Today's Stories

July 17-19, 2009

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

July 9, 2009

Ronnie Cummings
How Industry Giants are Undermining the Organic Foods Movement

Jonathan Cook
Two-State Solution, Israeli-Style

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Destablization, Inc.: Otto Reich and the International Republican Institute

James Bovard
McNamara's Other Body Count

Norman Solomon Afghanistan: the Escalation Scam

Allan Nairn
Indonesia Gets to Pick Its Killer

Andy Worthington
Revamping the Military Commissions

Tomas Borge
The Sadsack Soldiers of Honduras

Nadia Hijab
Palestinian Titanic

Paul Krassner
How Jeff Goldblum Didn't Die

Website of the Day
Dave Lindorff Wants Your Money--Will Give Good Reports

July 8, 2009

Saul Landau
In Amazonia

Dean Baker
The Green Shoots are Dead: Why the Economy Needs a Third Stimulus

Winslow T. Wheeler
Gates, Congress and the F-22

Eric Walberg
Obama in Russia

Ray McGovern
Is Texas Harboring a Torture Decider?

David Rosen
When Sadism Goes Systematic: Prison Rape as Policy

Dr. Mona El Farra
Gaza From a Distance

Ron Jacobs
McNamara and the Post: When Idiocy and Hubris Merge

Benjamin Dangl
High Stakes in Honduras

Alan Farago
How I Almost Pitched McNamara Into the Sea

Website of the Day
Ayatollah So

July 7, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
McNamara: From the Tokyo Firestorm to the World Bank

Uri Avnery
Israeli Court Rebukes Military

Brian M. Downing
Crossing the Helmand

Gary Leupp
Biden, Israel and Iran

Gregory A. Burris
My Brush With Homeland Security

David Macaray
When in Doubt, Blame a Labor Union

Laura Flanders
Obama Hushes Health Care Advocates

Alan Farago
Princple Over Principal

Greg Moses
Texas Patels Take Over Dallas Bank

Dan Bacher
Three Big Lies About the Peripheral Canal

Website of the Day
Tragedy at Toncontin

July 6, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Hussein's FBI Interviews

Diana Johnstone
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduran Coup to Venezuelan Coup: Same Old Globalizers and Torture School Grads

Gary Leupp
Operation Khanjar Begins

Jonathan Cook
Israel Calls on Ultra-Orthodox Jews to Stop "Arab Takeover"

Tim Wise
Of Fireworks and False Memories

Franklin Lamb
Cynthia McKinney and the Kidnapping of the Spirit of Humanity

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin, Plain and Tall

Carlos Benemann
California's Bingo Bondage: Getting Paid in IOUs

Shepherd Bliss
The Soulless Machine: Caught in the Cellphone Snare

Jerry Kroth
Stuart Levey and World War III

Karyn Strickler
A Fell-Swoop Moment Missed

Website of the Day
The Rise in Military-Backed Public Schools

July 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Gob Smacked

Eamonn Fingleton
Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

Jeffrey St. Clair
Is the Bald Eagle Really Back?

Mike Whitney
Running on Empty

Pam Martens
The Parable of Michael Jackson's Debts

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Counter-Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

Paul Craig Roberts
The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

Patrick Cockburn
The Haggling Over Iraqi Oil

Anthony DiMaggio
A Perilous Path: Iraq and the Language of De-Escalation

Roger Burbach
Honduran Coup: Target Left?

John Ross
Left's Grip on Mexico City Slips

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet Jim Demint: Coup Apologist

Gareth Porter
The Iran Canard

Andy Worthington
Finally, a Trial Date in the African Embassy Bombings Case

Saul Landau
Bad Times, Worse Habits

David Macaray
How We Spend Our Money

Adam Federman
The Recovery That Wasn't

Jane Slaughter Labor's Vague Rally for Health Care

Russell Mokhiber Black Caucus Muzzled on Israeli Kidnapping of McKinney

Robert Jensen
Beyond Independence

Robert Bryce
Hey, Paul Krugman, Here are 2.4 Billion More Climate Traitors

Belén Fernandez
The Situation in Honduras

Missy Comley Beattie
Would Jesus Pack Heat?

C. G. Estabrook
La Cina e Vicina

Stephen Martin
The Fog of Economic War

Charles R. Larson
Adichie on Her Own

Lorenzo Wolff
A Voice Like a Newsreel: the Soul of James Carr and the Civil Rights Movement

Kim Nicolini
The System That Hijacked New York

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Kazak and Stadler

Website of the Weekend
Paul Krassner v. Larry King

July 2, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Wall Street White House

Nikolas Kozloff
Spinning the Honduran Coup

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California's Empty Wallet

Christian Christensen Iran: Networked Dissent?

Patrick Irelan
Lost in Patagonia

Binoy Kampmark Returning Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Ethnic Cleansing as State Policy

Brian Tokar
Climate Bill: Cap(italize) and Trade(Off)

Dan Bacher
Panama Canal North?

Website of the Day
Scheuer on Immigration: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States."

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

Weekend Edition
July 17-19, 2009

The Musical Patriot

That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

By DAVID YEARSLEY

On that warm London evening with Jacko just dead and vigil-makers clogging Trafalgar Square and with Bruce Springsteen appearing in Hyde Park before his own adoring multitudes, I did the wisest thing I could to avoid all the madness. I went to the opera.

Only a couple blocks from the sorrowful rituals for Jacko, in the shadow of the lamented hero of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson, atop his column turning his back resolutely to the mourners, the English National Opera’s spacious and lovely production of Così fan tutte was on offer at the Coliseum  a couple of blocks up St. Martin’s Lane. Built in 1904 as the “People’s Palace of a entertainment,” the Coliseum has since been outgrown by the economies of scale that industrial giants like Springsteen and Jacko commanded.

Equally as close to the other theatres of Leiceister Square serving up standard fare for the throngs of tourists, the Coliseum’s neo-Baroque tower topped by a globe rises above the adjacent Georgian terraced buildings and recalls the most grandiose of Edwardian ambitions in the realm of entertainment. The lavishly decorated interior crosses the line from exuberance into pure folly.

The Sadler’s Wells Opera Company moved into the building in 1968 and changed its names to the English National Opera a few years later.  True to its name, all productions are sung in English.

Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, characterized Cosí fan tutte as “the third of the sisters borne of that most celebrated father harmony.” The pair had collaborated on Marriage of Figaro in 1786, Don Giovanni in 1789, and concluded their trilogy with Così fan tutte, which premiered in Vienna in January of 1790.

The sticky, overheated rituals of mass mourning for Jacko and the illusion that these outbreaks of sentiment mark the end of an era seemed appropriate to a piece whose opening run was itself cut short by the death of the reformist Hapsburg Emperor, Joseph II— he who chided Mozart for writing “too many notes.” The required period of mourning dictated a ban on opera and this more than halved the fee the cash-strapped composer was promised. Like Jacko, Mozart died in debt.

More than two centuries later, the most compelling characters in this opera seemed to me the cynical old man, Don Alfonso, amused to teach the young some bitter lessons about life, and the female servant, Despina, who likewise  knows far more about the world than her supposed betters. Da Ponte fitted the opera with the subtitle The School for Lovers, and the tuition offered there is a long way from the lessons in abstinence preached by High School Musical, installments one to infinity. Don Alfonso bets the besotted gentlemanly officers Guglielmo and Ferrando that their prospective brides, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, can be led astray from their commitments within the space of a single day.

The young men accept the wager sure that the steadfastness of their betrothed is a good bet.  They give their word as soldiers that they will follow Don Alfonso’s directions of deception and pretend to be called off to battle, but soon return disguised as “Albanian” noblemen intent on wooing the ladies. Against the faltering defenses of the women, whose weakening is abetted by their maidservant Despina (who has been paid off by Don Alfonso), each officer attempts to seduce the other man’s betrothed.

“Women are like that” is the usual translation of the more economical Italian; the title carries with it more than a touch of misogyny. Whether the men are similarly eager to swap partners for real at the end of this morally ambiguous opera remains unclear. The requisite lieto fine—the happy ending demanded by 18th-century taste and decorum—restores the initial pairings, but with the purity of love wonderfully tarnished by Don Alfonso’s cynicism and also by the roles the various members of the quartet of lovers has wittingly and unwittingly played in the drama he has directed.

The plot affords the seductive powers of Mozart’s music full sway, as if nothing could more natural and pleasing than moral corruption. Precisely because of its supposed immoral content conveyed through music of ravishing beauty, the opera was treated with great suspicion, little respect, and limited admiration in the 19th-century. While the various attempts at massive rewrites and bowdlerizations now appear ridiculous, they serve as reminders that the 19th century preferred to ignore the sometimes darker implications of Mozart’s music—especially so in the case of Cosí fan tutte. Richard Strauss’s more faithful textual treatment of the piece in the late 19th-century restored the work to its now-celebrated status.

I suppose I was in the mood to concentrate my attentions on the roles of old man and servant, because the evening had begun in my father-in-law’s  club — the Garrick — also just around the corner from the Coliseum.Founded in the 19th century as an actor’s club and for the intention of promoting the theatre and literature, the Garrick’s membership nowadays seems mostly to be comprised of lawyers and doctors and accountants, though actors are still represented and apparently have an easier time of getting admitted.

Some years back the Garrick Club finally sold to Disney the lucrative rights to Winnie the Pooh they’d inherited from another old member, A. A. Milne. With the money the fixed up the building, restored many of the paintings of actors from their wonderful collection, established a retirement fund for the old porters, and threw themselves a big party with a vintage carousel in which the tuxedoed pillars of English society mounted painted wooden ponies with glasses of French champagne in hand. 

For the Cosí pre-show drink I showed up to the stern building in Garrick Lane without jacket coat or tie. Before I could mount the stairs, however, the Porter barred my entrance pulled out a pin-striped about ten sizes to big and a orange tie—garish not Garrick. I emitted a thrilled gee-whiz at how great it was to know that British formality was in such robust, starchy health. Like Despina mocking her silly employers, the Porter looked me over in my ridiculous outfit, gave a slight grin and half of a nod, then sent me on my way up to the bar.

Mozart’s three operas done with da Ponte are usually read as documenting the spectacular demise of the ancien regime on the eve of the French revolution and, in the case of Cosí, just after it.  The Garrick proves just how resourceful new versions of the old order are at renewing and defending themselves.

 Garrick himself was interested in musical theater; he trained one of the great opera singers of the 18th-century, the castrato Gaetano Gaudagni, in his naturalistic, simple and affecting mode of acting. During his own visit to Naples and the famous theater of San Carlo, Garrick voiced a general distrust of Italian opera: “To speak of music here,” he wrote in 1764,” I think the taste is very bad.”

But what Garrick would have heard in this 2009 production of Mozart’s opera would have been a return to the natural style, for Mozart shared with Garrick a distrust of the artificially impressive.

The singing of the ENO production was of mixed quality. The finest performance was given by the young soprano Sophie Bevan, who I’d also had the pleasure of hearing as Xenia in Boris Godunov at the ENO last December. She has a crystalline and accurate voice, one she wields as deftly as Despina’s sharp wit. But it is also yielding, with hidden depths that draw us into the role’s endearing moments of self-pitying.  On the other side of things, the Canadian tenor Thomas Glenn had both a bad night in the realm of on-stage love and singing.  He struggled his way through the part of Ferrando and even extracted a few boos from the generally staid English public.  It was probably some visiting Italians not averse to twisting the blade after what had already been a tough evening.

As for the old man, Steven Page’s Don Alfonso captured the unsettling combination of sage reassurance and disabusing meddling that makes this character so wonderfully creepy.  Page’s is rendering of the recitatives in which Don Alfonso’s machinations are planned and his amoral philosophy espoused were delivered in a compelling parlando style that suggested age, cunning, and the idea that the whole game was partly a remedy for his own boredom.  Only a hint of comforting song was evident in Page’s speech-like delivery, except when his rich baritone voice warmed into resonant tone at moments where the delicious potential of his scheming seemed to please him most. In the celebrated E-major trio with Fiordiligi and Dorabella in Act I where the gentle breezes carry (or seem to carry) Guglielmo and Ferrando across the Bay of Naples to the military campaign, Page was all cantabile grace, as if he for a moment could almost believe in lasting love, and might suddenly lay off his bet against fidelity.

From the ample terrace of the villa the trio waved to their betrotheds, who could be seen in the sumptuous video backdrop, sailing on across the Bay of Naples with rocky cliffs in the distance. This lovely scene was conceived by the l Iranian film director, Abbas Kiarostami, director of the production, which was premiered last summer in Aix-en-Provence. In a ridiculous insult to Kiarostami, the British authorities did not secure him a visa in time to join the production again when it came to London. His gorgeous use of the shimmering bay as backdrop is the most lasting image of the production. In the last scene of the opera, Kiarostmia used a video of the orchestra to give the impression of an on-stage band; the pit orchestra was magically transplanted to the stage, and was deceptively seen to play in real time in their modern orchestral uniforms in an 18th-century ball room with the conductor gesticulating in front of them. These static video backdrops within which human figures played music, arrived and departed on barques, demonstrated masterfully how modern means can be deployed in the service of 18th-century grace and naturalness.  Often video in opera becomes a gimmicky distraction.  Here it had the occasional effect of reminding us that in the theatre the most natural tableaux are made possible only through artifice: the point of the technology was not to show off its own capabilities but rather to embrace beauty with a deceptive simplicity. In this way Kiarostami’s production conveyed a powerful message with the lightest of touches: the wayward heart can be mocked by the cold scientific experiments of a Don Alfonso, but it can never be truly understood. And even while Alfonso’s artifice has its own beautiful music, it can never attain the power of the lover’s song.

David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu   

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