It isn't often that I get the opportunity to agree with the liberal columnist and commentator Mark Shields, but I think he's spot-on with this (H/T NRO):Do you know why Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday? Because since 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln first declared it a national holiday, no robber baron or swindler has figured out a way to commercialize Thanksgiving. No expensive gift purchases required, no credit-card debt incurred, no fancy costumes to be paid for, no semi-mandatory and painful hangover the next morning.
Thanksgiving belongs to everybody. It is not the property of any one religion or faith tradition. You need not belong to any particular religion -- or any religion --to celebrate fully.
Even with the nation's economy in tatters and millions among us suffering the pain of forced unemployment, there are still reasons in 2009 to be thankful.
For some high schools — particularly within the original 13 colonies, understandably — this is the day of the season-ending football rivalry. In Connecticut, Norwich Free Academy will face New London High School for the 147th time. Boston Latin will square off against Boston English. And Xavier will make the trip up to the Bronx to battle Fordham Prep. Some traditions do end or adapt: last year, Metuchen High School stopped its once seemingly automatic loss to Highland Park in their annual Thanksgiving match-up. Alumni squeezed into old varsity jackets will fill the stands and run into faces not seen in a long time.
By midday, the first round of relatives will start showing up at your door. From California to Maine, families will begin the complicated logistics of who parks where, and who will box in whom in the driveway. Does this need to be put in the oven? Is there room for this in the fridge? Have you basted recently? Has anyone seen the gravy boat?
Down the hall from the kitchen, Americans across the country will check in to Detroit to see if its NFL team has gotten any better. The early afternoon game of the Lions against the Team That Isn’t the Lions has had little meaning or playoff implications — at least since Barry Sanders retired. But that means football fans are able to watch objectively, just to appreciate the game as it is played — and there’s a good chance that a player you’ve never heard of will have an unexpectedly good day, claiming a Turkey-related award from a network color commentator. A few hours later — having established that, no, Detroit has not gotten any better — football fans will bid farewell to the Motor City for another year.
Later in the day, Dallas plays Not Dallas in a game that often matters — but by that time, America’s Team is competing with America’s Feast. Those who care about the game’s outcome will drop utensils conspicuously in order to dart into the den and check the score before returning to the table with their third or fourth clean fork.
The blogger who wrote this is himself, actually, among those especially highly prone to frenzies. (Look at the tone of the rest of his post — not the substance, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t — but the tone. You’ll see what I mean.) I point this out not to “gotcha” him with a hypocrisy charge, but to praise him for upholding the principle. It’s well known that we dislike most in others the faults we ourselves share, and this fault — the cultivation of rage in our hearts — is one I’m sure most of us know, only too well. He deserves as much slack on this as any of the rest of us.
Christmas decorations are going up all around the town, and so we'll get a head start on our own month of festivities with this fascinating story (H/T Jonah Goldberg at NRO) of how the Nazi propaganda machine tried to subvert Christmas for their own purposes. The Nazi goal (much like that of today's PC secularists?) was "to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration."
Most interesting (and perhaps chilling) was this quote pulled out from near the end of the story:
Surprisingly, German churches put up little opposition to the Nazification of Christmas. 'You would have expected them to protest loudly and insist that it was a Christian festival,' said Breuer. 'But instead they largely kept quiet,out of fear.'
But that can't happen here. Can it?
If you're like me (and hopefully you can do better than that), you've run into more than your share of people who just don't get Catholicism. (Unfortunately, many of them happen to be Catholics, but we won't go there just now.) Many times you run into well-meaning, good-intentioned people whose notions of Catholicism have been shaped by years of ignorance about what the Church really teaches.
For those times, as well as for your own education, I suggest Anna Miller's brief 10 Common Misunderstandings of the Catholic Church - EXPLAINED! It's a nice overview of those common mistakes people make, as well as some nice talking points you can use with friends - without, hopefully, things turning into an argument. It's a good piece to keep handy, particularly in these times - for if we aren't prepared to defend our own faith, who will do it for us?
One’s reactions to last month’s run of Tosca by the Lyric Opera of Chicago will depend in great part on how you feel about opera in general, and this opera in particular. If you’re of the opinion that opera is stuck in the hidebound past, and that Tosca is little more than a piece of hoary melodrama that needed Luc Bondy’s recent innovations, then you probably wouldn’t much care for this production. If, on the other hand, Franco Zeffirelli's mammoth, opulent setting fits your definition of grand opera, then you were in luck. Count me in the latter camp.
The Lyric purchased Zeffirelli's staging a few years ago from London’s Covent Garden (for whom it had originally been designed) as a 50th anniversary present to itself, and if the sets were starting to show their age a bit, it was still wonderful to see what has become an all-too infrequent occurrence nowadays - the idea of opera as theater. And not minimalist, abstract theater either, but theater as spectacle - grand opera, in other words. While some complain that singers are dwarfed by the mammoth scale of Zeffirelli's sets, I have no sympathy for anyone who fails to be spellbound by the Act 1 finale, the Te Deum sung inside Zeff's massive recreation of the Basilica Sant'Andrea della Valle, jam-packed with altar boys, priests, a bishop vested in mitre and flowing cape, incense billowing about, parishioners kneeling before life-size statues - and yet, in the midst of a stage crammed with people, the lone figure of Scarpia singing of how Tosca makes him forget God, dominates the scene. The set overwhelming the singers? Nonsense.
Many were surprised by the casting of Deborah Voigt and James Morris, better known for heavy Wagnerian opera, as the two leads. However, Voigt portrayed the diva in a concert version of Tosca at the Minnesota Orchestra a couple of years ago, and if it is true that she didn’t bring back the echoes of Callas with her performance, neither was she any less suited for the role than, say, Karita Mattila in the Met’s production.
The Lyric’s rich history with Tosca stretches all the way back to the company’s beginning, with the famed Tito Gobbi, who played Scarpia to Callas’ Tosca in so many great performances. Gobbi was something of a godfather to the newly formed Lyric back in the 50s, appearing as Scarpia in several of those early productions. Perhaps Morris wasn’t quite in that class, but the man who’s become famous as the great Wotan of our time has actually essayed the villainous Baron more times at the Met than he’s played Wagner’s one-eyed anti-hero, making him well aware of the complexities of this deceptive character, who relies on charm in order to wrap his tentacles of corruption through and around his victims. Whereas Bondy was content to portray the police chief as little more than a cheap thug, Zeffirelli (and by extention Morris) understood that, as with the Devil, it is the smooth exterior and unctuous manner that make evil truly chilling. To be able to say that you once saw Morris playing Scarpia is to say a lot.
The real show-stopper is, of course, the showdown between Tosca and Scarpia which closes Act Two (as well as bringing down the curtain on Scarpia himself). It's a scene of immense drama, with Scarpia at his most sinister and Tosca at her most vulnerable. With Puccini's magnificent score as backdrop, it really is possible to imagine this as true drama, the only difference being that the actors are singing rather than speaking their lines. From Tosca's celebrated aria
“Vissi d’arte,” to her sense of utter despair as Scarpia writes her safe-conduct pass, to her sudden and startling discovery of the knife on the table, to Scarpia's smug sense of victory turning stunningly into tragedy, and Tosca's final, frantic escape from the death room - this scene has it all. Were Voigt and Morris up to the task? Absolutely. And for you Bondy fans out there, the candles do make a difference.
As for the third member of this little triangle, Vladimir Galouzine, who plays Tosca's doomed lover Cavaradossi, more than held his own. It's a role for big tenors, from Pavarotti (literally) to Domingo to Corelli and more, but when you've got such famed names at the top of the bill there may be a temptation to make Cavaradossi an afterthought. However, Galouzine wouldn't allow that, particularly in his big first and third act arias, and his performance completes the character's transformation from a doomed man facing execution to a man suddenly filled with hope - only to have it dashed at the end.
But the real star, as is always the case, was Puccini’s magnificent music, and the Lyric's music director, Sir Andrew Davis, brought his orchestra home in style under what could only be described as unique circumstances - the musicians, playing without a contract, actually held an informational picket outside the theater prior to opening night, and the threat of a walkout was present throughout the initial performances.
No fear on this score or any other, for that matter. This was Tosca as it was meant to be, with all the drama, power and lyricism that involves. The Lyric was a winner, Franco Zeffirelli's staging was a winner, and perhaps Puccini himself was the biggest winner of all - after all, if the master could survive a debacle such as that in New York, think how glorious it is when he's given the respect he truly deserves.
