Word: slaving
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When the biggest hand of an operatic evening is not for the singers -- Leona Mitchell as the eponymous Ethiopian slave girl, Placido Domingo as her hapless Egyptian lover Radames -- but for towering sets and slick stage machinery, then the era of content-free opera is at hand. Under the artistic direction of James Levine and departing general manager Bruce Crawford, the Met has ( suffered from a hardening of its arteries, offering up one lumbering spectacle after another without much apparent thought as to whether they make artistic sense...
...Committed: These are affectations or adornments that are either (1) uncomfortable and unpleasant, and hence indicate a true believer/martyr/fashion slave, or (2) that have not quite yet achieved mass-market status, and hence are still daring enough to alter the course of the bearer's life...
...chief sinner is Williams. When the slave Lucky makes a long, anguished speech, a flux of debased knowledge, Williams enacts the audience's presumed boredom at having to think. He scampers. He pounds the ground. He thrusts a big bone into the slave's hands as though it were an Oscar and tells him to "thank the Academy." As Martin feigns death, Williams hovers over him, murmuring the pet name "Didi, Didi," then segues into the theme from The Twilight Zone. Martin is never so outrageous, but his familiar cool-guy strut and laid-back vocalisms keep him from inhabiting...
LAST January, a similar controversy brewed at CBS Sports when commentator "Jimmy the Greek" Snyder spoke to a reporter about Blacks in professional sports. During the interview Snyder said that many a slave owner used to "breed his big Black to his big woman so that they could have a big Black kid." Here was another case of a public figure making an offensive remark that contained some truth--truth that was forgotten in the angry responses that followed...
...think [the slave auction] was wrong, definitely wrong; they had no right to do that," said junior James L. Bourne, who said the frat should be "kicked off campus for good...