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| Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown, is a suspenseful thriller involving a plot to blow up Vatican City while a conclave to elect a new pope is taking place. The main character, Robert Langdon is a professor of art history at Harvard and an expert on religious symbols. After telephone conversations with, and the receipt of a fax from, the head of a nuclear research facility in Switzerland, Langdon is flown to Switzerland in a plane that can make the trip in forty minutes. A scientist who had succeeded in producing antimatter, has been killed and his body has been branded with a mark that suggests that the crime was the work of the Illuminati, a secret society of scientists opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. A canister containing some antimatter has been stolen and has the potential to cause a large and dangerous explosion. The head of the facility receives an urgent phone call from the Vatican, but he cannot go there because of a serious health problem. Langdon and the scientist daughter of the murdered scientist fly to Rome in the special plane. In Rome, they meet with the papal chamberlain, a young priest who is in charge of the Vatican during the papal interregnum. The canister of antimatter has been hidden somewhere in the Vatican and will explode at midnight, completely destroying Vatican City. The Swiss Guards are ordered to try to find it. I immediately guessed where it was located, but of course I was not there to tell them. A further complication is that four cardinals have been kidnapped, and will be killed that night one each at eight, nine, ten, and eleven o’clock respectively at a different location in Rome. I guessed where the cardinals were being held, but again I was not there to help. Langdon and the young woman frantically find a slim volume by Galileo in the Vatican library that has clues to where the four cardinals will be killed. Thus, we know that much of the book will be a frantic dash through Rome (by Langdon, the female scientist, and some Swiss guards) to four different locations to try to prevent the murder of the four cardinals. And of course there is the ultimate question of whether Vatican City will explode at midnight. There are other surprising revelations in the book, some of which I had also guessed, and none of which were really surprising. At times characters talk about the relative merits of religion and science. As presented in this book, that talk is not very interesting, but it might be to an intelligent ninth grader. Much of the story is unbelievable. I realize that Vatican City is an independent country, but wouldn’t the Italian government and police involve themselves if the Vatican were going to blow up and cardinals were being killed at locations in Rome outside of the Vatican? Italian firefighters put out a fire at one point. But what about the police? Although the book does have some flaws as indicated above, it is nonetheless very interesting on the whole and could be described as a page turner. Whether or not one more or less knows what it is going to happen, reading the story is quite enjoyable. |
| On the evening of Wednesday June 11, 2003, I attended a Boston Early Music Festival performance of Conradi’s Ariadne. The opera was first performed in Hamburg in 1691. Before the performances this week in Boston, the opera was last performed in 1722. It is the only of Conradi’s operas to have survived. He was a German composer who was music director of the opera in Hamburg from 1690 to 1694. The libretto by Christian Heinrich Postel tells the story of Ariadne, who helps Theseus to escape from the labyrinth in Crete after killing the Minotaur. Theseus had feigned love for her so as to obtain her help, but he was in love with Ariadne’s sister Phaedra. Ariadne was being wooed by Evanthes, who in this opera is Bacchus in disguise. After the characters leave Crete, Ariadne is abandoned by Theseus on an island, where Evanthes reveals to her that he is the god Bacchus. Ariadne renounces Theseus and professes her love for Bacchus. I thought that the libretto was very interesting dramatically, with well developed characters. According to Paul O’Dette’s program notes, Postel was “considered by at least one prominent literary scholar to have been the finest of all German librettists, including Wagner!” The music has arias, duos, and trios, and recitative, much of it “accompanied” rather than “secco.” The arias resemble those in Italian opera of the time. There is also some dance music in the French style, and some music for comic relief that draws upon German folk tradition. The costumes, in seventeenth-century style, were sumptuous and attractive. The sets consisted of receding columns and backdrops, and were a pleasure to see, sometimes quite colorful. Ellen Hargis, as Ariadne’s mother Pasiphae, was the most satisfactory member of the cast. Her voice is pleasant and was always clearly audible. She fully communicated the words and their meaning. I had thought that she was under-utilized until she sang an impressive revenge aria in the last act. Dorothee Mields as Ariadne’s sister Phaedra was also quite good. Some of her hand and arm gestures during at least one aria seemed unnecessary, but I imagine that she was doing as she was told. As to the other singers, I would say that they were doing a good, but not superlative, job of performing difficult and demanding music. Karina Gauvin was somewhat likeable as Ariadne, but she lacked the star quality that the title role calls for. It often seemed to me that she was not so much communicating to the audience as she was doing her own thing in the presence of the audience. I could make out some of the German words in her recitatives, but in her arias I would not have been able to tell what language she was singing. There were occasionally a few notes that she did not project well. Matthew White had a lot to sing as Evanthes and Bacchus. Some of it seemed a little of a strain for his countertenor voice. I think that many female mezzo-sopranos would have been more to my liking. Jan Kobow, tenor, as the servant Pamphilius, provided comic relief. In his scene with the scissors-grinders at the end of Act One, he was the first of the singers to develop a real connection with the audience. I was happy with the dancers, the chorus, and the orchestra. On the whole the performance was very enjoyable. This Ariadne deserves to be known by a wider audience. |