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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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092589
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09258900.073
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1990-09-17
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MUSIC, Page 76Ferocious ParableA Weill opera goes Hollywood
When Bertolt Brecht created his legendary Mahagonny, that "City
of Nets" where every pleasure is for sale, he neglected to specify
exactly where it was. It was originally thought to be the
Nazi-threatened Berlin of the 1920s, but the libretto that he wrote
for Kurt Weill's most ambitious opera, The Rise and Fall of the
City of Mahagonny (1930), seems to be set on a wildly imaginary
Florida Gold Coast. But to Jonathan Miller, the gifted British
director who was commissioned to stage a new Mahagonny at the
enterprising, young Los Angeles Music Center Opera, there could be
only one locale. "Hollywood," he said before last week's opening
night, "seemed to be a living metaphor."
What gave him that idea was Kafka's Amerika. "I was thinking
about how he and Brecht and others saw America. Obviously, they got
their ideas from the movies, the Keystone Kops, Chaplin. You think
of these guys sitting in poky little movie houses in Central Europe
in the 1920s watching these flickering images. As far as they were
concerned, everything in America was all in the same place. You
rode down Fifth Avenue straight into Monument Valley."
Miller carries out this scheme almost too subtly, turning the
City of Nets into a collection of pseudo movie sets, illuminated
by camera lights. "I haven't made the references to Los Angeles too
explicit, because that demythologizes it. I set Mahagonny in a film
studio, but there is no attempt to have real scenery. I don't press
too hard."
There is a nice irony in Brecht's ferocious parable of
capitalist greed playing in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, that
pillared temple of capitalist philanthropy. The parable itself,
though, is rather silly. Brecht was a brilliant playwright and
poet, but his ideas were pure Stalin-era blustering. As a viewer
sits watching the hero Jimmy get executed for having been unable
to pay his bar bill, he can only marvel at the gorgeous music Weill
provided for this nonsense.
That music is admirably presented by Kent Nagano, 37, a
long-maned Californian who has guest-conducted widely and won a
solid reputation for his performances of works by such
contemporaries as Olivier Messiaen and Steve Reich. His reading of
Mahagonny is sharp, clear and briskly energetic (even a bit too
much so in the lovely "cranes duet"). Gary Bachlund brings an
appropriate touch of Nelson Eddy to the role of the doomed hero,
though Anna Steiger (daughter of Rod) plays Jenny with a less happy
touch of Jeanette MacDonald. As Lotte Lenya taught a whole
generation of admirers, Weill's heroines should sound sexy,
metallic and bitter.
Mahagonny marks the start of a big season for Weill, who would
have been 90 next March. The Threepenny Opera, with Sting as Mack
the Knife, began previews in Washington last week and moves to
Broadway in October. Menahem Golan soon plans to release a
freewheeling film adaptation starring Raul Julia and Julia Migenes.
There will be Weill festivals in Cleveland, London and Dusseldorf,
and lots of new recordings. The Los Angeles Mahagonny makes an
interesting beginning.