Formula for success
“Although they work in different genres, both Plácido Domingo and Elaine Stritch continue to impress and inspire with their dedication to stretching their talents in new directions.” If only Charles Isherwood could somehow have found a way to mention Israel, he’d have created the platonic ideal of a Times arts story. [NYT]
Brava! Indeed, this story defies belief.
Isherwood could easily have alluded to PD’s early years singing Lenski and other roles in Hebrew with the Israeli National Opera under Mme. Edis de Philippe!
Have others noticed that the NEW YORKER, too , has seemingly abandoned profiles and features about non-Jews? This may sound preposterous, but to an alarming extent it’s true. Just keep reading– the information turns up sooner or later. They made sure we knew William Kentridge was Jewish and even got him to say that The Nose as portrayed in the forthcoming staging is “a European Ashnenazi nose”. (Wouldn;t the routinely-fpr-his-time anti-Semitic Gogol be surprised!)
Following ion the heels of Bart Sher’s pathetic and , as it turned out, largely irrelevant pandering as to Hoffmann = Offenbach = Kajka = The Figure of the Outsider Jew, do we detect a Gelb marketing strategy?
A disgusting observation.
This week’s New Yorker features profiles of Arne Duncan and a group of NYC detectives–none of them Jewish, as far as I can tell. Last week’s featured novelist Neil Gaiman (Jewish) and cryonics guru Robert C.W. Ettinger (not, I think, Jewish). The issue with the Kentridge story also profiled designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy–presumably not Jewish.
Is Nerva affronted when she reads a story and discovers, to her surprise, that the subject is, in fact, Jewish? If so, I suggest she keeps it to herself.
I’m also wondering what relevance a comment about The New Yorker has to a Times piece. And what does Gelb have to do with either? Is this part of a vast Jewish media conspiracy?
Shockingly anti-Semitic.
I’m profoundly disappointed.
LPR
Every week I wonder if I’ll start getting my checks from the banking conspiracy and every week I am disappointed. How’s a fellow to keep in good spirits for poisoning the well without a little pocket change, I’d like to know.
You’ve got something of a conflict of interest there: first poisoning the well, then refurbishing it for greater curb appeal.
Nerva is in fact Jewish and the kind of Jew disturbed by relentless tribalist smugness. But not by allegation that her pointing out such constitutes anti-Semitism.
Cryonics guru Robert C.W. Ettinger was indeed Jewish, as the article made clear, and that is precisely my point: get real, there would not have been a NEW YORKER story had he not been. There was a similar story about some right wing media guru one would not have expected to be Jewish within the last few weeks and this has been an increasing -almost weekly- trend in the magazine, bringing it in line with the TIMES as far as what/whom merits covering.
David Remnick is a specialist on Russia but one would be hard pressed to find a single article– non-fiction or fiction– that has appeared under his editorship that has not focused on Russian Jews or anti-semitism. These are not invalid per se — Russian anti-semitism is a real and nasty force –but that is not the extent of the culture and its history except in the view of “experts” such as Cynthia “Kill all the Arabs” Ozick.
(Maury, make sure you bring the chalice for the Blood Ritual…)
Sorry, I just don’t get Nerva’s pov here. Cieca’s joke, as hinted at by the map, seemed to be about two different and often commented-upon attributes of the Times–a Manhattan-centered provincialism and a frequent focus on the issue of Israel. How her apt jape at this article on two Catholics somehow is seen as fodder for a screed against the supposed emphasis on Jewish subjects in the Times and the New Yorker (or why, even if that emphasis existed, it would be a crime) eludes me.
Blogger’s Remorse: The moment after I submitted the above comment, I did regret contributing to what could well feel as the piling-on phenomenon. I do understand your argument, Nerva, and I was amused by your Crudup example; I’m just not persuaded.
Back to the Times story, if I may.
This seems to me to be a rather artful ( but sad) attempt to “apologize” for a previous Times article that suggested the PD spread was spreading himself thin.
The Times printed a “response” letter from someone at LA Opera ( who of course defended PD) and I was wondering when the “make nice” article would show up. I guess this was it.
Wonderful that the NYT even cared to give the space for this tribute to Domingo and Strich.
Carlyle “Tickets are $125, and purchase of dinner is required. The total for two could easily top $500. Ms. Stritch” Does that mean that if she gives you a comp. you still have to buy your own dinner?
Not if you’re Charles Isherwood.
I think there is a way to reserve a table without having dinner, which brings the costs down significantly.
Could someone please explain to an Old World non-NYT reader (apart from the occasional scrap of Tony ‘Strapping’ T) the significance of the Isherwood/Israel comment?
Cieca, you want to handle the mess I’m being blamed for?
Well.. if you insist… briefly, over the years the TIMES has doubtless run more coverage on “Wagner and Israel” and “Barenboim and Berlin anti-Semitism” than coverage of all other aspects of classical music in Europe put together.
For a while, the TIMES could not get enough of the dreadful Deborah Drattell: Orthodox wife, mother and lousy composer, and there are and have been other such TIMES icons including La Sills, Liev Schreiber, the aforementioned Cynthia Ozick (not a good writer from any point of view), the boulevard playwright Wendy Wasserstein (apparently a lovely person and skilled at what she did well, but neither “the American Chekhov” nor “the Voice of Her Generation” s the TIMES claimed for years and years; they also adored her financier brother Bruce), the directors Jonathan Miller and Moises Kauffmann, Yazmina Reza, David Mamet, Mike Nichols, Tony Kushner, etc, etc
Of course none of these people are untalented ( except perhaps Ozick)– some are terrific– but one questions if they would have gotten the TIMES magazine profiles and relentless TIMES attention they had without their having been Jewish. Sadly, I think the honest answer is no.
Of course, there ARE many Jews in the arts and that can legitimately be a source of pride, but it’s the TIMES’ “people like us” tone and the evident principles of selection that grate.
If there is a positive Jewish angle to a story that would please/flatter the presumed readership (we Jewish New Yawkers are *numerous*), the TIMES will find it. Someone on another list posted one of the best ever examples: an Arts and Leisure piece on the actor Billy Crudup, who is not Jewish. The piece told about how, when a teenager, Crudup would attend Friday dinners at the home of a friend whose father was a rabbi and how the moral and political discussions there helped mold him. (Presumably the topic of leaving someone when she’s 7 months pregnant with your child did not arise.) I felt that Crudup’s press agent deserved a free weekend at Kutsher’s for putting that one over.
Who else is in this conspiracy, other than the Times, the New Yorker and Gelb? Up until Nerva Nelli’s trenchant post, I had been unaware of living in the midst of a Jewish Menace; now I hope to stay alert.
Hey, no one but YOU and Maury said anything about a conspiracy.
Can you honestly think about the TIMES’ coverage and deny what I say?
Yes. Yes, I can. And you described a conspiracy, even if you didn’t use the specific word.
CruzSF, I did no such thing, A conspiracy involves prior secret agreement between or among parties to do or not do something.
I didn’t realize you were implying the 2 publications were focusing on Jews by accident.
Comment below::
“I didn’t realize you were implying the 2 publications were focusing on Jews by accident.”
I am sorry you are so bereft of logical thinking; or maybe it;s alack of understanding of journalism.
The two publications are what they are and do what they do; I implied a similarity but no conspiracy. Many other publications concentrate on Jewish themes, too- perhaps they are a little more upfront about the focus. In the bad old Rosenthal days, the TIMES critics would hammer gay, black, latino and other artists for being “special interests” while treating the likes of Bellow and Malamud and Roth as “universal”.
Pick up some back issue of the Book Review and learn something.
I’m comforted by the fact that I wasn’t alone in reading your posts as a cry of conspiracy.
Be as comforted as you like. but since you used the world, others piled on as if that had been alleged.
If you tell “Fire” and people run, yelling, “Fire!”, are you comforted?
FQ, I wasn’t first to use the word.
What offended me about the article was this, and I quote:
“Simon Boccanegra” rivals even Verdi’s “Trovatore” in its pileup of absurdities. (It also contains the most delicious supertitle translation I’ve seen: “Die you evil pirate!”) Mr. Domingo achieves the implausible feat of making the narrative inanities utterly immaterial.
So we are to conclude, following this article writer, that Domingo saves Verdi, Piave and Boito. I don’t think so. I think Domingo read the libretto and the score, was sufficiently intelligent to connect the dots, and gave one of his marvelous performances. I must say the NYT article is a pieleup of absurdities compared to a well sung “Trovatore”.
Brava, Valkyrietta! I have noticed that even people who know very much better – or SHOULD know very much better – trot out the same old chestnuts about ridiculous plots in print. I often think it is pandering to the masses, and a kind of to those readers to indicate, I may be writing about this crap but I’m just a regular guy/gal like all of you. I’m tired of it and think people who write that way shouldn’t be writing in influential publications.
The point was made that information needed to understand Boccanegra happens in dialog rather than arias. WHAT a REVELATION!! Perhaps the writer should recommend that the befuddled listen to (read the METtitles of) the dialog. Aren’t they part of the opera? GMAFB!
TEST: First I could not find the comment feed for a long time, but I finally found it and it’s great. Many thanks. I will post the same text on another page of Parterre to see how it works.
For a while, the TIMES could not get enough of the dreadful Deborah Drattell: Orthodox wife, mother and lousy composer
Wow! I’ve found a connection between Domingo and The Vast Jewish Conspiracy (TVJC)!
Domingo, the LA Opera honcho, commissioned Deborah Drattell, she of TVJC, to write an opera despite having no evident talent for writing music and we Angelenos had to suffer through the utterly ghastly Nicholas and Alexandria as a result. Add it to a list of crap commissions by non-opera/orchestral composing composers (*cough* Howard Shore *cough*) that Domingo has foisted on us, while true opera composers go begging for commissions.
Nicholas and Alexandria….was that an opera about some Russian guy trying to convert an Egyptian courtesan?
I could sing the Pharos Lighthouse *tomorrow* – it’s a question of color and tessitura.
“AlexandrIa”? Jeebus. That’s what I get for rushing to post something as I was leaving work.