I deliberately delve into it, but I know it's important. I guess ultimately I believe that it will make me better, and help me to help others make things better. I always find beauty too.

Band Review: Bon-Bon and Buried By Tomorrow

As I indicated in an earlier post, I have been worried about this weekend, in terms of whether the reviews will really get read. For the Fourth of July weekend I made sure to write about British bands, thinking that it would be a normal day for their fans, and I think it worked out okay. This weekend I did the negative review, and I have two bands that I was not sure how to handle, so I am combining them. I became aware of both when they followed me on Twitter.

Bon-Bon

I have been holding off on reviewing Bon-Bon because she only had one song. Previously the minimum number of songs for any of the bands has been 3, with 5 being more common. I thought perhaps I could do a bunch of single song bands together, but she was sort of the only one. So, I thought I could do her today, and she suddenly added a second song on the 25th, which is getting some attention. I am sticking with the plan, but now I have doubts. I guess I can always return to her if there is suddenly more.

In the two songs on Soundcloud, there is a sort of a retro funk vibe, possibly some Amy Winehouse influence, but not as obviously indebted to the 60s. Technically "She Don't Want To Know" is listed as indie pop, and "Lois Lane" is listed as Lo-fi Pop. The accompaniment is interesting, but at times it seems to overpower the vocals, so could probably benefit from better mixes.

https://soundcloud.com/yeahbonbon

https://twitter.com/YeahBonBon

Buried By Tomorrow

Buried By Tomorrow had the usual five songs, and I listened to them some time ago, and then as I started the write-up, I discovered they had broken up. That week required some scrambling, but I still got two reviews in. I wasn't sure what to do about Buried though. It did not feel right to skip them, but was there a point in covering them. Therefore, they end up on today. Their EP Even The Dead Can Dream is still available on iTunes and Spotify.

Buried By Tomorrow was a hardcore/metalcore screamo from Quebec. They had some pretty good range to them, with a delicate instrumental in "Intro", and then moving right into the grows and aggression that is expected of screamo on "Every Smile Tells A Lie", but without completely losing melody.

It's not exactly my genre, and I am more aware now of how triggering their album cover can be than on my first round of listening, but I find myself disappointed that they are gone. I think there was some real potential there. I hope the individual members move on to other things.

https://twitter.com/bbtmontreal

https://www.facebook.com/BuriedByTomorrow

Salome and Portland Opera

I'm afraid my criticism is more of the director, Christopher Mattaliano, but focusing on Salome, which I saw November 9th, will help me make my point.

My history with Portland Opera goes back pretty far. I remember reading a review for Rigoletto in the early '90s and really wanting to see it, but I couldn't afford tickets. When they produced it again shortly after I started working at Intel (this would have been '97 or '98), I could.

I went and I loved it. The music is amazing, I appreciated the sets and effects, and it was exciting to be a high culture event, Portland-style, where some people dress to the nines and some really don't. I ended up subscribing, and for a while I was subscribed to the opera, the ballet, and White Bird. After an amazing first season with White Bird, I started liking it progressively less, and gave up that subscription, but I stayed with the other two and was pretty satisfied.

In 2003, there was a great arts shakeup in Portland. Much was made of the fact that the symphony, ballet, and opera were all changing at the same time. Also, much was made of the new directors being Christopher Mattaliano for the opera and Christopher Stowell for the ballet, and okay, it was Carlos Kalmar for the symphony, but that's still a C-name, and also in 2000 Portland Center Stage got a new Artistic Director named Chris Coleman.

That was very interesting, but I didn't think of it as more than interesting, because I had never realized the impact of an artistic director. I started to notice it more with the ballet. I saw changes in the styles and even the physical types of the dancers. It went from reminding me very much of James Canfield to looking more like Stowell. I liked Canfield better. It wasn't that Stowell was bad at all, but he was not as compelling to me.

I don't go to the symphony or plays that often, so I don't have an opinion on their changes, but I really started to hate the opera.

It took a while. I would say that Mattaliano's first season looked very much like the previous director's last season. Yes, the first one would have been pretty much arranged by his predecessor (I can picture him, but I can't remember his name), but even the season after that still seemed pretty normal, but somehow less moving.

Things were colder and uglier. I blamed post-modernism. The voices always sounded good, but the staging did nothing for me, and I realized I could hear beautiful voices on the CD, and much more cheaply. I let that subscription go too. I never would have thought of it again, but I have a friend who loves opera, and can't find anyone else willing to go with her, so periodically she talks me into one, and each time I get more irritated with them. Salome was the worst.

I'd read the Oscar Wilde play that inspired Strauss years ago, so I had some familiarity with the characters and plot. That may have made some of the disappointment worse, but I would still have been pretty disappointed.

For the setting they chose revolutionary Cuba. I'm not sure correlates exactly with Jerusalem under Roman-installed Herodians, but that wasn't the problem.

One problem was Narraboth's knife. He is going to kill himself with this knife. Showing the knife can give some foreshadowing, but he was moving it around in the air as if he was mesmerized by it, when he is supposed to be mesmerized by the off-stage Salome. It was so over the top, like, "We get it! He has a knife!" It was as if they inverted Chekhov's gun - this is going to go off before the end, so we need to really fetishize it at the beginning, or the audience may be confused when he dies. How did that knife get there?

At least we knew what they were doing there. Two other things were more puzzling. The opening characters in the play are The Young Syrian and The Page of Herodias. The Young Syrian becomes Narraboth, and The Page just becomes Page. She looked like Honey from Doonesbury. China was going through some similar changes, but they are still two different countries. I suppose this could have been to make her appear more separate from Narraboth, but since he was the Syrian, it would have made more sense to make him look foreign. I don't think it made sense to make the page the fish out of water.

So that was off-putting, but then you see Herod in a coat with enormous sleeves that give him some trouble. I think this was to indicate that he was not up to his role, and as other characters mention how cowardly he is, and he does get himself in over his head later. I guess that makes sense, but with both of these issues, it is too distracting. Changing the setting, or details with costumes, or visual cues like that should enrich the performance without distracting from it.

One other change that kind of bothered me was that the page was female. I assume that would be a change that Strauss made, possibly to balance the vocal parts, or possibly due to unwillingness to have someone who was clearly homosexual. That was kind of important in the play though.

The page's love for the Syrian was not the key relationship in the play, but it was part of the overarching theme of unfulfilled longing and the destruction that it brings. Everyone wants something that they can't have. If they get their small desires, it only leads to more trouble.

The Syrian does get Salome to pay attention to him briefly, when she is trying to see Iokanaan, but she grows obsessed, he cannot bear it, and he kills himself. Salome wants to the Iokanaan, and does, but it stirs up things within her that she cannot bear, and leads to her own death. Herod wants to see Salome dance, and gets that, but then she requires something that terrifies him, and all his other desires for Salome end up crushed. You could argue that his desire for Herodias only brought him censure and a new coveting for his niece and stepdaughter.

Where the other characters seem at best foolish and at worst venal, the page in the play is the one character who seems able to see beyond his own desires. He is still tortured by them, and there is a feeling that it is harder it is not merely that his love is obsessed with someone else, but that his love would never even think of him that way, and he cannot even confess his love openly. Perhaps the page was a stand-in for Wilde himself, but he was the character that I felt the most for.

The gender switch may take away some of the anguish, but there is still a lot of anguish and fate and doom, and tortured, beautiful language, and that was the real problem with the Portland Opera performance. Salome is not opera buffa, but it felt like it, with the knife and the sleeves, and Salome's eventual death being by a lot of paper falling on her. I know effects can be hard, and Cuban soldiers don't carry shields like Roman soldiers, but still, it just looked silly, and it should not have been silly. And I haven't even mentioned the fake blood! I realize that on stage you have to make things bigger than you would on film, so it carries to the entire audience, but you can do that without descending into camp.

The potential was there. Soprano Kelly Cae Hogan really did a great job. You saw her make the emotional progression from an idle young girl only a little bothered by her creepy stepfather, to having new feelings stirring within her, to going crazy and cold. She hit all the right notes, on multiple levels. There was nothing silly about her, and I appreciate that, but it was just not enough.

After it was done they announced a Q&A session with Mattaliano, and I immediately thought of three questions. What were you thinking? Were drugs involved? Has a more avant-garde city made an offer for you yet?

The rest of the audience seemed to like it. They got the traditional standing ovation, which I know is kind of a cliche about Portland, and I usually think it's snobby to criticize that, but when the show feels that bad, I get it. At the same time, arts funding is going down in general. That could be largely a financial issue, because times have been hard, but a lot of the people who were supporters of the arts should be rebounded by now. It's a concern.

I love that Portland has opera, symphony, ballet, and theater, along with all the writers and rockers and artists. I don't mind that sometimes things are more modern. Under the previous regime there was one more off the wall selection each year, and that was okay. I didn't exactly like The Cunning Little Vixen, but I don't object to the idea of broadening the idea of what opera is, and the very modern staging made sense without being too distracting. The green neon circle represented the circle of life; okay.

I just think Mattaliano has really questionable taste, and when there are hard decisions to make about how to convey the meaning and the passion and the intensity of the story, that he stumbles over and over again. I thought The Flying Dutchman was hitting bottom, but I was wrong.