I'd like to point out this note from Rob Schmitz, one of Daisey's interrogators:
What makes this [This American Life's actions] a little complicated is that the things Daisey lied about seeing are things that have actually happened in China: Workers making Apple products have been poisoned by Hexane. Apple’s own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers. These things are rare, but together, they form an easy-to-understand narrative about Apple.
Hmmmm. So Daisey "lied" about things that are actually true. I wouldn't say it's time to buy your next iPhone yet.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Developing: This American Life backs away from Mike Daisey, says he "lied" about visits to Apple/Foxconn factories; Daisey admits to "fabricating characters," but stands by his work
This American Life has suddenly announced that it is withdrawing its piece on Mike Daisey's The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, and will "devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors" in their previous story. Full press release below:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / FRIDAY MARCH 16
This American Life Retracts Story
Says It Can’t Vouch for the Truth of Mike Daisey’s Monologue about Apple in China
This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications.
This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen China. He has performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it’s currently at the Public Theater in New York. Tonight’s This American Life program will include a segment from Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, and interviews with Daisey himself. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz’s report earlier in the evening.
When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey’s Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio.
During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.
“At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”
The response to the original episode, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” was significant. It quickly became the single most popular podcast in This American Life’s history, with 888,000 downloads (typically the number is 750,000) and 206,000 streams to date. After hearing the broadcast, listener Mark Shields started a petition calling for better working conditions for Apple’s Chinese workers, and soon delivered almost a quarter-million signatures to Apple.
The same month the episode aired, The New York Times ran a front-page investigative series about Apple’s overseas manufacturing, and there were news reports about Foxconn workers threatening group suicide in a protest over their treatment.
Faced with all this scrutiny of its manufacturing practices, Apple announced that for the first time it will allow an outside third party to audit working conditions at those factories and – for the first time ever – it released a list of its suppliers.
Mike Daisey, meanwhile, became one of the company's most visible and outspoken critics, appearing on television and giving dozens of interviews about Apple.
Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.
"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace’s Schmitz says in his report. "I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip."
In Schmitz's report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters.
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."
Daisey's interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey's story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey's iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation). Daisey says in his monologue:
He's never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Cathy, and Cathy says, "he says it's a kind of magic."
Cathy Lee tells Schmitz that nothing of the sort occurred.
"In our original broadcast, we fact checked all the things that Daisey said about Apple's operations in China," says Glass, "and those parts of his story were true, except for the underage workers, who are rare. We reported that discrepancy in the original show. But with this week’s broadcast, we're letting the audience know that too many of the details about the people he says he met are in dispute for us to stand by the story. I suspect that many things that Mike Daisey claims to have experienced personally did not actually happen, but listeners can judge for themselves."
"It was completely wrong for me to have it on your show," Daisey tells Glass on the program, "and that's something I deeply regret." He also expressed his regret to "the people who are listening, the audience of This American Life, who know that it is a journalism enterprise, if they feel betrayed."
Daisey, who is currently performing the piece in New York, has countered with a short statement on his blog:
I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.
What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.
What can I say but "Stay tuned!"?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / FRIDAY MARCH 16
This American Life Retracts Story
Says It Can’t Vouch for the Truth of Mike Daisey’s Monologue about Apple in China
This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications.
This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen China. He has performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it’s currently at the Public Theater in New York. Tonight’s This American Life program will include a segment from Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, and interviews with Daisey himself. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz’s report earlier in the evening.
When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey’s Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio.
During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.
“At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”
The response to the original episode, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” was significant. It quickly became the single most popular podcast in This American Life’s history, with 888,000 downloads (typically the number is 750,000) and 206,000 streams to date. After hearing the broadcast, listener Mark Shields started a petition calling for better working conditions for Apple’s Chinese workers, and soon delivered almost a quarter-million signatures to Apple.
The same month the episode aired, The New York Times ran a front-page investigative series about Apple’s overseas manufacturing, and there were news reports about Foxconn workers threatening group suicide in a protest over their treatment.
Faced with all this scrutiny of its manufacturing practices, Apple announced that for the first time it will allow an outside third party to audit working conditions at those factories and – for the first time ever – it released a list of its suppliers.
Mike Daisey, meanwhile, became one of the company's most visible and outspoken critics, appearing on television and giving dozens of interviews about Apple.
Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited.
"It happened nearly a thousand miles away, in a city called Suzhou," Marketplace’s Schmitz says in his report. "I’ve interviewed these workers, so I knew the story. And when I heard Daisey’s monologue on the radio, I wondered: How’d they get all the way down to Shenzhen? It seemed crazy, that somehow Daisey could’ve met a few of them during his trip."
In Schmitz's report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters.
"I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not journalism. It's theater."
Daisey's interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey's story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey's iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation). Daisey says in his monologue:
He's never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Cathy, and Cathy says, "he says it's a kind of magic."
Cathy Lee tells Schmitz that nothing of the sort occurred.
"In our original broadcast, we fact checked all the things that Daisey said about Apple's operations in China," says Glass, "and those parts of his story were true, except for the underage workers, who are rare. We reported that discrepancy in the original show. But with this week’s broadcast, we're letting the audience know that too many of the details about the people he says he met are in dispute for us to stand by the story. I suspect that many things that Mike Daisey claims to have experienced personally did not actually happen, but listeners can judge for themselves."
"It was completely wrong for me to have it on your show," Daisey tells Glass on the program, "and that's something I deeply regret." He also expressed his regret to "the people who are listening, the audience of This American Life, who know that it is a journalism enterprise, if they feel betrayed."
Daisey, who is currently performing the piece in New York, has countered with a short statement on his blog:
I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.
What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China.
What can I say but "Stay tuned!"?
What's up this weekend
Even though I haven't quite caught up with my reviewing, the forced cultural march continues this weekend. I hope to finally pen an assessment of Bakersfield Mist on Saturday, and my considerations of Recent Tragic Events and Next to Normal should be forthcoming after that. At the same time, however, I will be checking out the Trey McIntyre Project (taking off, above) at the ICA tonight, followed by Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, one of August Wilson's best, at the Huntington on Saturday (if the power's on). I will also be hearing a re-discovery, Camilla de Rossi's The Prodigal Son, by La Donna Musicale, and may be able to squeeze in one extra fringe show as well.
Looking for Ameriville
 |
| "The Universes" perform Ameriville. |
Ameriville, by the Universes (Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, Gamal A. Chasten, and William Ruiz A.K.A. "Ninja," above) at ArtsEmerson through this weekend, is the kind of show you want to like - partly, I admit, because you feel you should like it. As directed and developed by Chay Yew (of Chicago's Victory Gardens), Ameriville returns to the scene of a recent political crime - the shrugging off of the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - and attempts to conjure from that shameful failure a vision of an America that might actually be able to hang together in a crisis, even when it's people of color who are being victimized. Yeah, imagine that - a nation that truly worked like a village, i.e., like "Ameriville."
And the resulting mix of rap, hip hop, gospel, rock and the spoken word is often rousing, and occasionally affecting; but while you can't fault its message, Ameriville only intermittently connects with the audience. The performers aren't the problem - all are powerhouses (although the stand-out is probably Ms. Ruiz-Sapp - whose wails waft to the rafters with an edge of genuine pain, even when she's beaming with an incandescent smile). No, it's really the material itself which still needs refinement and focus; Yew's text floats between poignant and satiric vignettes at will, and they tend sometimes to blend together; and to be honest, occasionally the performers' diction gets blurry, and we're no longer sure where we "are" in the show.
And then there's the simple fact that a real response to the problem of re-building New Orleans probably requires more dramatic structure, more literal dialogue; an impressionistic musical palette simply can't tell the whole story, even if it's delivered with a stomp. History, politics, and by now deeply-engrained economic structures are all in play here. Indeed, New Orleans probably stands as a literal symbol for the politics of the American underclass: one of the few true "melting pots" in the country, it's mostly built below sea level (a neat metaphor right there), and so despite being a font of American music, drama, and culture, it's perennially in harm's way, a Southern belle whose existence absolutely depends on the kindness of strangers (not to mention the elements).
And I think it's worth noting that the exodus from the city before the flood only exacerbated its problems - but Ameriville doesn't have much to say about that (and tellingly, we notice that nobody ever talks about getting organized after the disaster); nor does Yew spend much time dramatically connecting the aftermath of the deluge to the various larger political claims he wants to make (even though I agree with those claims, they'd be all the more powerful for not being so obviously assumed).
Still, in the show's specific, personal vignettes, the performers land their punches with a wallop; it's then that the levees of outrage break, and a flood of tears seems to pour forth before us. It's hard not to wince, for instance, when a dazed resident asks anyone who will listen whether or not they've seen his mama; more powerful still is the moment when a servicewoman returns to find her home has been destroyed, and that the nation she has pledged to defend with her life doesn't really give a damn. It's at such clinch moments, when America's indifference to its victims crashes into its habitual exploitation of them, that Ameriville suddenly sings.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Hub Review tries its hand at honest food blogging!
It was only a matter of time, I suppose. In case you've missed it, the familiar ethical issues surrounding blogging have just raised their collectively ugly head again - only this time around food blogging. The Globe recently called foul on a group that calls itself "The Boston Brunchers," a crowd of seemingly perpetually-squealing "foodies" who organize free lunches for themselves at local restaurants and caterers, and then tweet and blog about how great everything tasted.
Needless to say, the Brunchers have been shocked, shocked to discover that people might view their cozy little arrangement a bit skeptically. One blogger, "The Passionate Foodie" even outed the Globe's writer as having shared an ethically-suspect wine junket with him - and kudos to "Passionate," btw, for the following harumph: "I am deeply offended that anyone would think I would compromise my integrity for such a meager amount [of money]." I really like that - I suppose higher-pay-outs would be another story?
To be fair, the Brunchies occasionally do post a negative post or tweet - but my brief survey of their output revealed their assessments of these free brunch bits yielded overwhelmingly positive brunch bytes. Yeah, this is a pretty classic case of what used to be called "logrolling." And the best part of it is, the dishonesty is so democratic! Half these brunchers have no credentials as critics, or even writers - they're just self-described "foodies" who show up for the event. Still, is anyone being fooled? Everyone knows the "reviews" you read on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere are bullshit (and the pans are as suspect as the raves, frankly), so where's the harm?
Parallels with theatre blogging inevitably come to mind, of course - although just as many differences between these respective scenes occur to me as well. I've often been struck, frankly, by the fact that arts blogging is so unpopular. Only a handful of Bostonians have stuck with it, and most of those do make a long-term commitment to the form have written for print publication in the past. The idea of 150 people (the full roster of "Boston Brunchers") signing up for free tickets in exchange for the slog of actually writing a review seems pretty remote at this point. (And you can nab a free ticket to most opening nights just by joining Stage Source, anyhow.)
Not that the critical scene is some gleaming paragon of moral rectitude. I wish I could say that Boston critics constituted a city on a hill, but that's obviously not the case! Indeed, I've heard all the perky, obviously-phony self-defenses of the Boston Brunchers from half the theatre reviewers in town already. A good number of them - even the most established and successful - seem to approach PR people on their knees, and negative criticism is almost inevitably soft-pedalled. Except at the Hub Review, of course. Which is part of what makes me so shocking! Actually, even I soft-pedal pans for the defenseless - I'm not about to roast somebody performing in their friend's show in a basement, please! Yet oddly, this seems to shock people most of all. Yes, I ridicule the big players, the ones with the money and power - so call me crazy! They only put up with it because my blog has the largest audience, and because, let's face it, people only read writers like Don Aucoin and Ed Siegel because they're the face of the Globe or Phoenix; if they hung out a shingle by themselves on the Web, nobody would pay any attention, just as nobody cares what sweet old Joyce Kulhawik says on her blog. If people want actual criticism, genuine argument, they know they have to come here.
So you know, I'm wondering if I could parlay by moral self-regard into . . . food blogging!! Are the foodies ready for a blog like The Hub Review? Hah! Probably not. But just as a kind of opening salvo, I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on the restaurant scene flourishing around various theatres in the South End.
Okay, so you have tickets for a play at the BCA. Where should you eat? The first place to check - and this is no secret - is Picco, at the corner of Tremont and Berkeley, which is one of the best restaurant values in the city. The pizza is good, but the pasta is the secret here - I'm not kidding, it's superb. A good list of reasonably priced wines (try the reds), some great beers (try the Yeti stout), and a tasty sampler of ice cream round out the menu. What's the downside? All the obnoxious brats trucked by in the yuppies who live upstairs. Seriously, the place is like a daycare center at 6 pm. If only the owner would open a second, adults-only location! Venture capitalists, this is your chance!
What do you do, then, if Picco is overrun by screaming, entitled Isabellas and Noahs? Well, there are other options - and I'll run through them, I think, on a value basis. I usually try Metropolis, a little down Tremont, if Picco is jammed - not cheap, but reasonable, and there's a rough equivalence between price and value here. (Don't bother with the risottos, though, and the wine list is good but not great.) If that's also booked, I might brace myself for Hammersley's or Sibling Rivalry (note, though, that I'm edging here toward substantially higher price points). Hammersley's is the more reliable - it is worth the money - but it's not very imaginative; meanwhile Sibling Rivalry has been getting better of late, and the drinks are arguably more fun (and the bar in back is swankly groovy). If it's summertime and you can eat on the patio, though, I'd go with Hammersley's.
What else is there. Forget Stephanie's - ugh. Aquitaine? Only if you're a drinker (the wine list is the best in the area, though, and the waiters actually know something about it). The Beehive - uh, maybe if you're twenty years younger than I am, and don't mind waiting in line, then having to scream to the other members of your party to be heard. Other than that it's awesome, dude! Of course if you're looking to get laid and you're under thirty, this is your best shot - so the Beehive: horny, yes, hungry, no. That oyster place and that "butcher shop"? Too much "player" attitude; and as a general rule, I avoid Barbara What's-her-face's pretentious eateries. (I'm here to eat, not to be seen eating.) Coppa down on Shawmut is not bad, though (not cheap either, but again, probably worth it). The Indian and Thai places - only as a last resort. I've never been to the Ethiopian place. And when all else fails, I guess there's always Francesca's. Or the sub shop!
So there you go - honest food blogging! (I paid for every bite I ate.) Bon appétit!
Needless to say, the Brunchers have been shocked, shocked to discover that people might view their cozy little arrangement a bit skeptically. One blogger, "The Passionate Foodie" even outed the Globe's writer as having shared an ethically-suspect wine junket with him - and kudos to "Passionate," btw, for the following harumph: "I am deeply offended that anyone would think I would compromise my integrity for such a meager amount [of money]." I really like that - I suppose higher-pay-outs would be another story?
To be fair, the Brunchies occasionally do post a negative post or tweet - but my brief survey of their output revealed their assessments of these free brunch bits yielded overwhelmingly positive brunch bytes. Yeah, this is a pretty classic case of what used to be called "logrolling." And the best part of it is, the dishonesty is so democratic! Half these brunchers have no credentials as critics, or even writers - they're just self-described "foodies" who show up for the event. Still, is anyone being fooled? Everyone knows the "reviews" you read on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere are bullshit (and the pans are as suspect as the raves, frankly), so where's the harm?
Parallels with theatre blogging inevitably come to mind, of course - although just as many differences between these respective scenes occur to me as well. I've often been struck, frankly, by the fact that arts blogging is so unpopular. Only a handful of Bostonians have stuck with it, and most of those do make a long-term commitment to the form have written for print publication in the past. The idea of 150 people (the full roster of "Boston Brunchers") signing up for free tickets in exchange for the slog of actually writing a review seems pretty remote at this point. (And you can nab a free ticket to most opening nights just by joining Stage Source, anyhow.)
Not that the critical scene is some gleaming paragon of moral rectitude. I wish I could say that Boston critics constituted a city on a hill, but that's obviously not the case! Indeed, I've heard all the perky, obviously-phony self-defenses of the Boston Brunchers from half the theatre reviewers in town already. A good number of them - even the most established and successful - seem to approach PR people on their knees, and negative criticism is almost inevitably soft-pedalled. Except at the Hub Review, of course. Which is part of what makes me so shocking! Actually, even I soft-pedal pans for the defenseless - I'm not about to roast somebody performing in their friend's show in a basement, please! Yet oddly, this seems to shock people most of all. Yes, I ridicule the big players, the ones with the money and power - so call me crazy! They only put up with it because my blog has the largest audience, and because, let's face it, people only read writers like Don Aucoin and Ed Siegel because they're the face of the Globe or Phoenix; if they hung out a shingle by themselves on the Web, nobody would pay any attention, just as nobody cares what sweet old Joyce Kulhawik says on her blog. If people want actual criticism, genuine argument, they know they have to come here.
So you know, I'm wondering if I could parlay by moral self-regard into . . . food blogging!! Are the foodies ready for a blog like The Hub Review? Hah! Probably not. But just as a kind of opening salvo, I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on the restaurant scene flourishing around various theatres in the South End.
Okay, so you have tickets for a play at the BCA. Where should you eat? The first place to check - and this is no secret - is Picco, at the corner of Tremont and Berkeley, which is one of the best restaurant values in the city. The pizza is good, but the pasta is the secret here - I'm not kidding, it's superb. A good list of reasonably priced wines (try the reds), some great beers (try the Yeti stout), and a tasty sampler of ice cream round out the menu. What's the downside? All the obnoxious brats trucked by in the yuppies who live upstairs. Seriously, the place is like a daycare center at 6 pm. If only the owner would open a second, adults-only location! Venture capitalists, this is your chance!
What do you do, then, if Picco is overrun by screaming, entitled Isabellas and Noahs? Well, there are other options - and I'll run through them, I think, on a value basis. I usually try Metropolis, a little down Tremont, if Picco is jammed - not cheap, but reasonable, and there's a rough equivalence between price and value here. (Don't bother with the risottos, though, and the wine list is good but not great.) If that's also booked, I might brace myself for Hammersley's or Sibling Rivalry (note, though, that I'm edging here toward substantially higher price points). Hammersley's is the more reliable - it is worth the money - but it's not very imaginative; meanwhile Sibling Rivalry has been getting better of late, and the drinks are arguably more fun (and the bar in back is swankly groovy). If it's summertime and you can eat on the patio, though, I'd go with Hammersley's.
What else is there. Forget Stephanie's - ugh. Aquitaine? Only if you're a drinker (the wine list is the best in the area, though, and the waiters actually know something about it). The Beehive - uh, maybe if you're twenty years younger than I am, and don't mind waiting in line, then having to scream to the other members of your party to be heard. Other than that it's awesome, dude! Of course if you're looking to get laid and you're under thirty, this is your best shot - so the Beehive: horny, yes, hungry, no. That oyster place and that "butcher shop"? Too much "player" attitude; and as a general rule, I avoid Barbara What's-her-face's pretentious eateries. (I'm here to eat, not to be seen eating.) Coppa down on Shawmut is not bad, though (not cheap either, but again, probably worth it). The Indian and Thai places - only as a last resort. I've never been to the Ethiopian place. And when all else fails, I guess there's always Francesca's. Or the sub shop!
So there you go - honest food blogging! (I paid for every bite I ate.) Bon appétit!
Boston Lyric Opera's The Barber of Seville
 |
| Jonathan Beyer and Steven Condy in The Barber of Seville. Photos: Eric Antoniou |
People are always asking me, "What should I see right now?" And I'm always happy to answer: what you should see right now is The Barber of Seville at Boston Lyric Opera - a big, blooming bel canto extravaganza that you can only catch through Sunday. This is Rossini as it was meant to be heard and seen - with ripe voices, bold colors, a high musical finish, and a frisky sense of fun. Premiering just weeks after the brooding chamber opera The Lighthouse (itself a triumph in its own way), Barber offers proof positive that BLO, always Boston's leading opera company, is now ready to step up to the plate as its only opera company, with an artistic reach that convincingly stretches from the esoteric to the populist and back. Although all that aside, this Barber is just a great night out - and trust me, we won't hear bel canto like this, with voices like these, for some time to come (or at least not until BLO returns to the genre).
If this sound like I'm purring, well I am - this is the kind of production you can sink into confidently; it's a big plush easy chair of memorable melody (you already know the whole overture, in fact) and rollicking comedy. I suppose you could sniff at the fact that this is a "traditional" rendering, and nobody involved is trying to subvert Rossini's sturdy commedia structure with some intellectual agenda or other, to prove they went to Columbia or Harvard. But what can I say? If that's the way you think, well, you know where you can go (and it ain't Columbia or Harvard, much less the opera house!). I know, I know, people want to drag into Barber something of the complexities of The Marriage of Figaro, the second play in the Beaumarchais trilogy which, of course, inspired Mozart's revolutionary opera of the same name. But I'm afraid that wider intellectual dimension isn't really to be found in Rossini's source - and me, I'll take this composer straight, with his sunny melodies, lusty sense of romance, and yes, weakness for slapstick, any day.
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| The slapstick's about to start! Pass it on! |
And the voices! As was the case with Agrippina last spring (another big, bold comedy - BLO has a feel for this kind thing), the world-class warbling just keeps coming in The Barber of Seville. As the eponymous hairdresser himself, Jonathan Beyer deployed a rich, resonant baritone that seemed warmed from below with sun, and he beamed with just the right mix of lustiness and fey wit, too. Believe it or not, however, he may have been slightly out-classed by Sarah Coburn's Rosina, and Steven Condy's Dr. Bartolo. Coburn's flexible mezzo (as is often done, the role was transposed up slightly from its original range) is dazzlingly pure, and she has startling reserves of power; plus she, too, is no comic slouch. The comedy laurels, however, have to go to Condy, who as Rosina's would-be suitor/captor expertly teased both our ridicule and sympathy in about equal measure; and as an added bonus, his deep baritone is tinted with an intriguingly dark, individual color. Indeed, the only (slight) vocal gap among the leads lay in tenor John Tessier's turn as Count Almaviva. Tessier has a flexible lyric tenor, with a radiant bloom in the middle of its range; but it's perhaps slightly too light for what it has to accomplish here, and Tessier was showing signs of strain by the finale; which is too bad, because he looks just right, and has a sweet way with romantic comedy to boot.
But then he had stiff competition from what amounted to a talented squad of hammy farceurs, including the memorable Judith Christin, whose bug-eyed servant drew laughs every time she entered. Alas, local bass David Cushing (with Christin, above) eschewed his big aria as Basilio, the music master, as he was suffering from a head cold on opening night (just like, ironically enough, his character supposedly is) - although honestly, he managed pretty well in his ensembles. The chorus, which we only heard from occasionally, was likewise in strong form - there was a palpable sense from everyone onstage, in fact, that this was a production to be proud of; somehow they all knew they were giving The Barber of Seville a classic cut.
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| John Tessier and Sarah Coburn are finally wed, with a little help from the infantry. |
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Boston Baroque doubles up on Mozart
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| The boy genius twice over. |
My earlier post about the amusing contretemps I witnessed at last weekend's Boston Baroque concert has been getting a lot of play on sites like Universal Hub, but it would really be too bad if that concert was only remembered for that particular incident, because honestly, it featured one of the most astounding keyboard performances I've ever had the pleasure to hear in my life (and I've heard just about everybody, going all the way back to Rubinstein).
Actually, to be specific - it featured the most transporting double performance on fortepiano I've ever heard in my life. The players were Robert Levin and his wife, Ya-Fei Chuang; the piece was Mozart's Concerto in E Flat Major for two pianos and orchestra (K. 365). Both Levin and Chuang are local mainstays, of course (he's a professor at Harvard, she's at NEC), but we hear from Levin more often than Chuang, it seems. Here, however, Chuang took the lead - and to my mind she got the better fortepiano, too (plus the better gown - a sparkling number in pale periwinkle that looked absolutely stunning).
I wasn't that familiar with this particular concerto, so for me the whole thing was a ravishment - it's one long swoon of rippling, silvery delight, boasting a haunting andante at its core (in which joy and melancholy seem to keep each other at bay in an almost heart-breaking way) that is simply to die for. And Levin and Chuang weren't just virtuosic individually - as the piece progressed they seemed to be merging into a single musical mind; again, I've never experienced a sense of musical ensemble as pure as this one (and I may never again). People actually began giggling in happiness at certain phrases, they were so elegant they almost tickled you; this was like listening to Ariel's music on Prospero's island; the performance was absolutely perfect.
Oh, yeah, the orchestra; they were good too (!). Sorry, I don't mean to sound flip; though inevitably slightly overshadowed by the pianists, the strings and the woodwinds were in particularly fine form, and Pearlman shaped the playing so that it always operated as an exquisite response to the fortepiano line(s). The conductor likewise made a subtle statement out of the opening Symphony No. 29 (K. 201), the last of Mozart's "early" symphones - indeed, I thought Pearlman made a better case for No. 29 than he managed with the later "Linz" Symphony (No. 36, K. 425), which I always find round and maturely rousing, but not much more. (Perhaps tellingly, Mozart wrote and copied out the parts in less than six days, when his hosts at Linz begged him for a new symphony.) The program was filled out by three of Mozart's arrangements of fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which, though of some interest, didn't really have the heft or depth of true concert music (Pearlman all but admitted as much in his comments from the stage). Still, after the Levins, I think everyone felt we'd already experienced more than a concert's worth of great music; Pearlman could have followed up with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and I wouldn't have minded.
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