Covid is Fading, but Stern Justice Awaits

The Covid pandemic is fading, and hopefully it will stay faded, but the pernicious and baleful medical, scientific, political, and social effects will last for decades.

We can only hope that those who lab-created the Covid virus, that those who suppressed truths, that those who repressed the truthful, that those who suppressed effective, cheap, and available treatments thus allowing so many to die unnecessarily, and that those who profited off the suffering of others – that all these people will face stern justice.

 R Balsamo, MD

Thoughts on the SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19 Pandemic

On the virus origin:

There is little to no doubt that the US NIH funded research at a Wuhan virus lab that created the man-made Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 franken-virus that causes Covid-19, which then has killed hundreds of thousands of people world-wide.  Some still ridicule this notion, despite much evidence to-date, but Occam's Razor insists that SarsCoV2's origin was from the lab.

 

On the vaccine-primacy approach:

From the beginning of Covid-19, the big-pharma/Gates-captured establishment medical "leaders' went all in on fabulously-expensive vaccines to the near-total exclusion of therapeutics, which, no doubt has been the fear, would be much-less profitable and ultimately more effective.  Great harm has been done by the evil, pharma/Gates-captured death-merchant NIH bureaucrats Fauci and Collins, who duped America into a lockdowns-for-all, vaccine-primacy strategy.

Particularly disappointing, and shocking, has been the complicity of American medical leadership, down to the local group practice level, in the vaccine-primary approach to the pandemic, with very insufficient attention to therapeutics.

 

Realities of the novel genetic material vaccines:

The medical realities of the RNA/DNA gene therapies, called vaccines, are that the intermediate- and long-term side effects are unknown, in addition to concern about toxicity from the circulating spike protein itself and the potential for antibody-dependent enhancement.  For each person, getting vaccinated or not is an individualized a risk/benefit analysis.  Furthermore, many of the unvaccinated have recovered from an infection, which bestowed both antibody and cellular natural immunity that is superior to immunity to a vaccine that induces only antibodies to the mutable spike protein (only pharma-captured shills would deny that).

Initially and for quite a while, Covid-19 vaccines were said, by medical leaders and politicians, to prevent viral transmission entirely and prevent all illness, not just serious illness and death.  But we all now know that vaccination does not prevent infection with the Sars-CoV-2 virus, does not prevent spreading that infection to others, and only for a while lessens the chance for, but does not always prevent, serious disease and death from the virus.  

 

Vaccine mania:

The rebuttable presumption in medicine is that natural, or post-infection, immunity to a virus is equal to and likely better than immunity via a vaccine, especially one that employs only a part of one virus surface protein, and a lab-modified one at that, as with all current US vaccines.  Yet, even those with natural immunity have been pushed into vaccination.  So what explains the escalating vehemence of vaccine absolutists that everyone, even the Covid19-recovered with strong natural immunity, be injected with an experimental "vaccine" in the face of growing evidence of only partial effectiveness and of serious, more common side effects?  Well, for one thing, there is no money to be made in "natural immunity."

No one knows how "safe" the vaccines are, since intermediate- and long-term effects are unknown, and these RNA/DNA genetic material vaccines are brand-new technology.

Covid-19 itself and Covid vaccines both can cause serious illness and even death.  The risk-reward calculation to undergo vaccination or not depends on many individual factors, such as age, medical status, etc.  People who become ill after one choice naturally wish they had chosen the other.

Public health opinion leaders can begin to regain an ounce of the pounds of trust they so foolishly and cavalierly shredded in the Covid era by ceasing their insistence that Covid survivors, who have natural immunity, get vaccinated, and instead send those vaccine doses to underdeveloped countries for people at risk who need them.

 

Vaccinating children and young adults:

Injecting healthy children with a thoroughly-experimental, only partially-effective "vaccine," with totally unknown intermediate- and long-term side effects, for a disease with a mortality rate for them below that of seasonal flu is as astonishing as it is horrific.

Seeing a fatal thrombotic sequela of the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine in a young woman — if she was not at high risk for Covid and thus a strong candidate for an experimental vaccine with an unclear risk profile, is nothing less than a tragic and unnecessary event at the feet of the vaccine absolutists.

Robert Kennedy, Jr, and others have opined that once vaccines get full FDA approval (not just an Emergency Use Authorization), vaccine makers have liability unless the vaccine is indicated in children, in which case there is no liability by law even if adults also use the vaccine, and that’s why vaccine makers have been pushing the Covid vaccines to children.  If true, then vaccine makers are using children as liability shields.

Suppressing treatments:

Everyone knows that drug companies and their paid agents masquerading as impartial government advisor “scientists” cannot make money on repurposed drugs, also known as “cheap generics whose safety profiles are already known.”

The fact that a hospital would still refuse to administer ivermectin even after all of its treatments had failed and despite a court order (and family agreement) that would remove any liability means that there was a nefarious reason to deny care — recognition that ivermectin works.  Admitting that safe, pill treatments work would damage the push for fabulously-profitable universal, repeated, mass vaccination.

In late 2021 it was reported that the US FDA has been working with the US post office to seize packages containing ivermectin.  When has such a thing ever been done before in the US for drugs that are completely legal, safe, and on the WHO’s list of essential medicines?  The only plausible reason – big-pharma / big-government terror that more people will discover with their own eyes that ivermectin works.   The powerful tentacles of the big-pharma/big-government cartel have a long reach.

Eventually, the “truth will out” on ivermectin, and then the “just following CDC/FDA orders” excuses will begin from physicians and scientists who knew better all along but were cowed into being “useful idiots” for the big-pharma/big-government cartel.

 

Behavior of physicians:

It has been shocking to see "expert" physicians touting the complete effectiveness of "vaccines" whose antigenic material consists only of the highly-mutable spike protein and no other parts of the virus, all while ignoring therapeutics; skepticism would have been smarter & more honest.

So many doctors and hospitals have become cruel petty tyrants during the Covid era, under the guise of safety.  Pushing vaccines on low risk people, denying sick and dying patients the comfort of loved ones at their sides, denying even court-ordered treatments.  It saddens me to see so many doctors behave that way.  One factor must be deep, deep corruption among some physician opinion leaders, bought by pharma money and/or intimidated by political pressure.

The intense mania by so many physicians to vaccinate every single healthy (= extremely low-risk) child with a Covid vaccine having significant short-term risks (e.g., myocarditis) and unknown intermediate- and long-term effects seems quasi-religious and quasi-political in nature, and has been frightening to witness.

 

Vaccine failures:

The vaccines are only partially-effective, and possibly in some people may actually facilitate infection via antibody-dependent enhancement.  Their intermediate- and long-term safety is unknown, and short-term side effects can be significant.  

With seemingly most Covid-19 case data looking worse in 2021 versus 2020, the question of antibody-dependent enhancement becomes ever more pressing.  Hospitalization and mortality data in the "fully" vaccinated also has been alarming, and underappreciated by society at large it seems.

Since the vaccinated can just as easily harbor and transmit Covid than the unvaccinated, while more likely to be asymptomatic and thus mingling out-and-about, the vaccinated (and the unvaccinated as well) may indeed be at more risk from other vaccinated people than from those unvaccinated.

Somebody must be blamed for their totally-failed strategy of going all-in on vaccines to the near-exclusion of therapeutics (especially those already available like cheap ivermectin), and the leaders are not going to blame themselves.  So the vaccine’s failures are blamed on those not taking it, a first in history.

On the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

This past year the CDC has revealed itself, somewhat unexpectedly, to be one of the many failed government institutions in America.  Even apart from the medical and policy missteps & politicization, its bumbling data collection issues last year were shocking.  Examples: failed testing roll-out; incomplete data on website; no modeling; no dissemination of best treatment practices; incorrect public recommendation on mask wearing (maybe a lie to protect the supply).

Among the CDC’s many problems is mission creep into social justice and non-contagion-related projects, which dissipate and squander the agency’s effectiveness and betrays Americans.  (As an aside on government mission creep, who can forget NASA's Muslim outreach program under Obama?)

The CDC's budget is about $12 BILLION, with 15,000 staff, yet it seems to have been totally unprepared to effectively deal with Covid-19.  Its core purpose is to deal with infectious epidemics, and the lifer staffers failed.  A complete reformation is needed.

The destruction of trust in medical and public-health “experts”:

No one believes these "experts" any more, after they've shown themselves to be politically-based, opinion-based, pharma-captured control freaks, not science-based.  From mass quarantine to suppression of ivermectin to making sick people die alone to vaccinating low-risk kids, etc. – just evil.

Richard R. Balsamo, MD

2020 -- The Inflection Point

The willing, ongoing sacrifice of liberty to authoritarian governors, whose dictates have at times been illegal, the brazenly stolen election that most Republican leaders passively accept, & the politicization of medicine are the great 2020 tragedies for the American Experiment. 

The patient lies in hospital on IV meds and a heart monitor, but we can only hope that Adam Smith was right when he said there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.

R Balsamo

The Barber of Seville at the Lyric Opera

Rossini’s The Barber of Seville certainly is a popular opera.  Since Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 1954 inception, the comedy has been performed in 14 seasons, more often than such favorites as Rigoletto, Carmen, Lucia, and Aida.  The story revolves around the matchmaking machinations of a fellow (Figaro) who has a day job as a barber, as he tries to link up his rich patron, a count, with his young inamorata Rosina, who is the ward of an elderly doctor who also has designs on her.  

The opera is an enjoyable comedy, easy to understand, and enduringly popular as a respite from the tragic, and often excessively melodramatic, staples of the repertory.  It’s a visual delight and the audience was certainly entertained.  Musically though the opera does not have the memorable, emotive arias, duets, and ensembles of dramatic opera, but it has plenty of melodic scenes with appealing harmonies.  The cast was terrific, and thankfully, the Lyric played it straight with the production, without any dysfunctional, annoying modern reinterpretations.

Some of my earliest exposure to opera and classical music came from Looney Tunes cartoons, and in my memory I can see and hear the parody of the Figaro, Figaro, Figaro riff that, as fact would have it, is sung in the opera by Figaro himself.  Sitting there taking in The Barber, I was distracted in my mind’s eye by images of Bugs Bunny singing the piece on stage, outwitting Elmer Fudd while the annoyed audience throws produce at him.

R Balsamo

Our Lyric Season Closes with Old Favorites Traviata and Boheme

Here’s a belated note about two wonderful operas we saw, moreover heard, this past winter (which only ended the day before yesterday, hence I didn’t realize I was so dilatory in posting).  Actually, some recent Lyric Opera promotional materials spurred me to write.  The Lyric, understandably needing to promote itself these days perhaps more than ever before, markets itself as providing beautiful musical art that everyday people can (and should) enjoy while simultaneously casting itself as a vehicle for a more rarefied opera lifestyle.  High-definition DVDs played on big screens with surround sound and an ever more-juvenile pop culture are taking their toll.

Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Boheme have of course some great similarities.  Each is a story centered on a Parisian woman who wins and then loses at love, only to be reunited with her lover just before dying from tuberculosis.  Each opera is its composer’s most popular – and not for nothing is that true, as they are so full of beautiful music each is the equivalent of a greatest hits album. 

The Traviata production featured Albina Shagimuratova as Violetta, Giorgio Berrugi as her lover Alfredo, and Zeljko Lucic and his father Germont.  In recent years Lyric patrons have heard the wonderful voices, and seen the wonderful acting, of Shagimuratova and Lucic, while Berrugi was very strong in his Lyric debut.  Boheme starred Maria Agresta as the ill-fated Mimi, Michael Fabiano as her lover Rudolfo, Ann Toomey as her friend Musetta, and Zachary Nelson as his friend Marcello.  Agresta and Nelson were heard last season in Puccini’s Turandot. 

Both productions featured strong singing and acting, with sets that were visually traditional yet appealing to a more modern sensibility – no wacky reinterpretations here by self-centered directors.     

Lyric patrons won’t see these two gems for a while.  Traviata and Boheme were last produced in 2013, so it’s maybe a 5-6 year cycle.  Next year Luisa Miller and Madama Butterfly will provide our Verdi and Puccini fixes, spiced up with a production of selected scenes from Donizetti’s The Three Queens and Rossini’s Barber of Seville.  But for now Lyric patrons have warm weather to get through.

R Balsamo

Related posts on these operas:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-traviata-at-michigans-harbor-country.html

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/la-boheme-at-lyric.html

The End of England, Exhibit 937: English Police Ignore Ongoing Rape Gangs to Focus on Real Crime – Misgendering Language

In Britain in recent years there have been a number of horrific scandals in which police and community leaders ignored organized, continuous rape of young English girls by gangs of Muslim men, primarily of Pakistani origin.  As these scandals finally have come to light, the shocking and pathetic excuse given by the police and others is that they feared being charged with anti-Muslim bias and racism if they exposed the rape gangs.

The rape gangs activity in Rotherham, England, is just one of these scandals, but the most infamous.  The section below is from Wikipedia (link), with emphases mine.  Note the self-censorship – the absence of the word “Muslim” in this explanation that fear of anti-Muslim bias caused the ethnic English authorities to allow the Muslim gang rape gangs to rape their own children, and the euphemism “British-Pakistani” for Pakistani men then living in England. 

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consisted of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the northern English town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, from the late 1980s until the 2010s and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. ....  From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council.  The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.  From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.

In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that an estimated 1,400 children, most of them white girls, had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men.  A "common thread" was that taxi drivers had been picking the children up for sex from care homes and schools.

The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, and trafficking them to other towns.  There were pregnancies—one at age 12—terminations, miscarriages, babies raised by their mothers, and babies removed, causing further trauma. .... 

The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors [including] fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations [and] the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority....

Shocking beyond words: “the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority” – the English men and women of the left-wing Labour Party allowed their own young English girls to be raped over and over again because to even call attention to it might cause the Muslims not to vote for them in future elections.   

So what in God’s name have the British police been doing with their time, if not arresting gang rapists of their own children?  Answer – sending teams of investigators to check out any allegation of “misgendering” and arresting young English mothers suspected of using incorrect language.  Here’s the recent news (link) out of the land of Winston Churchill (emphases mine):

A British mother was arrested and incarcerated for referring to a transgendered woman as a man in online communication.  Kate Scottow revealed Saturday that police came to her home, brought her to the local police station for questioning and left her in a cell for seven hours while her children watched, The Daily Mail reports.  Scottow had been engaged in a Twitter dispute with a transgender activist over “deadnaming,” or denying the gender that someone believes he or she actually is.  News of the arrest follows another incident in the UK, when 74-year-old Margaret Nelson was questioned by Suffolk police about her social media comments on transgendered people.

Scottow is still under investigation by police — who took her photographs, fingerprints and a DNA sample after arresting her.  They also took the woman’s mobile phone and laptop computer and haven’t given it back since Scottow was taken into custody on Dec. 1, 2018.  “I was arrested in my home by three officers.... for harassment and malicious communications because I called someone out and misgendered them on Twitter.”

Hayden’s complaints prompted both the police to arrest Scottow and a judge to deliver an injunction against her, according to The Mail.

English politicians and police allow Muslim rape gangs to rape their children while they spend their time quashing "misgendering" language.  Millions of men and women died in living memory to save England.  For this?  Dear God, what has become of these people? 

R Balsamo

Director John Ford at 125

John Ford

I’ve loved movies from as far back as I can remember, and my favorites growing up were filled with action and adventure.  When as a young adult I finally began paying attention to directors, I discovered that many of the films I admired most were made by John Ford.  Today is his 125^th birthday.

Ford was a prolific director, even by the higher-output standards of his time, and he had astonishing breadth in subject matter.  He won four Academy Awards for Best Director, more than anyone else.  But although those four films were all non-westerns, Ford is best known today for his magnificent Westerns.  

Harry Carey Sr, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Henry Fonda (in his early days), and especially John Wayne, whom Ford made a star in his 1939 film Stagecoach, are just some of the actors particularly associated with Ford.  In fact, he cast in supporting roles a large group of regulars that became known as the Ford Stock Company.

Ford was admired for his genius, both in narrative and in technique.  But he was a gruff, often-unpleasant man, and at times mean and vindictive – especially when drunk.  Given his personality, Ford had a poor and unsatisfying family life, but in his films he seems almost obsessed with the rituals of community and domestic life.  Many of his best films center on family – some of his earlier ones, like Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley, can seem overly-sentimental and mannered today, but some that came later are personal favorites – The Quiet Man and Donovan’s Reef.  Other non-Westerns that I particularly enjoy include What Price Glory, The Horse Soldiers, Drums Along the Mohawk, and The Last Hurrah.

Ford's Westerns stand out, many of them filmed in Monument Valley (which he put on the map).  Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are particularly noteworthy favorites.  And then there’s his masterpiece, The Searchers, which many film buffs consider perhaps the greatest Western and one of the best films ever made. 

There are certainly other directors who have made many great films; for me Billy Wilder particularly stands out in this regard.  But Ford had an extra dimension, a thread, in his films that is hard to identify or describe, but it’s there.  Once, as the story goes, Orson Welles, certainly no slouch himself as a filmmaker, was asked to name the directors he most admired, and he replied: "I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

R Balsamo  

In Key West "Remember the Maine"

Key West "Maine" Memorial

As I huddle indoors enduring the latest polar vortex that has brought record sub-zero temperatures to the Great Lakes, I warmly recall that I began this month in the Florida Keys.  Specifically in Key West, which isn’t all just sun and fun, boats, beaches, and bars.  There are some serious sights to see.

One notable place is the military section of the Key West cemetery.  It’s easy to get to, a moderate walk from most parts of the western, tourist side of the island.  Servicemen from many wars rest there, and not all American, but the prominent memorial is to the 19 sailors buried there after the explosion of the American Navy cruiser Maine in Havana harbor (most of the Maine dead were buried at Arlington National Cemetery).

The Maine was one of the very first American ironclad battleships, still featuring masts in case the steam engines failed.  Because of the nine years between design and completion, and the rapid advance of naval technology, Maine was obsolete when it entered service in 1895.  In January of 1898, it steamed from Key West to Havana to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban uprising against Spanish rule.  Just three weeks later, on February 15, an explosion sunk the ship in Havana harbor.  Over 266 American servicemen men died, while 89 survived.  In March, the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry, sitting in Key West, declared that a naval mine had caused the blast.  This conclusion has been challenged, and it seems from my reading that most knowledgeable observers today think that a spontaneous internal coal fire ignited the magazines (the Navy brain trust had the Maine using, for ships, a non-standard type of coal, which burned hotter but was prone to producing combustible gases).  

At the time, the sinking of Maine became a rallying cry ("Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!") of those who wanted the US to declare war on Spain.  The warmongers soon got their wish, and after a short war the US emerged victorious and the new ruler of Puerto Rico and the Philippines (and some other places like Wake Island and Guam).  The Spanish-American War at the time was viewed as a great American victory, but actually it is one of the great American misadventures.

Maine sat on the harbor floor until 1911, when the US built a temporary dam around it and patched up the hull.  What was left of the ship was then floated, towed out to sea, and re-sunk some miles off the Cuban coast.  It was a sad ending to a misbegotten ship that was poorly-designed and poorly operated in its power plant, leading to the deaths of nearly 300 young American men in the bloom of youth.  To compound the tragedy, Maine’s destruction was used to start a war absurdly costly in blood and treasure, and whose sequelae burden the United States to this very day. 

And far from tropical Havana, in north-central Illinois, there is this:

A memorial to those who died in the Spanish-American War, in Ottawa, a town in north-central Illinois.
The second body of text begins with "USS Maine seaman Carlton H Jencks." 

The filaments of war reach far and wide.

R Balsamo

Rotting Out America – the Anti-Trump Political Scandal Percolates On

About one year ago I first commented on the great frame-up of Donald Trump, then after more than a year of unfruitful FBI and Department of Justice investigation.  Now one whole year later the witch hunt continues, as its perpetrators labor mightily to push their discreditable and shameful boulder up the hill, only to have it time and time again roll back to painfully crush a bone or two. 

But as facts are pried loose from the malefactors who fight hard to keep them all secret, the slow unveiling of the greatest scandal, by far, in American political history fitfully continues.  We see more and more, in drips and drabs, as time goes on.  We know indisputably that some Democrat Party senior officials in the Obama Administration’s national security team, in the Justice Department, in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and in the Clinton campaign, strongly aided by Democrat operatives in the media masquerading as journalists, all conspired to criminally sabotage Donald Trump, first in his presidential campaign and then in his presidency.  After the election, they deftly maneuvered around hapless Republicans to engineer the appointment of a special inquisitor of effectively all things Trump and in essence charged him with finding the crime.  The Democrat insiders have known from the jump that it was all a put on, but still today gullible, Trump-hating true believers, churlishly refusing to accept an election result, frantically grasp at illusory straws while specters of collusion dance in their fevered dreams. 

Even many so-called Republicans, those whose Democrat-lite political influence dissipated in the Trump wave or whose exploitation of cheap, illegal labor is threatened or whose lust for endless foreign wars is unrequited, have looked the other way at these Democrat depredations.  They myopically and delusionally make common cause with the Democrat crocodile while it rips away at some other Republican, thinking the beast will be forever satisfied with just Trump. 

In political depth and breath, and by the global stakes at hand, this may be the greatest nefarious frame-up in all political history.  It has severely corroded public trust in the FBI and the Justice Department, the two critical federal agencies once, naively in retrospect, thought fair and honest and above the political fray.  And senior leaders of the Democrat Party, actively and passively, have endorsed these affronts, and more (see their vicious, despicable behavior during the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation process).  I fear that the evildoers who have betrayed America’s trust will never be held to account, making further damage to our polity much more likely, and that this horrific scandal is one giant step toward a very ugly political future. 

Romans, Egyptians, and British, to name just a few, at one time could not imagine that their great states, their great power, could ever collapse.  We know though that they first became hollowed out, until the shell that was left just collapsed.  Now, Americans can only hope that there is a “great deal of ruin in a nation.”  But should America die, how will it die?  Certainly slowly at first, politically rotting out behind the facades and underneath the flags, and then one day all of a sudden.  And then having sown the wind, the great destructors will reap the whirlwind.

R Balsamo

Related link:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/clinton-democrats-fbi-justice.html

Van Dyck’s Palermo Madonna and Child

On Christmas Eve two days ago I posted (link) a photo of the beautiful Caravaggio painting of the Nativity that was stolen from a Palermo oratory in 1960.  Christmastide has me thinking of another Palermo oratory I had the pleasure of visiting a few years ago. 

Oratories are small, Roman Catholic chapels for private worship.  Palermo, Sicily, has three of which I am aware, built by confraternities -- private altruistic organizations of men bound by a trade or specific object of religious devotion.  In walking distance of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, in which now hangs a reproduction of Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, one can find the Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico.  This chapel sits behind Palermo’s great Dominican basilica of San Domenico (which unfortunately was closed both times the missus and I tried to visit in the spring of 2016). 

The Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico is stunning.  Bathed in white with gold accents, the space is full of three-dimensional ladies, knights, and playful putti.  The magnificent altarpiece is the large painting Madonna of the Rosary with St. Dominic and the Patroness of Palermo, executed by Anthony van Dyck in 1628. 

Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico in Palermo, Sicily

Van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who achieved great success in England, in the Netherlands, and in Italy, where he spent six of his 42 years studying and painting.  His Wikipedia entry states that for him Titian’s “use of colour and subtle modeling of form would prove transformational, offering a new stylistic language that would enrich the compositional lessons learned from Rubens.”  Van Dyck spent time in Palermo, about 20 years after Caravaggio passed through Sicily, and left behind in the Dominican community a stunning painting to be especially enjoyed this Christmas season. 

R Balsamo

Caravaggio’s Nativity

Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence is a warm scene of dramatic moment composed with his typical striking use of light and shadow. 

Caravaggio was born Michelangelo Merisi in Milan and came of age in the nearby town of the name by which he became famous.  Pugnacious and temperamental, he spent a fair amount of his all-too-short life on the lam, running from the jailer or the assassin.  He spent some time in Sicily late in his short life of 38 years, and it was probably there in 1609 that he composed The Nativity .  The painting found its way to a confraternity hall in Palermo, the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, where it was on display until 1969 when it was stolen by the mafia, according to all evidence.  It has never resurfaced, and is said to have been destroyed.  Recently, a faithful reproduction of the painting was created and is now on display where the original hung. 

R Balsamo

The Lufthansa Heist at 40

Today is the 40th anniversary of the incredibly-successful, infamous Lufthansa heist by New York City mobsters.  It paradoxically led, through greed and stupidity, to the destruction of many, if not most, of the men who pulled it off.  Moral of the story — be careful what you wish for.  Martin Scorsese, though, got a great movie out of it, Goodfellas, and he may be one of the few who really profited from it all.

R Balsamo

Cendrillon at the Lyric Opera

The Lyric offered up a solid production of Cendrillon, French composer Massenet’s version of the Cinderella story.  This is the opera’s first showing at the Lyric in its 64 seasons, although it has offered up Rossini’s variation on the theme, La Cenerentola, no less than six times.  Massenet’s version is half comedy (awfully slapstick in this production) and half drama, and he gives Cinderella’s father a sizeable role.  Although the story line for the most part is an operatic version of a chick flick, there are a few worthwhile moments.  Particularly of interest, and the highlight for me, is the serious, touching Act III scene between Cinderella and her father, as she despairs of ever again seeing her magical love Prince Charming. 

In popularity Cendrillon does not rank with Massenet’s main four – Manon and Werther, followed by Don Quichotte and Thais.  The Prince is a “trouser” role, written for a contralto and featuring a mezzo in this production; for me, the opera would be more appealing if the part were transposed for a tenor.  

Soprano Siobhan Stagg was terrific in the title role in her American debut, and I also particularly enjoyed bass-baritone Derek Welton as her meek but gentle and caring father.  Sets consisted of various moving panels with writing on them – inexpensive, minimalist, and very uninteresting.  I know opera companies are struggling with cost control, but this was a pretty lame effort.  The show was almost a concert version in costume.  The blame for the set, though, gets spread around to many other opera companies, so the Lyric is mostly off the hook.  Hell, even the Met used it.

I’m happy to have seen Cendrillon, though I don’t think I would go out of my way to see it again.  If an opera company is going through the expense of putting on a show, there are a lot more appealing choices on the list before you come to Cendrillon.  The set was available, sure, but sets abound.  And it’s not as if a packaged cast, already rehearsed, was readily available, for only Alice Coote as Prince Charming was a carry-over from last spring’s production at the Met.  So here are two picks, for example, that jump to mind long before Cendrillon – Puccini’s sleeper Manon Lescaut, last seen on the Lyric stage 13 years ago and just that once since 1977, and even Massenet’s own take on that story, Manon, regarded by some as his best opera and last seen at the Lyric in 1983 – 35 years ago.

R Balsamo

Opera’s Shrinking Audience

Earlier this Fall, the Lyric Opera of Chicago suffered through a short musicians’ strike that caused the cancellation of a few performances, but a quick resolution was reached and productions are back on.  However, the cause of the strike was proposed reduced employee compensation that the Lyric said was necessitated by the fewer performances and reduced revenue as a consequence of its shrinking audience.

I've been wondering about this development and why it is so.  Multiple factors seem at play.  Certainly the wide availability of high-fidelity opera CDs and DVDs has made an impact.  Perhaps even more importantly, opera seems generally much less familiar to most people than it was decades ago.  The general dumbing-down of our popular culture has had an impact – rarely do opera stars appear in general entertainment and public venues as they did in the past.  For example, years ago opera stars could be seen on widely-watched TV variety shows and Johnny Carson-like late shows, but programs like that are no longer common, and the late-night shows have degenerated into junk time hosted by smug, smirking, and sarcastic personalities offering sophomoric entertainment to pseudo-adults stuck in perpetual adolescence. 

So what can opera companies do in the face of these secular trends?  By themselves, unfortunately perhaps not much.  But they can redouble efforts to promote opera and their performers in the broader culture and in the media.  Add perhaps some programming shifts.  How about adding a few evenings of great scenes from a number of operas?  Tosca Act 1, La Traviata Act 2 Scene 1, and La Boheme Act 3, for example, with narrative introductions that explain each scene.  Solo concerts are fine, but they lack the beautiful mixture of voices in duets and trios and scenes, and lack as well the costumes and the sets that make opera such a wonderful visual experience. 

What about being more aggressive in offering smartly-edited performances of operas that perhaps don’t get shown because they’re too long or too complicated.  The Lyric’s recent complete staging of Bizet’s The Trojans (Les Troyens) was wonderful, but it is very long; some opera companies eliminate the first two acts which are frankly not the more musically-pleasing parts and are severable plot-wise.  Although I like having an opera produced in its entirety, if length and cost prevent its production an opera is much better being trimmed than never being seen.  Rossini’s William Tell is another candidate.  Ballet sequences, where they exist in some operas, are now often omitted in the interest of time, so the precedent of editing operas is already established.

Finally, I wonder if opera selection has been a factor in recent years.  The current Lyric management seems to have a tilt toward German, Russian, and modern operas.  Of course those operas have their fans, but I have known few casual opera lovers to pine for a German or Russian opera, or hum a tune from an atonal modern show.  In the professional opera world and among the intelligentsia that may be true, but for many of us in the hoi polloi German and Russian operas remain better in theory than they sound in practice.  A good example of the recent selection tilt is the 2016-2017 Lyric season, which featured two German operas and one Russian among the eight produced, and, remarkably, no Verdi or Puccini.  Don’t get me wrong – it featured some wonderful productions – Norma, Carmen, and a premier of Berlioz’s masterpiece The Trojans.  But no Verdi or even Puccini? 

I realize that some in the high-brow set love to love not-very-popular operas, and I am certainly not arguing for Boheme, Butterfly, Tosca, and Traviata every year or two, but can the Lyric find room for more Italian classics?  In its 64 seasons, including the current one, the Lyric has put on Puccini’s beautiful Manon Lescaut just four times, just once since 1977 and not since 2005-2006.  What about Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, put on just three times over 30 years ago, or his Luisa Miller, done just once in 1982.  How about more Bellini, whose version of the Romeo and Juliet story, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, has appeared just twice.  And never on the menu in 64 years are such notables as Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers and I Lombardi, Bellini’s Il Pirata, and Rossini’s William Tell.

My ideas might not help the Lyric and other opera companies much, and even then perhaps only at the margins.  Opera as an art form is swimming against the cultural current for the first time in its history, and it’s a tough slog.

R Balsamo

Il Trovatore at the Lyric Opera

Il Trovatore is an operatic treat, musically and visually, and the missus and I were delighted to take it all in the other day at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  We last saw it four years ago to the month at the Lyric, and it was just as fresh and wonderful this time around.  Its music to me is as beautiful as any Verdi wrote.  After its world premiere in Rome in 1853, according to The Lyric Opera Companion, a music critic wrote:  “The music transported us to heaven ... because this is, without exaggeration, heavenly music.  The public listened to every number in religious silence and broke into applause at every interval.” 

As remarkable as Trovatore is, given the wealth of the Verdi repertory it is only the fourth most-shown Verdi in the Lyric’s 64 seasons, appearing nine times, after Traviata, Rigoletto, Un Ballo, in that order, and tied with Aida.  The first production was in 1955 with none other than tenor Jussi Bjorling and soprano Maria Callas.  How’s that for casting?  In fact, in November of 1955 alone, when the Lyric’s season was very short and very, very sweet, opera lovers had not only Callas (in three operas) and Bjorling (in five!), but also Giuseppe Di Stefano, Renata Tebaldi, Tito Gobbi, and Carlo Bergonzi, plus Chicago (Melrose Park) native Carol Laraia, stage name Carol Lawrence, in no less than six productions.

Trovatore has not been everyone’s cup of tea, puzzlingly.  Highbrow critics slam it for its allegedly confusing libretto, but, assuming the knock is even true, few opera lovers have read the libretto, and the plot seems straightforward to me, and with supertitles at a performance the narrative is quite understandable.  Those same critics also look down their noses at Verdi’s supposed retreat in Trovatore from the musical “advances” of Rigoletto (which premiered two years earlier) toward the ideal – loved by the cognoscenti – of the Wagner-like “numberless” opera – in other words, music that’s better than it sounds, as Twain supposedly phrased it. 

Il Trovatore is a wonderful opera, and the Lyric put on a great show.  Highlights of the performance were soprano Tamara Wilson as Leonora, mezzo Jamie Barton as Azucena, baritone Artur Rucinski as Count di Luna, and Roberto Tagliavini as Ferrando.  On tenor Russell Thomas I plead the 5th.  The choruses were terrific, as usual at the Lyric.  And the sets were visually arresting and appropriate to the storyline, and a welcome step up from the less-expensive offerings (however understandable) that occasionally pop up.  Costuming was fine enough for the leads, but the Lyric seemingly ran out of gypsy costumes, for most of the gypsies in the Anvil Chorus gypsy camp scene, set in 15th century rural, northeastern Iberia, were dressed in relatively-dressy 17^th century clothing, including some in top hats; well, there always has to be some transgressive functionary who likes to poke the audience in the eye, highlighting the need for constant adult supervision.

Stephanie von Buchau writes in The Lyric Opera Companion that “Il Trovatore is the quintessential Italian opera, its drama propelled by the human voice.”  In fact, it is so quintessential that it was chosen as the opera backdrop for the zany antics of the anarchist Marx Brothers in their film masterpiece A Night at the Opera.  High praise indeed.

R Balsamo

A post on the 2014 Trovatore at the Lyric:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/il-trovatore-at-lyric-opera.html

One Hundred Years After the Armistice That Paused the Carnage

This day marks the one hundredth anniversary of the armistice that paused, for about twenty years, the senseless slaughter of World War One.  It was called “the War to End All Wars,” and would that only to have been true, it might have been worth it all – but it did not and so it was not.  The most prosperous culture in the world, one that certainly should have known better, descended into madness and almost destroyed itself in quick time.  Scores of millions died, all over the world, in the two-part war that only ended in 1945 and whose effects are very much with us today.

As I wrote last year, in the primitive film of 1914 we can clearly see the pompous, murderously-incompetent, half-decrepit generals and the effete, smarmy, oily politicos all parading about in herky-jerky motion, full of themselves, festooned like peacocks with their gaudy European plumes and sashes, leading the world into war for their own petty, obscure, and erratic purposes.  It was all so absurd, so comical if not so unspeakably sad, so utterly infuriating, so unimaginably tragic.

When the war began in 1914, certainly few, if any, however foolish they might have been, could have imagined the horrific carnage that was about to come.  But soon they suffered full well the harsh reality of it all and no doubt most, if they could go back in time, would have none of it.  Yet after almost three years of this madness, revealed to the world in newspapers, in film, in photographs, and in letters, in June of 1917 the Americans crossed an ocean to join in.  They disembarked in France to cheering crowds, smiling while shouting back, it is said, “Lafayette we are here.”  Then over one hundred thousand of them died, and to this day we don’t really know why.

For years afterward mothers and fathers roamed battlefields looking for sons who never returned.  Nonpareil writer Jan Morris evokes the profound sadness of inconsolable loss: 

In one of the lonely cemeteries in which, buried where they died, the Anzacs lay lost among the Gallipoli ravines, the parents of one young soldier wrote their own epitaph to their son, killed so far away, so bravely we need not doubt, in so obscure a purpose: “God Took Our Norman, It Was His Will, Forget Him, No, We Never Will.”

Canadian physician John McCrae, serving as a front-line field surgeon in France, wrote a short poem after the burial of one of his friends killed in battle.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row, [....]
We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

McCrae never returned home either, dying himself later in the war.  He was buried near where he fell.

Western culture paused in the slow suicide it had begun just a few years earlier, one hundred years ago today, and we still bring out the poppies to pretend it all stopped just then.

R Balsamo

Singer/Songwriter Steve Goodman at 70 – You Better Get It While You Can

Today would have been the 70th birthday of the late, great Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman.  For anyone who saw him perform, it was impossible to imagine that a man with such youthful energy and bounding joy could ever grow old.  Sadly, he did not, passing away in 1984 at age 36 from the leukemia that plagued him throughout his too-few years among us.

His performances were full of energy and sparkle and good humor.  Much of what he sang were his own compositions, and his style was certainly eclectic, ranging from folk to country & western to oldies, from soft ballads to comedy to satire to jazzed-up foot-stompers.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing him live, especially in a small club on a warm summer night, can only wonder why he did not become a bigger star. 

I saw Steve Goodman perform many times in Chicago, in small folk-houses and in large halls (like the Park West on Armitage Avenue).  Most of the venues are long-gone.  I first saw him in the mid-1970s at the Earl of Old Town saloon with the great Chicago blues band Martin, Bogan & Armstrong, and I will never forget their exhilarating rendition of Mamma Don’t Allow It, which no one there, especially the musicians, seemingly wanted to ever end.  A couple years later I returned to the Earl to see Goodman once again, and smiled as, early in his act, he pulled an audience member up to play with him.  They played for hours, and seeing Steve Goodman and John Prine do an impromptu three-hour riff was a thrill I still remember.  In his middle career years he was joined in concerts, and on recordings, by county music legend Jethro Burns.  I once drove alone from Chicago to Rockford, almost a hundred miles from where I started on the South Side, in a light snow storm (I was very young then) to see the two of them play; consummate musicians they were, Goodman on his guitar and Burns on his mandolin.  (I had the pleasure of conversing with Jethro Burns for a couple of minutes during a break while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the small, two-man men’s room – a most pleasant fellow).  A few years before his death, Goodman moved, with his wife and children, to Southern California, hoping for more success from the connections he could make there.    

His breakout hit was City of New Orleans after it was recorded by Arlo Guthrie.  He had great range in his many compositions – from Would You Like To Learn To Dance, a soft, gentle invitation to take a chance at love, to Banana Republics, a ballad about disaffected American expatriates south of the border.  Some were intensely personal, filled with bittersweet emotion, notably My Old Man in which he mourns and reconciles with his long-passed father, and Old Smoothies, about the joy his loving grandparents experienced watching an old couple ice skating together.

Goodman had a great sense of humor, and what a treat it was to see as well as hear him do Talking Backwards, The Auctioneer, Vegematic, This Hotel Room, or of course The Broken String Song (which always seemed like he was making it up on the spot when he actually took time to repair a broken string in the middle of a set).  He could fill up half an evening, if he wanted to, with just these fun, and funny, songs.     

North-sider that he was, Goodman was a big, and long-suffering, fan of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and composed two tunes still often played today – Go Cubs Go and A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request (featuring the now inoperative lyric, funny then – “the doormat of the National League”).

Along with life-long friend John Prine (fellow Chicagoan and fellow former US postal worker), Goodman wrote Souvenirs, a favorite of mine, and the “perfect” country song You Never Even Call Me By My Name.  He also popularized songs of other composers, notably Michael Smith, who wrote The Dutchman, Roving Cowboy, Crazy Mary, and Spoon River – all soft ballads that became big Goodman fan favorites.  Goodman was a leading figure among the Chicago singer/songwriters and folksingers in a now-bygone era, along with others such as Prine, Bonnie Koloc, Ed and Fred Holstein, and Tom Dundee.  

Although not well-known by his fans during his lifetime, illness and mortality were always on Goodman’s near horizon, perhaps explaining in part the energized emotion and bittersweet tenderness of so many of the songs he sang.  His You Better Get It While You Can was more poignant than many of us realized at the time (“from the cradle to the crypt is a might short trip, so you better get it while you can”).  Steve Goodman passed away in late September 1984, just days before his beloved Cubs finally entered post-season play for the first time since before he was born.

Although I enjoy a great deal of popular music I don’t go to concerts much, preferring mostly to listen to music in a comfortable arm chair with a subtle pinot at hand.  But Steve Goodman had to be seen in person, to share in his warmth and energy, and so I have seen Steve Goodman far more than any other performer, and he is still sorely missed, after all these years.

R Balsamo

Related Posts:
John Prine at 65
Folkie Tom Paxton at 75
Laura Nyro in My Head

Faust at the Lyric Opera

Chicago’s Lyric Opera has a striking new production of Faust, Gounod’s most popular opera whose story is loosely based on Goethe’s most famous play.  The Wikipedia entry for the latter asserts that it “is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.”  The basic story is well-known – a disenchanted, aging philosopher named Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for his earthly transformation into a dashing and attractive young man, especially, but not exclusively, so he can pursue the beautiful young maiden Marguerite.  Many suffer tragic consequences. 

Faust debuted in Paris in 1859 and has become a world-wide favorite.  Created in the French grand opera tradition, like many others of its kind it is so long that many productions scale it back.  Thankfully, the ballet is often omitted entirely.  Faust offers some wonderful music in addition to its thought-provoking story line.  But although there is beautiful, flowing music in this opera, little of it seems to show up in compilations of favorite opera selections.  The tenor aria “Salut, demeure chaste et pure” is the only one I’ve frequently encountered.  

The Lyric production featured terrific singing from the leads and the usual great vocals from the chorus.   French tenor Benjamin Bernheim played Faust in his American debut, Ana Maria Martinez played Marguerite in her one appearance in this role (Ailyn Perez sang the role in the other performances), Christian Van Horne played Mephistopheles, and Edward Parks was Marguerite’s brother Valentin.  The sets, although somewhat abstract in parts, were for the most part interesting and relievedly period-appropriate.  Taking in the Lyric production in sight and sound was a delightful way to spend a few hours.

Faust has evoked some strong feelings.  Despite being French and spending time studying in Italy, Gounod fell under the spell of Wagner.  In the Lyric Opera Companion, Dale Harris writes that after the appearance of Faust “accusations of ‘Wagnerism’ were leveled against [Gounod].”  Harris quotes one British critic who “accused [Gounod] of being to all intents and purposes a German composer ... and too much after the manner of Wagner to please the lovers of unadulterated music.”   Joseph Wechsberg writes in his masterful The Opera that “Gounod’s Faust remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, but compared to Carmen it is second-rate salon music...  The critics hate Faust and the public loves it.” 

Many music lovers take a different view.  The Lyric offers that “the score ... simply bursts with memorable music. Marguerite’s Jewel Song, the Soldiers’ Chorus, the spectacular final trio — these and much more make Faust a sublime experience.”  And the public does love it.  At the Lyric, in the last 50 years Faust has been the tenth most frequently-produced opera in the Italian and French repertory, with its six productions second only to Carmen of those by French composers.  Boito’s treatment of the same story in his opera Mephistopheles seems well-regarded, if not more regarded, by critics but has not been as popular with the public, as illustrated by its only two Lyric productions in the past 50 years – both in the 1990s. 

The moral of the Faust story is immortal.  Although the notion of literally selling one’s soul to the devil may strike a great many today as fanciful, selling out one’s principles and honor for some temporal advantage is not, so the story has lasting relevance.  Such folly is all the more tragic when committed by someone old enough to know better, for truly there’s no fool like an old fool.

R Balsamo

Lincoln's Birthday

Today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1809, of Abraham Lincoln.  My small collection of books specifically on his life include the first edition of the one-volume edition of Carl Sandburg’s monumental six-volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years;  Stephen B. Oates With Malice Toward None – A Life of Abraham Lincoln; the Library of America’s two-volume Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings; James McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution; Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg; and Jan Morris’s Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest.  Some of these I’ve read fully, and some in part. 

Interestingly, the only one I’ve hardly touched is perhaps the most famous of all – Sandburg’s biography.  I have a general bias toward more recent scholarship, and I’ve always been suspicious, unfairly no doubt, that Sandburg was too close in time to the actual man, and did not have the benefit of more fulsome scholarship and basic research yet to come.  But it’s on my long get-to list!

Among his many qualities was his sometimes-droll great sense of humor.  One example I enjoy, from Anthony Gross’s The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: 

While walking along a dusty road in Illinois in his circuit days, Lincoln was overtaken by a stranger driving to town.  “Will you have the goodness to take my overcoat to town for me?” asked Lincoln.  “With pleasure, but how will you get it again?” came the response.  Lincoln promptly replied “Oh, very readily.  I intend to remain in it.”

R Balsamo

Clinton Democrats, the FBI, & the Justice Department Caught in the Biggest Political Scandal in American History

By all appearances now, Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party and their corrupt high-level operatives in the FBI and the Justice Department funded a pack of lies about Donald Trump’s supposed ties with Russia and dressed them up in an official-looking “dossier.”  They then used those lies to secure legal justification to spy on Trump and Republicans and promoted those lies through the liberal media to smear Trump during the 2016 election campaign.  Moreover, all indications are that the same senior FBI and Justice Department people who worked so hard to frame Trump were the same ones who colluded with the Clinton people to wrongly clear her of grossly illegal activity.  

This is the biggest political scandal in American history, all the more remarkable because many of the corrupt conspirators to this very day remain in senior positions in the FBI and the Justice Department.  Even now, they are allowed to obstruct justice by their Republican boss, the seemingly dazed and spineless Jeff Sessions, and his boss the Republican Donald Trump, remarkably the very object of the conspiracy.  What are Sessions and Trump thinking – that the FBI and the Justice Department don't report to them, and that they can do nothing about the Obama and Clinton partisan lawbreakers still apparently running those two federal organizations that are very much under their control?  I'm sure that never before in American history have such corrupt, subversive high-ranking federal officials been allowed to remain in office and continue their conspiracy by the very President who has been the object of their vicious malfeasance.  Breathtakingly remarkable.

R Balsamo