A gala day is enough for me
Hey, remember how New York City Opera threw this big gala last fall to salute the billionaire teabagger, Astroturfer and enemy of Net Neutrality David H. Koch? Now, La Cieca is sure that in the intervening months you have been asking yourself, “What could NYCO possibly do to top this ill-advised exaltation of someone who really doesn’t deserve to be honored? Who could NYCO possibly find who would be a less popular and appropriate target for veneration?”
I warn you, cher public, you are not going to believe who the honoree is for the spring gala.
Care to tell us who that is, because not all of us follow the comings and goings of New York’s rich.
I was going to guess Cheney, but the blurred man seems to have too much hair. Who else would be as offensive?
Her name is “Typhoid” Mary Mallon. She singlehandedly poisoned many people by infecting them while working as a cook, despite warnings and arrests, while a carrier of typhus. For many years she was isolated in a hospital on the fairly remote North Brother Island in Long Island Sound. However, she escaped, found herself some money and, living with an acid bath-created new face under the name “Susan Baker” managed nearly to destroy NYCO by hiring Gerard Mortier to run it, having applied to him the same scrutiny George W Bush famously gave to Vladimir Putin.
Oh.
My.
God.
appalling.
unless: any chance this means they’re going to put her out to pasture?
That’s all they CAN do with her. Her kind can’t be killed.
As an outsider, I ask…what is the specific objection to Susan Baker?
I dunno. I just do it ’cause everyone else does.
Betsy, you have been on FIRE for the last week at least.
Baritenor, I came in as an outsider, too, but from what I can understand, S. Baker oversaw NYCO during its darkest, recent days, becoming enamored of Gerard Mortier, the would-be GD who shut down the company for a year and then left for another gig before the company could get back on its feet. Someone else here will elaborate, I’m sure.
Well, let’s see if I can put myself out. I will start by asking Baritenor if he can tell me why Stephen Sondheim wrote so mordantly (is that a word? Can it be spelled that way?) of “The Ladies Who Lunch” and why Elaine Stritch made your skin crawl when she sang it. I will expand by observing that CruzSF’s answer is historically accurate, at least as far as we know. Next, I will politicize my response by saying that all I have read of her fits into the pattern of “The Social Harpy,” who uses her money, almost always inherited or married, as a weapon to achieve a status to which her personal merits would never entitle her. There she surrounds herself with others who are playing the same game by the same rules, the culmination of which is almost always “The Grand Testimonial.” (The male counterpart follows the same pattern, but is allowed to “Loot the Pension Fund,” or wait for Congress to open the Treasury gates and call soooo– EEEEEEEE !) And finally, because I almost married one, being saved from a dreadful life of luxury, ease, and being incredibly henpecked by the sudden intervention of a space alien starship, which schlooped her right up. . . . or have I already told that story?
Betsy, have you ever considered writing libretti?
Betsy, what can I say but:
Everybody RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!
It’s funny you should bring that up, Cruz, because I did write the words — AND MUSIC — for our Sunday School production, “Oh Pilate, Pilate.” Lady Claudia was played by a lovely, but chubby little girl who could never remember the words and la-la-la’d her way through “Oh, Carpenter’s Son, wash your hands with me.” Dear little Montsy; I wonder whatever happened to her.
HA!
Had to be a different Montse, since Caballé was painfully skinny as a child, due to the poverty her family endured in those terrible days.
Actually, come to think of it, there might be an opera libretto there …
Now THIS is funny. Sad, but funny.
You have got to be fucking kidding me? Either she and the hubby pnied up a lot of money or she has brought in some major donations this year. Or maybe she is one of the only board members not trying to jump ship? Well just when you thought NYCO was turning a corner it looks like it will be business as usual. This does not bode well for the opera company. The woman is a menace. Let’s see how this spins in the Wall Street Journal.
I think NYCO should commission Betty_Ann_ Bobolink to write the libretti of her opera The Grand Testimonial. Fill it with all those vipers who slither from one infesting termite association to another, in the hope of increasing their self aggrandishment. As the saying goes ‘Those that think their shit doesn’t stink because they are so well heeled’, or socially connected.
Hold on, here! What I wrote was personal. Publicly I remind you these same harpies are responsible for building hospitals, libraries, shelters, auditoria, and, yes, opera companies. Let me peckishly seethe by myself while we all partake in the fruits of their self-aggrandizing largesse. Shit, what a dilemma.
I have never and I mean NEVER felt beholding, in any way for my opera interests and pleasures- to those social harpies and butterflies that love getting on Opera Boards. I have paid for that privlige myself, throughout my life and I do not owe them anything. Did they educate me on Opera? NO! The same applies to other people who also have the living , breathing ‘fire & passion’.
If you ever meet some of those prominent fuckwits, start gently quizzing and checking in a round about way -how much – they actually know about this or that opera. Most of what they know is parrot learnt. Most of their opinions about an particular opera are easily judged as based on shallow knowledge perhaps leamed from the latest Broad press release opera synopsis of hat the Company intends to perform. Most of their opinions are bland and terribly -terribly safe….like ” Is this…..or that so and so, wonderful?” – when everybody else thinks the person referred to, is fucking awful. The undeclared faux pas being: to challenge that opinion -could show them mercilessly up. We would be really exposing the full extent of their empty social networking. They would see that challenge as a personal threat. Robust debate to test and prove a point – is not in their mental lexicon. So it becomes a case of ‘being nice’ or becoming their enemy.They are too used to social games of mutual suck-arsing. For people who believe that Opera is ‘one of the things you do’ when you have a self sense of upward social mobility. Aim: to make a noted substainal donation and then expect to get their arses greased with all the spin-off stepping stone networking benefits. At base: buying plastic friendships,the ruse….supposedly fostering Opera. If that is at all doubted…. think of Vilar. Can you imagine members of the Broad of the MET sympathetically taking a basket of special MET treats and visiting him in prision? More likely spat his memory out like ‘slag’, in the nearest gutter ( out of anyone’s sight), what else!
Lordy, Harry, I’m so much with you I could cry. But the problem is, I’m tired, I spent my years on the barricades, on the marches, and in the jails. Chicago, 1968, I got betrayed by MY leadership and gassed by MY government! It took a long time for the fire and passion to come back after that, and it never was as strong. Every so once in a while, a particular injustice or unfairness will hit me and I will fight back the only way I still can, through words, wit, satire, parody, burlesque, but those don’t work on the totally self-absorbed. And I’m just too fuckin’ old and tired to do anything else. My main hope is that along the way someone will say, “What is this fire-in-the-belly you speak of, Grasshopper?” and I’ll answer, “Lemme tell you a story about a space alien starship.”
While I don’t know the lady- might I ask if anyone’s tried crucifix’s or strings of garlic?
Well here’s some possibilities and ideas for raising much needed money for NYCO if Baker is as genuine as I assume she makes out.
(1)By selling Susan Baker voodoo dolls with a good supply of pins added as a bonus.
(2)What about a raffle? The successful winner gets Susan Baker to get down on her hands and knees in her best cocktail frock and scrub one’s already prepared grimy toilet and floors with a toothbrush. Then drink a cup of ‘punch’ from the punchbowl.
(3)She write a tell all book on herself and every other wannabee she associates with, at NYCO and let NYCO have all the proceeds
(4)Announce she is leaving NYCO.
Love it, Harry, love it.
BETSY_ ANN_BOBOLINK: You may feel tired about some things . but rememeber you and others like minded, have one great thing going for you……….experience! What is happening now in things like Opera and other things is all based on a repeating behavioral matrix. Therefore you are able to anticipate ‘the next move’ in a given ‘human chessboard’ situation once you ascertain what position each player is on that active checkerboard. Making us unshakeably resolute in what we think and feel: that ‘having being there-seen that, all before’ syndrome. As well as being wise and cynical for the right reasons. Looking at all the pretentious creatures and attitudes around us, it is almost too easy to take ‘the piss out of them’ -the social mugs who set themselves up for their unforeseen but highly predictable falls. And Opera happens to be the specialty category for us, where we can debunk and mortify its self designated gods, its promoted fake princesses, princes and puppets to our hearts content. We will never run out of subjects to examine with fime microscope or crude blow torch, any time soon.
What is comedy? A mere formula: ‘Take a given situation – reverse that situation a complete 180 degress to that of ‘what if’ – then imagine it is a set of expanding springs for chest strengthening exercises. Now stretch that reversed situation to ‘the beyond of ludicious’. Presto – Comedy! About time the young generations were let into one of life’s little human secrets.
Just a reminder . . . Beverly Sills died on Susan Baker’s birthday (i.e., July 2nd).
Haha! The woman is obviously Evil Incarnate! (Baker, not Sills)