Word: basse
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Like all of LeBoutillier's radicals, the tutor is a hypocrite: he wears Bass Weejuns and has a rich wife. Martin Peretz, now editor of the New Republic, is cast in much the same light--as a rabid McGovern supporter who also happens to be wealthy. "I had to laugh out loud at the irony of the situation," the author writes. In truth, of course, Peretz never supported McGovern, but that is almost beside the point. The Dick and Jane analysis would be pathetic by any standard...
...Lulu's patron, husband and prime victim, Bass-Baritone William Dooley mordantly conveys the opera's central drama of worldly power and rationality being ravaged by the primal erotic instinct. Among other solid supporting performances, Bass-Baritone Andrew Foldi is funny and touching as Schigolch, the old man who may be Lulu's father and who is as good a key as any to Berg's newly retrieved third act. Schigolch is the none too comforting image of what is left after passion and violence are spent: a scrabbling, wheezy, lecherous rag bag of a survivor...
Despite his brobdingnagian frame (6 ft. 7 in., 240 lbs.), his ever present cigar and his gravelly bass voice, Paul Volcker is a man who likes to keep a low profile, to perform his financial wizardry as a bureaucratic technician rather than as a public figure. But such behind-the-scenes machinations have their frustrations. One night, after an International Monetary Fund meeting in Copenhagen, Volcker was so exasperated with his colleagues that he strode down to the Tivoli Gardens and proceeded to throw wooden balls in a booth full of china plates until he had smashed away his tension...
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, Tenor Nicolai Gedda, Bass Dimiter Petkov, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich conductor, Angel; 3 LPs). Soviet critics thought they heard a masterpiece when this, Shostakovich's second opera, was premiered in 1934. Then Stalin walked out of a performance and they listened again. This time they heard "din, gnash and screech" (Pravda). The work was withdrawn, and Shostakovich pursued more orthodox ways. A sanitized version, unveiled in 1963, found its way to the West on records, but this is the first recording of the original score. Harsh, erotic...
Joni Mitchell: Mingus (Asylum). An act of elaborate and loving homage to the late Charles Mingus, formidable bass player and jazz composer. The record is more emotional in its dedication than in its musicianship, however. Mitchell's lyrics for Mingus' sometimes abstruse music get a little toplofty, and her sidemen-Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius are among the most renowned-stay so aloof and mechanical the record turns to stainless steel...