Siegfried at São Carlos

Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon's wonderful XVIIIth century opera house, is staging a great new production of the Ring cycle by Graham Vick. This year it was Siegfried's turn. Graham Vick presents the Ring in a kind of comic book style which, at its best, is witty instead of silly something  seldom achieved by the numerous attempts to transfer to our day and age classic opera plots. (Peter Sellar's great D.Giovanni, set in the Bronx, is another exception). Personally, I found Siegfried himself, that curious mixture of adolescent bully and idealistic hero, not entirely convincing. But this is no more than a detail, albeit an important one, in what can be considered on the whole a triumph. A sure sign of success: the hours passed effortlessly and at the end the feeling was of anticipation for Gottardamerung.

Clive James' culture bath

"Il n'y a pas de genres, il n'y a que des talents". This quote by Jean François Revel is one of the many trufles to be found in "Cultural Amnesia", the great partial summation of a lifetime of reading and pontificating by Clive James, the Australian critic and TV personality. The quote and the book, which I spent a feverish summer day fevereshly reading in bed, make an implicit case for great journalism which I entirely subscribe and add to by arguing that newspaper and magazine writing provide a much better literary training than is to be found in academia. Endlessly entertaining and generally wise, even if occasionally corny, "Cultural Amnesia",a collection of "over a hundred essays", as the backpage helpfully points out, about cultural figures mainly from the XXth century, rescues from oblivion dozens of worthy writers. I found the book particularly illuminating on such topics as Vienese café society before the Anchluss, French collaborationists and the German intellectual scene after WWII. 

John Richardson's Picasso

Chatty, mischievious perceptive and thorough, John Richardson's biography of Picasso is a compulsive read. Richardson offers us not only the life of Picasso but also of its social setting. It makes for fascinating cultural history. But will it ever be finished? The third volume came out in 2007 and it only takes us to 1932. There are still another 40 years of life to be covered and Richardson is already 83 years old. It gives you a great urge to look and look again at the great mass of work left by Picasso. He covered and seemingly exhausted an enormous field. His presence in the history of art is daunting. Very few artists today seem to be grappling with his legacy. Hockney is an obvious exception. Check out Richardson's loft in lower Manhattan and his art collection in You Tube: At home with Charlie Rose: John Richardson

The diaries of Harold Nicolson and Duff Cooper

Harold Nicolson and Duff Cooper were two scions of the British bourgeoisie who led parallel lives and who, by their wits, looks and charm, gained entry into the highest circles of British politics and society. One, Nicolson, was gay, the other, Cooper, a notorious womanizer. Both had succesful marriages, the former to Vita Sackville West, the writer and landscape gardener who was one Virginia Wolf's best friends, the latter to Lady Diana Cooper, a notorious beauty, the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland, a social celebrity in her day who acted in Hollywood. Both joined the Foreign Office and left it to pursue a career in politics. They ended serving together under Churchill in his first government as PM in 1940, Nicolson junior minister to Cooper at the Trade Board. They were not especially friendly. Their diaries are a fascinating record of life in London in the first half of the XXth century, but they could not be more different. Duff Cooper gives us an intimate, blow by blow, account of his love life, his numerous infidelities, and his copious and rich eating, drinking and gambling - together with a few offhand, almost casual descriptions of his feats of arms in the First World War and of his break with Chamberlain after Munich. Nicholson is reserved, never mentions his homosexuality but is the more disciplined and fluid writer, with marvellous evocative descriptions of moods and personalities.

Sophisticated Palma

The olive and the palm tree, this is the sacred Mediterranean combination you will find in Palma de Maiorca, that most charming, sophisticated and cool island at the crossroads between Spain, Italy and France, with a sultry touch given by the hot African wind blowing in from the Sahara. Rich renaissance arquitecture, great "arroz negro", cool shopping, nice art galleries, everything comes together in a subtle whisper ringing in your ears: "stay..."

Aragón

On the high speed train from Zaragoza to Barcelona, Aragón can feel like America. A wide expense of desert with the odd patch of green and a mountain in the background. A tiny cluster of houses fleeting by. A solitary herd of cattle. Few people and much land.

Fitzgerald revisited

"Tender is the Night" has many flashes of brilliance and can be supremely evocative, but I cannot agree with Pietro Citati that it is Fitzgerald's masterpiece. Gatsby is perfect and feels effortless whereas this more ambitious book seems at time belabored. As Citati says it is a book about charm and I would add about the evanescent quality of time - the fleeting moment, the revealing gesture, the odd lapse, the exact second when life's plot turns. It is also a novel about decadence, wasting one's talent, coming short, the things that Fitzgerald thought about himself and that thicker writers like Hemingway said about him. But Hemingway, often thought the greater of the two has not lasted as well. His macho poses are embarassing and terribly dated ("such a lady", as Robert Hughes said). On the contrary, Fitzgerald remains true. Even if "Tender is the Night" is not his masterpiece, it still is a moving, modern novel.

Proustian Nabokov

"Speak, Memory", Nabokov's delicious memoir of his cosseted childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, is often strongly reminiscent of Proust: the voluptuous style, the tender evocation of minute details, the precise, tactile and sensuous descriptions, even some episodes - for example, his train of thought as he waits for his mother's good night kiss. And how this sophisticated, refined world collapsed almost overnight... There are always barbarians at the gate.

A cuban memoir

Reinaldo Arenas' memoir "Antes que anochezca" is a harrowing tale of sexual frenzy, political repression and literary courage set in Cuba in the 60's and 70's. In the cuban hothouse, a petty, implacable communist tyranny corrupts, suffocates or crushes all opposition and dissent. Writers and homosexuals are a particular target. Somehow, amidst terrible difficulties, Arenas manages to smuggle first his manuscripts and them himself out of the island and finally taste a little freedom in the US before succumbing to the Aids epidemic. It is important to read such testimonies every once in a while to be reminded of the value of political freedom and material comfort such as we enjoy  in the West. 

Wagner: an acquired taste

What seemed forbidding is now bewitching; dull and ponderous it sounded, now it appears deliciously lyrical, dramatic and moving. For hours the attention never flags; the attention is rapturously held by the unfolding drama. Yesterday, at the Liceo,  "The Walkyries" cast their spell. The audience held its breath; nothing moved except on stage. At the end a storm of applause as I had never heard in this city. 

Grotesque Dali

Up in Figueres, the Dali museum, one of the biggest tourist attractions of the region, is by turns nauseating, funny and grotesque. An explosion of kitsch which  not even its very excess redeems. Down in Pubol, the Gala chateau, with its sweet dead roses smell, the piped in Wagner, the collection of haute couture dresses and other assorted mementos of the high life faux surrealist style stands as another  monument to the cult of personality gone silly. 

It's only rock'n roll

Old for those of us who were young in the 80's, washed up in the 90's, decrepit in the new century, the Rolling Stones are still in there, making faces, making moves, playing their old repertoire as if it was new. Look at Shine a Light: altogether a disastrous movie...even the sound is bad...at the beginning Jagger & Co look like a pastiche of themselves. But as the concert moves along, the power of the music gradually takes over. Those old songs still have the capacity to move you ...and to move them. Gradually a trance like atmosphere is established. The Stones rock. They still do.