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ArtsBeat
The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more.Join the discussion.
Revisiones bibliográficas. Documentación científica en Ortopedia y Traumatología, medicina deportiva, artroscopia, artroplastia y de todas las patologías del sistema Músculo-Esquelético
lunes, 20 de diciembre de 2010
Los hongos escondidos de Somiedo
Investigadoras a la sombra de la ciencia académica
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Un programa para acabar con el 'ruido' en Internet
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Investigadores españoles patentan un quirófano inteligente portátil
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La tormenta perfecta
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Un programa de investigación europeo hecho a la medida
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Un test español para medir la longevidad
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Real Strangeness in Imaginary Kingdom
MUSIC REVIEW
Real Strangeness in Imaginary Kingdom
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Stéphane Degout and Magdalena Kozena in a revival of Jonathan Miller’s productionof Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” at the Metropolitan Opera.
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Published: December 19, 2010
It took until he was 55, but Simon Rattle finally made his Metropolitan Opera debut on Friday night. Mr. Rattle, who has been a major conductor for 30 years and the artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2002, led the season premiere of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” a revival of Jonathan Miller’s gothic 1995 production. At the end of this four-hour evening, some of the most ardent participants in the ovation for Mr. Rattle were the musicians in the orchestra pit, who stood and heartily applauded.
Multimedia
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Gerald Finley and Magdalena Kozena play a married couple in “Pelléas et Mélisande.”
In perhaps the most impressive performance I have heard Mr. Rattle give, he drew lush and plangent yet clear-textured and purposeful playing from the great Met orchestra. He was blessed with what he described in an interview on “Charlie Rose” on Thursday night as a “dream cast”: the elegant French baritone Stéphane Degout as Pelléas, the alluring Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena (Mr. Rattle’s wife) as Mélisande, and the intelligent Canadian baritoneGerald Finley as Prince Golaud.
Debussy’s mysterious opera, first performed in Paris in 1902, is an elusive and unconventional music drama. Adapted from the Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the troubled family of an aged king in an imaginary realm, “Pelléas et Mélisande” is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Some conductors bring out the Wagnerian harmonic textures and dark orchestral colorings of the work. When called for, there was Wagnerian richness and impressionist fluidity in Mr. Rattle’s performance.
Yet, in the manner of Pierre Boulez, an acclaimed exponent of this work, Mr. Rattle kept the textures lucid and focused, even when Debussy’s chords were thick with notes. Debussy tucked some piercing dissonances inside these milky harmonies, and Mr. Rattle brought them out through the pinpoint accuracy he elicited from the inspired Met players.
For all his intelligence, though, Mr. Rattle is an intensely dramatic musician. I have never heard a “Pelléas” in which the extremes of the score came through so vividly. You could sense the simmering below the deceptively subdued surface.
In the first scene the melancholic middle-aged Prince Golaud, who is lost in a forest, chances upon Mélisande, a weeping young woman full of fears and secrets. Mr. Rattle conducted the parallel orchestra chords that open the opera and the modal themes that slowly unfold with haunting serenity at a daringly slow tempo.
In an impulsive act that is neither depicted nor explained, Mélisande marries the older Golaud. Yet, from the time they meet, Pelléas and Mélisande are drawn to each other, a sensual current that runs through this restless score. In Act IV, when they can no longer constrain their illicit attraction and confess their love, Mr. Rattle brought out all of the music’s teeming intensity and fitful shifts.
Mélisande is a good role for the lovely Ms. Kozena. The tenderness of her singing could not disguise the inner emotional chaos of this strange young woman: a victim, yes, but also a compulsive liar who remains an enigma to the end. Mr. Degout brought a warm, youthful voice and stylistic insight to Pelléas, conveying the character’s tragic path from the uptight younger half-brother of an imperious prince to a hopeless romantic with uncontrollable longing for his brother’s wife.
Mr. Finley, who triumphed at the Met in the title role of John Adams’s“Doctor Atomic,” was superb as Golaud. While not overpowering, his voice is dark, virile and generous. He is that rare operatic artist who even when singing lyrically, sounds like he is speaking with the directness of a great actor.
The bass-baritone Willard White made a poignant Arkel, the old king. The mezzo-soprano Felicity Palmer gave a wrenching performance as Geneviève, the mother of Golaud and Pelléas who is helpless to prevent their fratricidal passions. And the excellent boy soprano Neel Ram Nagarajan was heartbreaking as Yniold, Golaud’s son by his first wife, whose is forced by his bullying father to spy on his Uncle Pelléas and his new mother Mélisande.
Mr. Miller’s production, with sets by John Conklin, fashions a visual symbolism to match the thematic symbolism of the opera. This royal family, in vaguely Victorian dress, lives in a run-down mansion, which rotates onstage to reveal stuffy rooms, forbidding exteriors and marbled arcades.
The Met has scheduled only five performances of “Pelléas et “Mélisande” with this cast and Mr. Rattle. Now that he has arrived at the Met, he must come back.
Why Remarry?
Updated December 19, 2010 07:00 PM
Why Remarry?
Introduction
Ed NationalDecember may be a popular month for marriage proposals, but it hasn't been the season for universal affirmations of the institution itself.
The Times reported last week that French couples are avoiding traditional marriages and increasingly opting for civil unions. In the United States, two recent studies, one by the Pew Research Centerand another by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virgina, noted the rise in cohabitation, which has doubled from 1990 to more than six million households in 2008, as an alternative to marriage.
This rise is not simply a reflection of the decision by the young and never married to delay taking the big step. The number of couples living together who were previously married is also on the rise, both among those who are still raising children and among older partners.
More second marriages fail than first marriages. With the increasing acceptance of cohabitation, why remarry? Why risk that nightmare all over again?
Why Remarry?
Two out of three second marriages end in divorce, and cohabitation is increasingly accepted. Why make a relationship official?
The Higher Risks of Cohabitation
Updated December 19, 2010, 07:00 PM
Sharon Sassler is an associate professor in the department of policy analysis and management at Cornell.
Previously married people have probably heard the warning that divorce rates are even higher in second marriages. But I ask you, how could remarriage possibly be any worse? After all, 100 percent of marriages ended unhappily among the currently divorced. Second marriages on average cannot possibly fare any worse statistically.
Just as with marriage rates overall, remarriage rates have declined. Divorced individuals are increasingly choosing cohabitation as an alternative to marriage. Living together is sometimes believed to be a safer, if less formal, relationship.
But the reality is that dissolution rates are higher among cohabiting couples than remarried couples. According to results from the National Survey of Family Growth, only 13 percent of cohabitations remained intact (that is, did not make the transition into a marriage or dissolve) after five years; in contrast, 77 percent of couples that remarried were still together five years after the ceremony. The odds of remaining in a long-term partnership are higher when there is a legal tie.
As for those who are parents, remarriage is sometimes unfairly maligned for the impact it can have on children. It is often difficult for children to adjust to a parent’s new spouse, and on average, research shows that children who spend time in step-families fare less well than those who grow up with married biological parents.
But on many dimensions children whose parents enter into second marriages have better outcomes than do children whose parents cohabit. They are less likely to drink or smoke, have higher levels of economic well-being, and as adults have better relationship quality than their counterparts whose divorced parents formed cohabiting unions or remained solo. Parents’ intimate relationships serve as templates for their children, long after the divorce and its aftermath.
Finally, looking at those who do remarry reveals a well-kept secret.
Just as the advantaged are now more likely to tie the knot in the first place, they are also more likely to remarry following a divorce. Men, for example, are more likely to remarry than are women (especially if they are custodial fathers), and remarriage rates are also higher for whites and the college educated. That suggests that marriage – even second marriages – confers social, legal, and personal benefits that those in positions of power or authority take advantage of.
Remarriage may be less beneficial among those nearing retirement age. Some recent studies have found that later-life cohabitations are more stable than those entered into by younger adults, though they are still less durable than remarriages. There may be other reasons to avoid remarriages among those who are retirement-aged; concerns with children’s inheritance, reliance on a former spouse’s pension, or a desire sometimes expressed by widows to enjoy the chance to do what they want without concerning themselves with another’s wishes.
But for those interested in establishing intimate relationships with new partners, there are many reasons, well supported with the scholarly research, to put aside the fear of failure that divorce represents to many Americans, and engage in what Samuel Johnson termed “the triumph of hope over experience.”
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