Oh, show us the way to the next whiskey bar

My family went tonight to see Opera Boston's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), and it was fantastic. The brainchild of three crooks in flight from the G-men in Pensacola,* founded on the principle that "it's easier to get gold out of miners than out of rivers," Mahagonny becomes a capital of pleasures simultaneously too expensive and too cheap—a city that even God cannot abandon, because its inhabitants have thrown him out with the declaration that they are already in hell. This is America all crushed into a dirty handful of urban legends, where Alaska is next door to Alabama and the gold rush is still on at the frontiers of the soulless, citified world. Here, as elsewhere, the only true crime is being poor.

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist's du . . .

The set could have been any derelict truckstop with its scuffed parking-lot crossroads and three port-o-potties out of which characters variously appeared like sketchy jacks-in-the-box, but Brechtian alienation was out in full force with kindergarten chairs and fluorescent lights and a different announcer for each tableau of the opera, dashing onstage into whatever had warmed up into naturalistic action before dashing offstage again, the illusion broken. The lumberjacks from Alaska tramp onstage in parkas and backpacks; the whores of Mahagonny are there to greet them in fishnets and babydolls. Black plastic garbage bags pile up in the bins from which props are alternately removed and thrown back, and more than one dead character is slung out of sight into the recycling. When a gun fires, its shot is the crack of a visible slapstick. I didn't even have a problem with the bits of the translation that rhymed. People might as well speak in couplets as expect a hurricane to blow itself out in the mountains of Florida.

It's still a rare work. After 1933, there were no performances of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny until the 1960's, when the opera was gradually revived—only a single printed score had survived the Nazis. But it survived. It's tenacious stuff, that entartete Kunst. Jarring and bitter and catchy and I want to know, does anybody on this friendlist have a favorite recording of Mahagonny to recommend? Because now I need one.

The Doors don't count.

*shirei_shibolim, fleurdelis28, thomasfreund: Frank Kelley as Fatty the Bookkeeper, in a Saturday beard, a red leather blazer, and a shirt with '70's lapels? Surprisingly sleazy. But with that clarion, crystal-cut diction even when he speaks. All hail the King of the Chia Pets.

Though the stars hang their tears in the trees

My dreams have better architecture than the cities I live in. All last night's action took place on huge terraces, sunken courtyards, stone skyscrapers, monumental statues, with crowds of students and restaurants and occasional warm and silent fields, away from the skyline that looked like a twelfth-century cathedral with neon. I remember lunch on a balcony where the stonework went up to either side like cliffs, with weeds and flowers springing from cracks between the blocks, but we still had to tip the waiters twenty percent. There was a boy who was sometimes a coyote, but the storyline of the dream dealt unkindly with him—everyone commented on how out of character his actions had been toward the end. There were some books I had borrowed, that were and were not the plot of the dream. Mostly I remember a little orchard of trees and a circular house like a stunted tower, two floors and no way in except to climb up the brickwork and lever up the sash in the nearest, white-ledged window, but inside it was all quiet, closed up, clean as though its occupant had only recently moved out, but something in the sunlit stillness made me think no one else would ever move in, either. I went back through the trees, where the leaves crowded together so closely that the afternoon came through in fingernail bits and lace fragments. I tried to write up a description. I remember one line: "the dark sunlight under the crab apples and the planes." Much later, I realized that the trees and the tower had been Applegarth, and where I had broken in Merlin lay sleeping. But he was in another layer of time, and I could not reach him; or perhaps he had been the man who sent me off to steal nothing except a view of an empty room, a bare floor, shelves with no books on them.

This week sort of disappeared into itself. On Monday, I had lunch with dgr8bob, who introduced me to The Extra Glenns and Dale Bailey's "In Green's Dominion," and now I have two new bookstores to visit in Waltham. Tuesday, I walked through the snowdrifts of the bike path into Lexington Center, for the library, and returned with Angela Carter, Paul West, John Crowley, and blisters on both my feet. Wednesday, there was a wake; no one in my family, but it was still not good. Thursday, I visited a friend in Hartford and New London, and listened to the radio for the first time in months. (And very late that night, it snowed again. Thank God for winter.) And yesterday has already been memorialized, but I had to think about most of the other days of the week. I want my brain back. It's off dreaming Arthuriana and I need it to read Mimnermos.