14 書香人生 B O O K S & R E V I E W S SUNDAY, JANUARY 3, 2010 • TAIPEI TIMES Hardcover: US Classical DVDs Surprise Civil War ending comes three years early

Military historian John Keegan focuses on in London. The DVD dates from September last the big picture in his sweeping year, and thus contributed to events marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death in 1759. one-volume analysis of the deadliest Andreas Scholl, singing in a high woman’s register, is conflict in US history Arsace. Another character, Rosmira, is a woman disguised as a man (sung by Tuva Semmingsen). Such anomalies were by Joe Mysak par for the course in early 18th century operas in which Bloomberg emasculated “castrati” played an important part. Today their roles are often taken by counter-tenors, and Scholl February 1862, General was dubbed the finest counter-tenor of his generation by In Ulysses S. Grant captured forts Publication Notes Opera News. Tenor or baritone voices are relatively rare in Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and this production — one of the best is Emilio, leader of the won the American Civil War. warlike Cumae (Bo Kristian Jensen). herself, a It took almost three more years and thousands of lives, but female character unambiguously played by a woman, is very the capture of the two earthwork strongly sung by Inger Dam Jensen. structures was key to all that came In a bonus track the director, Francisco Negrin, and set later, argues British historian John and costume designer Louis Desire, discuss the production Keegan in The American Civil War: A with none other than Andreas Scholl, here playing the part Military History. of interviewer. The view is expressed that perhaps Handel “Possession of the Tennessee was trying out a new style, something lighter and more River, if it were used correctly by the North, would give access to southern ironic than audiences had experienced in his heavily treated, Tennessee, northern Alabama, and the myth-based “serious” operas. He may consequently have upper Mississippi, and lend support to played with the operatic conventions of the day, and the operations down the Mississippi River director and costume designer take this as a go-ahead to itself,” Keegan writes. “The capture of play with the work even more. Thus a stage battle at one Forts Henry and Donelson effectively point becomes a game of musical chairs. marked the end of the opening stage The supposed date of the production is timeless, says of the Civil War in the West.” Surprised? I was. Most histories of The American Civil War Desire, though it’s clearly modern in essence. And Negrin describes how he’s brought characters on stage who weren’t the subject tend to rank the capture By John Keegan of the two forts as marking the there originally to help the soloists establish comic aspects emergence of Grant, and not much 396 pages to their roles. Quality comedy is harder to achieve than tragic more. For many writers, and not just Knopf drama, he points out, but the plus is that 18th century comedy those with a sneaking admiration for has a lot in common with the present era — not taking sexual various Confederate commanders, the passion too seriously, and often ironic and playful, unlike the Civil War is more of a close-run thing. You almost wonder how or even if the The reputation of General 19th century when comedy largely took a rest. North won at all. Grant has seen a revival in recent PARTENOPE By BRADLEY WINTERTON Musically attractive though it is, Partenope, or any Keegan, a former lecturer at the years, and Keegan is a partisan. Handel Contributing Reporter Handel opera, is not where anyone newly curious about Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, He considers Grant “the greatest Royal Danish Opera In a recent interview on Deutsche Welle TV, Kent Nagano, the art form should start. The Baroque 18th century is Decca 074-3348-5 and author of such works as A general of the war, one who would the Japanese American conductor who’s music director of an acquired taste, whereas some of the more established History of Warfare (1993), The Mask have excelled at any time in any the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, was asked what his classics are so powerful it’s almost impossible not to fall for of Command (1987) and The Face of army,” followed by his friend and reaction was to the current resurgence of interest in opera. them on first acquaintance. Battle (1978), is a big-picture writer. colleague William T. Sherman. He He’s more comfortable with the calls the Confederacy’s Robert E. I must say that any such resurgence was news to What opera DVDs, then, should be considered an movements of armies and decisions Lee “a gifted battle-winner” whose me. Nevertheless, I started wondering what kind of new essential beginner’s library? I offer the following six by generals than with vignettes that defects included a lack of boldness, audiences, judging by recent opera issues on DVD, might as unreservedly recommended. None are new, and all romanticize people and places. excessive sensitivity to the feelings be drawn to the medium. Going by the proliferation of have been previously reviewed in this column. Mozart’s The overview format favored by of his subordinates and a failure to chic parties and generous libations of champagne in recent Nozze di Figaro, a film directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle Keegan is distinctly old-fashioned in insist upon his own judgment. productions, I concluded that some of the newly affluent — with Hermann Prey and Mirella Freni (DGM 073-4034-9); a day when writers spend hundreds And then there’s this, presented young financiers and investment analysts, perhaps, anxious Kenneth Branagh’s World War I film version of Mozart’s of pages on the heroics of a single early on without elaboration: “The engagement. The emphasis on the armies of the Civil War were the worst for something to mark them out from the still-struggling (Lien Yin DVD-9 in Taiwan); Wagner’s Die personal over the strategic has tailored of any great conflict, and the masses — might be involved. Meistersinger von Nurnberg with Ben Heppner, James obscured the story of the war, effect was heightened by the almost So, as it’s early in January, and still feels like a time for Morris and Karita Mattila, on balance the finest opera DVD which was essentially written with universal abandonment of shaving.” surveys and round-ups, I’ll today look at one new DVD, and of all time (DGM 073-0949-0); Verdi’s Otello with Renee the North’s successful blockade of If The American Civil War has then go on to ask what opera DVDs all these newcomers to Fleming and Placido Domingo — as with the Wagner, from Southern ports and the isolation of a defect, it is the book’s less-than- the genre, assuming they exist, should regard as must-sees. New York’s (DGM 073-0929-2); Puccini’s the Confederacy. The North’s eventual chronological, sometimes jumbled The music that tends to receive the party-going treatment Madame Butterfly with Ying Huang and Richard Troxell — victory was inevitable. narrative style. What this approach lacks in Before the Appomattox finale, isn’t the usual Verdi-Wagner-Puccini repertoire, but earlier, Puccini’s finest score, recommended less for the singing than suspense, it makes up for in clarity a grab-bag of chapters covers such 18th century music — in other words, operas in the Baroque for its effectiveness as a film: the treatment of the Humming and concision. Even buffs steeped in subjects as black soldiers in the style. Certainly a new DVD of Handel’s rarely performed Chorus is quite sensational (Columbia Tristar 05670); the subject will find value in Keegan’s Union army, Walt Whitman and the Partenope, first seen in 1730, opens in just that style. and Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s observations and conclusions, quality of medical care, the war at Partenope is meant to be a princess and the mythical Pagliacci, two incomparable short films by Franco Zeffirelli, especially about the nature of battle. sea, life on the home fronts and the founder of Naples, and we first hear her receiving each starring the young Placido Domingo, on one disc (DGM For one thing, there were lots obligatory “Could the South Have supplications and hearing breathless messengers. But what 073-4033-2). This is the top recommendation for a first-time- of them: 10,000 between 1861 and Survived?” Some of these chapters 1865. For another, they were often are compelling, even provocative, we see is her in a modern setting, flouncing about on a table, ever opera experience. indecisive, chiefly because both sides and yet here they seem presented as watched by her fellow partygoers, glasses in hand. Asked who his favorite composer was, Nagano named lacked the cavalry and artillery that afterthoughts. The production originated at the Royal Danish Opera . Unfortunately Bach didn’t write would have forced the issue. Finally, The one-volume approach is in Copenhagen, and was later seen in a concert version at any operas. there was the question of terrain. refreshing and, these days, unusual. Many of the bloodiest battles were Those who are looking for more can fought in relatively confined areas always go find full-length treatments of marked by dense vegetation. the Iron Brigade, or Collis’s Zouaves. Hardcover: US Any relation to biography is pure fiction (in a way) Nobel and Booker prize winner J.M. Coetzee completes his trilogy of fictionalized autobiographies with ‘Summertime’

By KATHA POLLITT his retired father in a Capetown Readers of Coetzee’s books prefer my books to have proper at one point — are what life for partial, provisional truth. NY Times News Service, New York suburb, teaching English, and know what that something was: Publication Notes heroes and heroines, characters these women is all about. In Does it matter that few readers In Boyhood and Youth, the Nobel writing, unbeknownst to most who the fierce, bleak, imaginative life you can admire,” Julia says. different ways he failed them all. will realize that the supposedly Prize-winning South African writer knew him, his first two novels. running in his head. The notebook “Yes, send it,” Adriana tells autobiographical stratum on J.M. Coetzee gave memoir the So what kind of a man was fragments with which the book Mr Vincent with a laugh when Resistant muses which Summertime is based is freedom of fiction by employing the secretive young writer? To his begins and ends give us the man he offers to mail her a copy of It’s tempting to see Summertime itself a fiction? Coetzee did not a third-person narrator and the former lover Julia, he was “not fully the interviewees didn’t know, the Foe, whose heroine he thinks as Coetzee’s attempt to answer actually spend the early 1970s oddly distancing present tense. The human,” “like a glass ball,” sexually one who writes in the third-person she inspired. She adds, “I am critics’ charges of misogyny by living with his widowed father in results were unforgettably vivid, “autistic” — creepily, he insists that voice, at once flat and intense and interested to see what this man of offering a quartet of humorous, a tumbledown shack: He was a evoking with equal sharpness a they make love by acting out the remorseful, of Boyhood and Youth. wood made of me.” mature, strong female characters married man with two children tense, alienated childhood in Cape instrumental lines of Schubert’s There, he portrays South Africa Even when he was involved who haven’t much use for their and a mother still very much Town and floundering post-college string quintet. His earth-motherly pitilessly: the staggering violence, with the women, they had other gloomy, self-absorbed author. One alive. I’m not sure why Coetzee years as a computer programmer cousin Margot, with whom he the aridity and complacency preoccupations. Julia and Sophie can also see them as resistant gives us an invented past. Perhaps and would-be poet in London. shared an intense childhood bond, of Afrikaner culture, the moral had their bad marriages to deal muses who upstage the writer by he is warning us against lazy Summertime continues the describes him as cold, possessing corruption of apartheid. with. Adriana was mourning her putting themselves at the center assumptions about the connections story into the early 1970s, with a “Mister Know-All smile” and uses He tries to understand his husband, gruesomely murdered of a story that is supposed to be, between books and life, fiction and the methods reversed: Although an Afrikaner vulgarism meaning inexpressive, dying father, who in a break-in, and trying to keep after all, about him. Readers alert autobiography. After all, the book most readers will assume the book lacking in determination. had so little satisfaction even in his her teenage daughters on the to writerly games about art and is obviously a novel, so why should is autobiographical, it’s clearly prime — rugby, drinking, a record straight and narrow. Margot was reality, however, will note that the reader assume it accurately labeled fiction, and the author, both Dissatisfied lovers of Renata Tebaldi — and now has struggling to keep her farm going even if they are modeled after depicts the writer’s life? Or does as “John Coetzee” the character, Adriana, a fiery Brazilian dancer, none at all. He makes notes for as South Africa imploded. actual people, Julia and the rest are he assume that we know his and as omniscient narrator of that is still irritated to have been pur- stories: “In the back page of his John’s insistence on laying his literary characters, the inventions biography as well as he does and character’s story, is dead. Literally. sued by this “soft,” unmanly man. diary he makes lists. One of them is own concrete, badly, rather than of the novelist, who imagined for are in on the game all along? The intriguing book we have in our Sophie, his colleague and lover at headed ‘Ways of Doing Away with hire a laborer contrasts tellingly them the very qualities they think In any case, it’s a mark of hands is a collage. Fragments from the university, is similarly under- Oneself.’ In the left-hand column Summertime with the simple humanity of he does not possess. Coetzee’s power as a storyteller Coetzee’s (or “John’s”) notebooks whelmed: “I never had the feeling he lists ‘Methods,’ in the right-hand Margot, who works all week as So who, in the end, is pulling that he makes a compelling, bookend five interviews conducted I was with an exceptional person, column ‘Drawbacks.’” By J.M. Coetzee a hotel bookkeeper to pay her the rug out from under whom? indeed, racing, narrative out some time in the future by a young a truly exceptional human being.” The barbed joke of Summertime 266 pages farm workers a decent wage. Perhaps it is the mysterious Mr of these hidden wheels within biographer, whose name is given Another colleague, Martin, is that the four women not only The human connections he finds Vincent, who will take his research wheels. Even those who miss the only as Mr Vincent, with five people says of him that as a teacher, as found the John they knew lacking Viking unbearable — “My difficulty — “women’s gossip,” as the rather intensity of Boyhood and Youth who knew Coetzee (or “John”) a friend, “Something was always as a person, they are also only consists in not wanting to live stuffy Martin calls it — and make will find themselves turning pages around the time he was living with being held back.” mildly interested in his work. “I with other people,” he confesses yet another book, with yet another as fast as they can.