Carmen (an opera review post)

Carmen marks the first opera I have seen more than once. Evidently, it's one of SFO's favorite operas to perform, so I suppose you should expect another Carmen review in two to three years. This was a different production than the one we saw last time, and, I have to say, this one fell short. It's something that I'm saying that, too, because, at the point of the intermission, I announced to my wife, "I like this one better than the last one." I was wrong. But I'll get more to that in a moment or three.

First of all, this was a much more traditional production than the previous one. What I'm learning is that the new general director of SFO, having taken over in 2016, just after we started attending, is very much a traditionalist in his approach to the productions of older operas. He's British, so maybe that's why? It's not that they don't perform newer operas, after all, since we've been going, they've debuted several new opera productions, but, since he's been in charge, the trend has been to return all the staple operas to more traditional styles of productions. So, last time we saw Carmen, we had a show set in the 60s or 70s, while this recent production returned us to the 1800s. I don't know that this traditionalist approach is a detriment or not, but Carmen, in particular, seems to be ready for a more up-to-date interpretation.

I believe the reason I liked the first half of this particular production as much as I did is that Don Jose, the male lead, is not actually in it much. I enjoyed J'Nai Bridges in her role as Carmen. She very much embodied the character and was fun to watch. Matthew Polenzani, however, was barely believable in his role as Don Jose. He creates no romantic, sexual, or violent tension, and all three of those things are required in the male lead.

I would kind of love to break it all down, but I think that would take too long and, ultimately, prove to be uninteresting, so I'll give the highlights:
1. Polenzani turns what should have been a highly charged meeting of sexual tension into something that more resembles insta-love, as he ignored Carmen during the entire exchange. Once she's off the stage he picks up a flower she threw at him and decides he's in love with her.
2. During the pivotal scene where Jose is forced into running off to the mountains with Carmen, it doesn't actually feel forced. It comes across more as an "oh, well..."
3. During the final scene, Carmen keeps going on about how Jose should just go ahead and kill her if that's what he's going to do, but Polenzani managed to be so non-threatening throughout the production that it comes across as emo whining on the part of Carmen rather than any real threat upon her life. It makes her murder somewhat out of the blue and arbitrary feeling, more like he did because she was saying it rather than there being any threat of murder hanging in the air.

It's so bad, in fact, that when the romantic rival shows up, I really felt like Carmen should go off with him. You're not supposed to be rooting for this guy and, in the previous production we saw, I wasn't. In the that one, he felt like the villain he was supposed to be but, in this one, he felt like the better option. You could feel his passion for Carmen and could support that over Jose's milk-toast ambivalence.

Now, I realize that a lot of these issues could be directorial, but I think the lack of believable passion from Don Jose falls squarely on Polenzani's shoulders. Unless, maybe, the director told him to be as uninterested as possible, but I highly doubt that. Maybe it all would have been fine if I had just shut my eyes and listened to the music only but, then, I wouldn't have understood it because I need the translation on the screens.

All of which is to say that the specific production can make a huge difference in an opera. Yes, I knew that... in my head... but I had never experienced it before. Not in an opera, anyway. It's interesting to get this perspective.

"The map is wrong" and Why It's Time To Ignore Trump

Living with an autocrat is never easy, not least of which because they can be erratic and unpredictable. Some of that unpredictableness comes from the fact that they warp reality around their assertions that their view of the world is the one and only correct view of the world. Let me give you an example:

When I was no more than seven or eight, I was having a discussion with my mom about a geography thing I learned at school that day. It was one of those "what did you learn today" moments. As I was telling her, my dad butted in with, "That's wrong."

Now, when I was a kid, I never held that typical belief that my parents were the ultimate authority on things. That was a view I held for teachers. Teachers were infallible. At least, at that point in my life, they were. So, of course, my response to my dad was something along the lines of, "But my teacher said..."

To which he responded, "Your teacher is wrong."

Some of you may have realized that I can be pretty... forceful... about the things I believe, and that has always been true, even when I was a kid, so an argument ensued. An argument which ended with the purchase of a map of the state, upon my insistence, because I was determined to prove that I was correct. We opened the map up, found the landmark, and...

I was right. It was just as I said from what we learned in class.

And my dad said, immediately, "The map is wrong."

I tried to argue. An argument which was cut short by my dad saying, "I'm right because I say I am."

I was, needless to say, flabbergasted. I just could not understand his insistence that he was right when, clearly, reality said otherwise.

It was also the very last time I ever argued anything with my dad. What was the point?

Also, that's a difficult lesson to learn when you're only seven or eight.

My dad also had that infuriating thing that you've probably seen in movies where he would ask me a question then yell at me not to "talk back" to him when I tried to answer. So, yeah, reality warping.

My tactic for dealing with him by the time I was in middle school was to just walk away. Literally. (And I have to say that it was actually quite satisfying, because it would leave him flustered and yelling, spittle flying out of his mouth as he did so. Seriously. (You didn't want to be close to him when he was yelling about something because there was always spittle.)) I refused to engage with him because you could never tell where you stood or what kind of crazy -- I hesitate to call them lies, because he was never "lying." -- untruth was going to come out of him. And you couldn't argue because facts didn't matter. He was right because he said he was. So, yeah, maybe it was disrespectful, but I would walk away, usually to my room but, sometimes, to outside.

And you know what? It would shut him up. I mean, after the "don't walk away from me while I'm talking to you!" part, that was the end of it. He never resumed anything later and there were never any consequences. Well, okay, there was the occasional "you're grounded!" that followed the bit about not walking away, but he never paid enough attention to ever enforce that; it just made him feel good to say it. Like he was actually doing something, I suppose.

Now, here's the punch line:
Trump is just like my dad. Or like my dad would have been if he'd had someone to give him a "small loan of a million dollars" to get him started off in life.

I realize what I'm about to say is more than impractical, but the way we need to be dealing with Trump, as a society, when he starts spouting nonsense is to "walk away." Ignore it. Deal with the actual business at hand and not pay any attention to his untruths. Because I'm pretty sure that Trump, also, isn't "lying." He's just saying stupid shit because
1. He's not very smart. and
2. He's right because he says he is; therefore, to him, anything he says is reality.

So here we are, two weeks later (as I write this and, probably, three weeks later as you read this), and we're still talking about Trump's completely unsupported and demonstrably false statement that he was wiretapped by Obama. Why are we still talking about it? Because we have allowed Trump to warp or reality. Rather than talking about him and his ties to Russia or any number of other things, we are now focused on whether Obama, the least scandalous President ever, had Trump under surveillance. With the British! Because Trump has to continue to warp reality to keep us focused on the wrong things. On non-things.

All of that to say this:
It's time to move the conversation back to where it should be, on Trump and the evil of his cohorts and how they are trying to ruin the world for everyone except the very wealthy. Because, actually, some of Trump's untruths are lies and, certainly, the people around him are lying all the time, just look at Flynn and Sessions for starters.

What we need to learn, as a society, especially the press, is that when Trump offers up something that comes without proof, something like "I was wiretapped," we need to not even acknowledge it. You stay focused on the actual story (in this case, it was the story about Sessions and how he lied under oath, but we haven't heard anymore about that since Trump made his completely fallacious claim) and resist chasing the squirrels that Trump is tossing into the room.

Personally, I think it would be great if we really could just walk away from him, just like I did with my dad. I bet Trump spittles, too, when he yells.

You Can't Have It Both Ways

Most of you reading this can probably remember back to September 11, 2001. You remember the shock and horror that we -- and I use that term globally, because the whole world was shocked and horrified -- all felt. Shocked because no one could understand why anyone would do such a thing. Horrified because we couldn't understand how it had happened. Why it had happened...

Why did it happen? Why did our government let such a thing as terrorists attacking the country happen? Or, an even better question, how did our government allow the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor. Surely (as conspiracy theorists have been saying for decades), the government knew. And, to bring it up to date, how did the French government allow the Charlie Hebdo massacre? I mean, they had had one of those guys in jail not all that long before. They had to have known!

Someone, somewhere, failed to act and allowed these things to happen because, you know, they could have stopped them. Should have. They should have proactively stopped the bad guys before they had done anything wrong. You know, like in Minority Report. Surely, the government has future-reading psychics hidden away somewhere and know about all the bad things before they happen and are just picking and choosing which atrocities to stop (hmm... and that kind of sounds like what the British did during World War II once they had cracked the Enigma machine).

Look, it would be great if we could see the future and know, for sure, who was going to do what bad thing and when, but that's just not how the world works. Some people will do bad things and some people will only talk about doing bad things, and it's difficult to tell which is which. It leaves us with two options:
1. Catch the bad guys after they do the bad things.
or
2. Toss people in jail (or worse) just because we think they might do a bad thing.

There's this conversation in Captain America: The Winter Soldier about this topic -- actually, the whole movie is about this topic, but there's one particular exchange that really captures it -- between Nick Fury and Captain America:

Nick -- "We're going to neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen."
Cap -- "I thought the punishment usually came after the crime."

I think this is the central conflict not just in the United States but in all of Western culture, right now. How do you balance the need to feel secure against the need for something that is actual just (as in justice) treatment for all people? I mean, it's one thing to shoot a man down who has pulled a gun on you, but it's another thing entirely to shoot a lot of people down for no other reason than you think they might have a gun on them. Or might be thinking about getting a gun.

In general, I think we, as a people, really do believe in the idea of justice, the idea that no one should be persecuted or punished before s/he's done anything wrong. Punishment comes after the crime. However, when something like the Charlie Hebdo massacre happens, we immediately start up with, "Why didn't you stop them?" And that supposes that we should, somehow, not only know that the person(s) was going to do something but that we should also catch and punish that person before the crime has been committed.

Sometimes, it's the same person crying foul over assassinations and drone strikes one day then demanding to know why some terrorist wasn't put away before killing some people. It's not a thing you can have both ways.

And the truth... well, the truth is that some people are going to do bad things, and there's nothing we can do to stop all of them... that is unless we stop everyone that we even slightly suspect. That means, well, that means you, because virtually everyone I have ever known has gotten mad at some point and threatened someone else. So we either have a society with no freedom but total security, or we have a society with freedom and risks where we do the best we can and allow people the opportunity to do the right thing. Yeah, it's a hard choice, especially after an extreme act of violence, but you can't have it both ways.

It's time we make a choice and stick to that choice and uphold that choice. Me? I choose freedom.
Every time.

How To Be... a Knight

The word "knight" conjures up all sorts of images, but I bet the one that charges to the forefront is something like this:

You know, that whole "knight in shining armor" thing. But the ways of becoming a knight have changed through the years.

For instance, it is both easier and harder to become a knight today than it was, say, 1000 years ago. Rather than learning to wear armor and ride a horse and fight with swords (which all sounds rather difficult and time consuming), these days, you only have to make a significant contribution to British society to be knighted. Somehow, the learning to wear armor, ride a horse, and fight with swords sounds easier. And more dangerous.

But, since I know you are all thinking about shining armor and all of that, we'll take about that kind of knight and not Sir Ian McKellen or Dame Maggie Smith.

So what did it take to be a knight all those long years ago? Well, let's look at that on the historical continuum.

The word originates from a word meaning servant, which eventually came to mean a military servant following a king. So, at that time, about 1000 years ago, all you needed to do was pick up your weapon (which probably wasn't a sword) and follow the king or warlord or whomever into battle and you were a knight. Pretty easy. You didn't even have to know how to fight, which was good, because most of those guys weren't actually trained in combat, not like we think of it.

Within a few hundred years, during the Hundred Years' War in fact, the specific sense of the word had changed to mean a mounted heavy cavalryman. These guys did know how to fight and were trained to both wear armor and wield a variety of weapons while mounted, so the meaning of the word had the connotation of a skilled warrior. By about 1300, being a knight was a rank of dignity that was bestowed because of martial prowess. To be a knight was something that was earned, and it wasn't easy. I think this ideal is probably what most people think of when they think of knights, although we weren't really to the "shining armor" part quite yet.

But the word wasn't finished changing...

See, to be a knight you had to have a horse, a warhorse, in fact, that could carry a man in full armor and often wear armor itself. These were not cheap, so, basically, only the wealthy, the landowners, could support owning a warhorse. By 1500, the term had already begun to change to be an honorific for landowners. Yes, they were still required to be able to sit a warhorse if they needed to go to war, but they weren't necessarily good fighters. Actually, it's slightly more complicated than that...

If you had money and owned land and had horses, you could afford to have your sons taught to fight, so it was pretty normal that the wealthy had some fighting skills that placed them above the masses, but they no longer had to demonstrate those skills to be a knight; they just tended to gain the skills by the fact that they were knights. Some of them were very skilled, but, mostly, it was a title of position, not ability. And it was around this time that what we think of as the "knight in shining armor" really came into being, because that was the time period when armor technology really began to take off.

Plate armor as developed in the 1400's.

So there you go, many different ways of being a knight. Of course, you can't really be a knight in shining armor anymore, not in any real sense. However, you can always join the Society for Creative Anachronism to get a taste of what it would have been like.