Marlis Petersen in Lulu/ Courtesy: The Metropolitan Opera

 

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This week: Churchill and Champagne, Berg and Blackness

FictionThe Mark and the Void, by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus & Giroux): It’s been just over seven years since the defining moment of the 2008 financial crisis: the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And while there have been plenty of nonfiction assessments in the intervening years, the fictional renderings of the crisis have been slower to appear. The standard bearer to date has been John Lanchester’s Capital, which surveyed the crisis through the lens of a single street in London, touching on the widespread effects of international financial turmoil. But the financial crisis was a global one, and it was not just New York and London that suffered. Dublin, too, experienced its share of commotion, with the once-mighty “Celtic Tiger” economy kneecapped by the tightening of credit markets. This is, nominally, the subject of Paul Murray’s new novel, The Mark and the Void, which follows his 2010 Man Booker-longlisted effort, Skippy Dies. In The Mark and the Void, Murray pillories both sides of the deals that brought down the Irish economy, reserving scorn for both the lenders and those who personally overreached. This is no hectoring, though. With wit and a taste for the absurd, Murray draws characters who, had we not lived through the comic outlandishness of 2008 (remember Fabulous Fab Tourre?), might seem to be mere caricatures. There’s a lot going on in The Mark and the Void, but then again, financial markets are complicated too. That the characters, living in a world of such complexity, stand out so acutely is a credit to the author. —BR

Nonfiction: No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money, by David Lough (Picador): The field of Churchill studies is a large one—that should come as no surprise. He was not only at the center of many major historical events, but was the driving force behind them. But our fascination with the man goes beyond his monumental place in history. Put simply, he was also a fascinating man, full of life and the source of many a great dining-room anecdote. One might think that, more than fifty years after his death, there is little more to study or say about Winston Churchill. That supposition naturally would be mistaken. Entering into the fray is David Lough, a former private banker turned historian, who has turned his eye toward Churchill’s often-precarious personal finances. Using previously unstudied material from Churchill’s private records, Lough examines the way Churchill spent profligately—almost ruinously—only to see his fortunes rebound following the Second World War. Deliciously titled and minutely researched, the book should appeal to all those with a curiosity about the man behind the legend that was Churchill. Which is to say, nearly everyone. —BR

Drama: "Books at Noon," featuring David Hare, at the New York Public Library (November 4): David Hare is nothing if not prolific. The author of over thirty plays (such as Skylight and Via Dolorosa) and fifteen television, movie, and radio scripts (including The Hours, The Corrections, and The Reader), he also has directed twelve plays and movies. It makes one wonder where he finds the time to write a memoir, as he just has with his new book, The Blue Touch Paper, out today from Norton. This Wednesday he’ll be speaking at midday under the center arch in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building’s Astor Hall, offering devoted fans and those new to Hare’s manifold work a chance to hear from the man himself. —BR

Art: Lulu, by Alban Berg, at The Metropolitan Opera (November 5–December 3): The season premiere of Lulu provides us with a twofer for this week's Critic's Notebook, since this opera is as much anticipated for its art as its music. In 2010, the South African artist William Kentridge brought his vision for the Shostakovich opera The Nose to the Metropolitan, to entirely worthy acclaim. Three years earlier, The Magic Flute received its own Kentridge treatment at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Kentridge is an artist who uses his process of drawing and printmaking to create stop-action films, which in his opera productions become backdrop projections. Their use so artfully incorporates the music and themes of the original works that Kentridge has proven the exception to the rule: new productions are not always infelicitous to their source material, and new technologies sometimes do have a place on the opera stage. It can feel like Kentridge crafts productions that Mozart and Shostakovich and Berg might have always intended, or at least would be delighted to see. Through December 19, Marian Goodman Gallery gives us another way to experience the work, with an exhibition of Kentridge's "Drawings for 'Lulu.'"  —JP

Music: Lulu, by Alban Berg, at The Metropolitan Opera (November 5–December 3): There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the opening of Alban Berg's Lulu at the Met this week. Not least, of course, is the new production by William Kentridge, the South African artist whose previous staging of Shostakovich's The Nose was one of the most powerful, dark, and imaginative pieces to play on that stage in the last decade. His Lulu promises to be similarly impressive—inventive, evocative, and stark, the aesthetic revealed in the company's production photos will not shy away from the blackness or sensuality of the work. The score itself is one of the great musical achievements of the twentieth century, though admittedly is not for all hearers. Not quite as bleak as the composer's other operatic masterpiece, Wozzeck, it is nonetheless an aesthetic and emotional ordeal, unlikely to lift the spirits but a perfect bet for listeners eager for a challenge. Marlis Petersen, today's most celebrated interpreter of the title role, leads a cast that also features Susan Graham and Johan Reuter. Lothar Koenigs, replacing James Levine, conducts. —ECS

From the archive: Last of the Whigs: Churchill as historian, by Robert Messenger: On Winston Churchill’s enduring legacy as an historian.

From our latest issue: The intolerable dream, by Gary Saul Morson: Don Quixote at 400.

 

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