A few more points on the subject I commented on on Friday. First, costs should be compared with the non-healthcare increases in costs (colloquially referred to as the “rate of inflation”). Only healthcare and education consistently proceed ahead of other costs. They have many things in common including heavy government subsidy and artisanal production system.
That’s health care spending as a share of the economy, so we don’t have to worry about correcting for inflation (as we do with Kleinke’s graph). Do you think the trend is up or down?
I just realized that I didn’t make any comments about Lyric’s production of Aida we saw last month. Aida and Amneris—very good. Radames—fair. Radames is in an unenviable position. Essentially, he walks out onto the stage and sings the opera’s most famous aria, “Celeste Aida”. Most tenors ignore the composer’s notations and belt the love song out, crescendoing at the final high note. This was no exception.
I’ve seen this production for the last 25 years. The first time I heard it Luciano Pavarotti sang Radames (I don’t recall which critic said he looked like the Goodyear blimp in a dress). We refer to it as the “Smurf production”—the Nubians (with the baffling exception of Aida) sport blue body and facial makeup. All these years later it remains a production of Aida without pageantry. Chicago audiences deserve a new production.
On Saturday my wife and I saw Lyric Opera’s new production of Jerome Kern’s 1927 musical, Show Boat. I love Show Boat and have seen it staged more times than I can count. I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen Show Boat—it continues to be performed at the St. Louis Muny Opera roughly every six years. With the Muny’s huge facility they can actually put a full size showboat on the stage. The scale of the Muny’s productions is unmatchable.
Lyric has gotten stingier with its production photos lately. The shot above is the best I could manage. As you can see it depicts the production’s large showboat set piece with chorus and cast members.
We liked the production but found it uneven. Morris Robinson (Joe—“Ol’ Man River”) and Angela Renee Simpson (Queenie) were superb. The first act performance of the show’s most famous song, “Ol’ Man River”, was as good as I’ve ever seen. I wept throughout. I wish the director had turned Ms. Simpson loose a bit more. Although her performance was simply wonderful she was clearly keeping it toned down a bit.
Our opinions split on Nathan Gunn’s Gaylord Ravenal. We both thought his looks and acting were excellent but I liked his singing better than my wife did. I wish he hadn’t cheated on his high notes but you can’t have everything. I found Ashley Brown’s Magnolia appealing as an ingenue but I did not find her convincing as a Ziegfeld headliner. Alyson Cambridge as Julie LaVerne, the part originated by the incomparable Helen Morgan, was exquisitely beautiful and had a lovely singing voice but in her case I think the decision to split the cast between opera singers and musical comedy performers betrayed them. Her singing was too precise, too a tempo. I think she over-performed her second act song, “Bill”. Understated, it should have torn your heart out. It didn’t.
The one performance I found disappointing was Ross Lehman as Captain Andy. I thought his timing was lousy. He persistently stepped on his own gag lines.
The dancing and crowd scenes were probably the best I’ve seen in any Lyric production. The sets were glorious, particularly the gorgeous backdrops of the Columbian Exposition and The Palmer House. A combination of backdrops and cartoon sets helped propel the second act along at a dizzying pace.
Overall, I recommend the production strongly, particularly if you’ve never seen Show Boat on stage before.
Spoilers Follow
The production differs in some significant ways from the standard production that prevailed until the release of the “restored” recording in 1988. Unlike on that recording the black cast members never use the “N-word” although white cast members do. This production thankfully restores Queenie’s first act song “Misery’s Comin’” which in the standard production appeared only in the overture and as incidental music in the background. I found that an excellent choice.
We never learn that Kim (Gay and Nola’s daughter) has become a movie star in her own right. I presume that’s for the sake of time (the show runs just under three hours, cut from a potential total length of four hours).
At the end of the show Gay and Nola do not reconcile, unlike the standard production or the two movie versions. No Hollywood ending. The message, apparently, is that decisions have consequences and some may never be forgotten. As the curtain falls Kim embraces her father, Nola stands off to the side. That’s truer to the Edna Ferber novel in which, once Gaylord has left, he’s never seen again. There’s only one message to an Edna Ferber novel: men are shnooks.
Besides the cinematic fluidity of Zambello’s pacing, what makes this “Show Boat” sail along so smoothly is the expertise with which it integrates trained operatic voices, musical comedy singers and a pride of Chicago actors and dancers into an energetic troupe of performers. Lyric’s talented cast comprises 22 roles and calls for a dozen dancers, and that doesn’t include the two choruses, one Caucasian, the other African American.
For Lyric, Zambello has reconnected “Show Boat†with its operatic kin and full orchestra, gone deeply and with great knowledge and respect into the stories and context of the show’s black and mixed-race characters and brought together trained opera singers, musical theater performers and stage actors in a strongly braided cord. She’s perfectly cast an ensemble across the board to perform some of the most enduring songs and theater music ever written.
As with “Porgy,†Zambello, artistic director of the Glimmerglass Festival who started her career as an intern and then assistant director at Lyric in the early 1980s under the late Ardis Krainik, has been working with “Show Boat†in various forms for years to develop a clear and cohesive presentation of a 40-year survey of the lives of traveling show people. All orchestrations, including banjo and acoustic guitar, are those of the great Robert Russell Bennett, who created the orchestral sound for the original 1927 production as well as its 1946 revival.
Show Boat’s production values are as grand as its players. Chorus master Michael Black and choreographer Michele Lynch helm a vast, high-spirited chorus who are a consistent delight to behold. As if by magic, Peter J. Davison’s sets conjure up the grand locations of Chicago’s own Palmer House Hotel, the World’s Fair and the Cotton Blossom in all its exquisitely crafted glory. And Paul Tazewell’s costumes – flouncing petticoats, high stepping boots and feathery hats – are a supporting cast in themselves, with hints of bright red that complement the sets and create a moving work of art.
A few problematic elements exist in Lyric’s Show Boat. The venue isn’t used to spoken-word dialogue and the sound is a bit patchy at times. Also, both Magnolia and her daughter Kim appear far too young at the end, taking into account how much time has passed. Overall, however, Lyric has revived Show Boat in a way that would surely please Kern, Hammerstein, Ferber and the god of theatre himself, Dionysus. Intrigue, suspense, laughter, tears, visual and aural heaven: it’s all here. Get on board!
Check out the production photos in Lauren Whalen’s review.
Is the United States a serious country? Should it be? Apparently, the Tom Friedmans and Eugene Robinsons of the world think it isn’t and should be.
My take: U. S. policy is an emergent phenomenon of the competing interests in the country. This does not enable us to proceed with the single-minded determination of a dictatorship or the consistency of authoritarian rule but it is well-suited to a large, diverse country and provides us with a durability that more “serious” systems might not.
It seems as though everywhere you turn these days you hear more about battery-powered electrical vehicles. However, when I read articles likes this:
Stanford University researchers believe they’ve found a better way to build a long-range electric car. Amazingly, their solution has nothing to do with batteries.
By using resonating metal coils to wirelessly transmit large amounts of current between roadways and vehicles, the researchers say it’s now possible for an electric car to have virtually limitless range.
“The idea is that the energy transfer would take care of the base load that you would need to propel the car,” Sven Beiker, executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS), told us. “If you do the math, you see that it would provide enough energy for the car to cruise down the road at about 65mph.”
I wonder if in 30 or 40 years today’s infatuation with battery-powered EVs will appear quaint.
There is as yet no Moore’s Law when it comes to batteries and producing safer, longer-lived batteries with greater capacity that are quicker and easier to charge and can be produced in quantity is proving quite the challenge. As the article cited above suggests batteries are not the only prospective solution for powering EVs and it’s far from certain which technology, if any, will ultimately prevail.
Quite a few governments and very powerful companies have put their eggs into the battery basket and that alone might be enough for batteries to prevail. It would be nice to think that the superior technology always triumphs but isn’t necessarily the case.
Contrary to the perennial doomsaying, the health-care system is—almost in spite of itself—getting better. A generation of breakthrough drugs for chronic disease, mental illness, HIV and cancer were developed in the 1980s and ’90s at great cost. Dozens of these drugs—like Zocor for heart disease or Zyprexa for schizophrenia—are now widely available, many in generic form. There are now countless electronic ways of telling patients about them. And health insurers are driven by their own evolving market disciplines to make sure patients start taking them and keep taking them in the cheapest available versions.
Combine all these new medicines, information channels and business compulsions with the slow, steady transfer of economic responsibility for health care—from corporate and government bureaucrats to consumers and their families—and suddenly health-care starts to look almost like an actual market.
and produces a handy graph illustrating the second derivative changes in the cost of healthcare (the change in the rate of increase). Indeed, the rate at which the cost of healthcare is increasing is lower than it was in 2003.
However, when you look at a longer time horizon, as the graph I’ve reproduced at the top of this post does, a different picture emerges. Mr. Kleinke’s explanation for the decline in the rate of increase is one of the triumph of technology. What I see is somewhat different.
Every so often Congress, like the groundhog, emerges from its troubled slumber, and engages in a spasm of panicked activity, hoping to bring healthcare costs under control. Such spasms took place in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and we’ve just been through one. Mirabile dictu! Almost as if in reaction to the inevitable threats to take the healthcare system under federal control, the rate of increase subsides.
Mr. Kleinke’s interpretation is one of technology triumphant and he sees something resembling a market emerging in healthcare. I see a fear of regulation and a response that does not suggest market forces so much as the response of a cartel to the fear of losing its prerogatives.
If Mr. Kleinke is correct, we’ll know soon enough. If the increase in healthcare costs remains around the general rate of inflation over a protracted period, say, two or three years, we’ll know a basic change has occurred. If, on the other hand, they begin to increase again, we’ll know it’s business as usual.
I would ask Mr. Kleinke a question. If technological change is introducing market discipline into healthcare, why does that discipline never push the rate of increase below the general rate of inflation? Isn’t that what you’d expect in a market?
There’s a discussion going on in comments about the relationship between military strength and peace. I don’t think there is a clear, straight line relationship. It may come down to the old “butter or guns” model used in Econ 101 (at least it was mentioned in my first economics course which, as it works out, was Economics A01—FWIW I also took C01, C03, and C05).
Let me give an example using my favorite outlier, Switzerland. Switzerland hasn’t participated in international war since 1815 but not by virtue of pacifism. By some measures the Swiss are the best-armed people in the world.
That’s a proud Swiss tradition. Machiavelli wrote of the Swiss: “they are the most armed and the most free”, following up with an example of the Swiss response to foreign invasion.
The Swiss are obstinately neutral: during World War II the Swiss shot down both Allied and German aircraft that strayed into their air space.
How has Switzerland avoided war? All Swiss men between the ages of 18 and 45 serve in the Swiss military, keeping their service firearms in their homes. It has been remarked that Switzerland is an army.
Further, Switzerland has little in the way of resources to attract an invader. It is rich by virtue of its people and its people are ready to oppose any invader.
Essentially, Switzerland has avoided war by virtue of cost-benefit analysis. The Swiss have raised the cost to an invader and reduced prospective benefits (additionally even belligerents need bankers).
One of the benefits of long periods without war is that my family’s written records of baptisms and deaths go back to the 13th century.
How does this relate to the United States? Here in the U. S. we have raised the cost of a prospective attack to a devastatingly high degree. We also attempt to ensure that hostilities will take place far from our soil, a legacy, I think, of the American Civil War. Only a country whose leaders’ utility function was drastically different from ours would essay such an attack.
It’s been observed that liberal democracies don’t go to war with one another. That’s the reason, I think: their utility functions are too similar. I think the Russians’ utility function is sufficiently similar to ours that their attacking us is unlikely. The Russians are, however, more paranoid than we are if anything (it’s a quality we have in common).
Is the assessment of risk and reward by the Iranian regime sufficiently similar to ours that we can deter them? I honestly don’t know. The mullahs’ utility function is very, very different from that of our leaders. It’s possible to be simultaneously sane and non-deterrable.
On an unrelated subject I read and speak Russian fluently. I am reasonably conversant with Russian history, politics, and culture. I was once offered a job as a Soviet analyst. Although my knowledge is a bit dated I still read Russian newspapers (in Russian) on a regular basis. When making assertions about what Russians would or would not do under this or that circumstance, please provide citations. Or at least present your credentials.
I’ve been in a sort of funk for the last ten days or so. I’ve had a bad cold or the flu. As a rule I’m rarely ill (other than the things that trouble me all of the time) so my taking a couple of days off to recover is an indication. For a while I was running an actual fever. When you consider that my normal body temperature is more than a degree below 98.6° going above 98.6 is something of an occasion.
I’m also discouraged about the general state of the world. We seem to hurtling towards war with Iran without any prospects of accomplishing anything by such a war other than getting a lot of people killed. I know that people will point to the threat that a nuclear-armed Iran will present. They should convince the U. S. intelligence agencies which still hold the position that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons.
My own view is that the Iranians are, in fact, developing nuclear weapons, we didn’t take the actions necessary to prevent them from doing so when it might have done some good, and there’s very little we can do to prevent their developing them now. Now is the time to develop a good policy for dealing with a nuclear Iran rather than more saber-rattling over a nuclear Iran being unacceptable.
I wish that the Obama Administration were crafting a strategy for a long-term commitment to Afghanistan rather than continuing to delude itself (or us or both) that victory there is within their grasp.
I think our foreign policy, generally, is a mess, neither pragmatic nor idealistic. Just incoherent.
I find the budget that the president has submitted equally incoherent. Many seem to agree, the most extreme characterization that of a Democratic congressman: “a nervous breakdown on paper”. Some think it’s political theater; a few poor souls think it’s brilliant political theater. The Wall Street Journal editors think it’s “doubling down on class warfare”. The Washington Post editors, apparently, think it’s a serious policy proposal.
If it’s serious, it’s a serious acknowledgement that the economy won’t right itself for the foreseeable future. More on that later.
I think the economy is a house of cards being built by drunks. It’s not a question of whether it will get knocked down but when and by what. There’s almost no end to the prospective candidates.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at contest for the Republican presidential nomination. IMO the final outcome will be that a weakened and decreasingly coherent Mitt Romney will be narrowly defeated by President Obama whose campaign, running against the Congress, ensures Republican majorities in both houses.
Last night my wife elected not to go to dog training and instead we shared a Valentine’s Day dinner of a small filet, twice-baked potatoes, and asparagus, washed down with a bottle of domestic champagne and watched the second evening of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on television. Lots of nice dogs and we saw several acquaintances handling and in the audience.
The Best in Show winner was the Pekingese. I didn’t see it that way, myself but, then, I’m not crazy about extremely brachiocephalic dogs.
Update
One compliment and one rather catty word on fashions. I liked the dress worn by the woman who judged the Working Group. It was both becoming and fashionable. But why was the woman who judged Best in Show wearing a dust ruffle?
The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week.
